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Gleanings in Bee Culture 



BEE-KEEPING IN FLORIDA. 



Migratory Bee-keeping. 



BY E. G. BALDWIN. 



Continued Jrom last isaue. 



Florida bee-kee])iiig has had its golden 

 age and its tragedy. Along in the '80's, 

 many bce-nien, living inland or in localities 

 affording Inil one main source of honey (as, 

 for example, orange or ])almetto), were in 

 the habit of migrating to the coast lands for 

 the honey from the black mangrove that 

 then grew most luxuriantly all along the 

 islands and keys of the East Hhore. This 

 truly wonderful tree gave results that are 

 yet the wonder of the apicultural world — 

 never before equaled, and never since aj)- 

 proached (see Fig. <>. page 2b'?, April 1), for 

 a view of a mangrove thicket in the fore- 

 ground, liy migrating at the proi)er seast)n 

 — that is, after the orange and palmetto — 

 many bee-keepers secured a double or treble 

 harvest in one and the same season. To 

 cite a good instance, Mr. A. F. Brown, then 

 of Huntingdon, Fla., would secure there his 

 crop of orange honey; then he would move 

 to the flat woods or the hummock lands for 

 the honey from the saw i)almetto; then to 

 the coast in time for the combined man- 

 grove and cabbage palmetto. The vicinity 

 of the Hillsborough and Indian rivers on 

 the East Coast was the Mecca of mangrove 

 honey-seekers at that time. 



The years from 1S90 seened to grow stead- 

 ily better every year, with one exception, 

 till 1894. That was a record-breaker. Old- 

 time bee-keepers still point back to "the 

 phenomenal year " of 1894. That year the 

 colonies built uj) earlier than usual. Sjjring 

 was very far advanced early in the year, 

 and all things were favoraltle from the out- 

 set. The hives were full of orange-blossom 

 lioney l)y the middle of March (a time when 

 Ihey are usually only well into the su])ers). 

 IJy the middle of May, honey was coming 

 in freely from saw i)almetto, and extracting 

 was begun fully a month earlier than usual 

 from this source. Mr. .1. B. Case, of Port 

 Orange, says: " I extracted from 40 colonies, 

 and then moved them l.'> miles by wagon 

 and boat to the Indian River, near a man- 

 grove swamp. By .luly o we extracted 2500 

 lbs.; two weeks later we took off 3000 lbs. 

 more; and at the close of the season, 1500 

 lbs. more, making a total of 420 lbs. per col- 

 ony for those moved, and 300 lbs. per colony 

 for those not moved." 



That moving paid, and paid w^ell. Those 

 located right in the mangrove sections rea])- 

 ed a golden harvest. The results they se- 

 cured were almost dazzling. Mr. Harry 

 Mitchell, of Mawks Park, secured 600 lbs. 

 from one colony, on scales all season, get- 

 ting as high as 15 lbs. per day. His bees 

 averaged 380 lbs. per colony from mangrove 

 (done. Mr. AV. S. Hart secured 20 >^ tons of 

 choicest honey from 116 colonies, spring 

 count. Two of his colonies gave him 600 

 lbs. each. Fig. 22 shows how his honey- 

 house looked at the end of the season, even 



after about one-third of the barrels had been 

 shipped. 



The crop harvested by the combined bee- 

 men of one locality, Hawks Park, marketed 

 a total of 200,000 lbs. Other sections along 

 the same coast fared likewise. That year 

 honey was not counted by pounds or gal- 

 lons. Cases and barrels were hardly men- 

 tioned. When the bee-men met or si)oke of 

 their yields it was " How many /o?i.s have 

 you?" Bees were at a premium, and their 

 owners i)lanned big things for the coming 

 year. But, alas for the coming year! Win- 

 ter came on with an ominous fall in tem- 

 perature. A strong wind drove back the 

 sea from the roots of the mangrove, and a 

 sudden cold spell froze the mangrove-trees 

 back to the roots. The orange-trees fared 

 likewise, and so a double source of surplus 

 was cut off at one fell swooj). Ordinarily, 

 mangrove will recover in fiNe years after a 

 froeze, if no more than the trunks are kill- 

 ed; but if the roots are injured it takes al- 

 most three times that long. Migratory bee- 

 keeping was almost at an end then, for there 

 was nothing to migrate to. It has taken 

 mangrove 15 years to come back into bear- 

 ing. The first freezing of it was in 1835, the 

 earliest recorded by the white men; the sec- 

 ond was in 1886; by 1890 it was blooming 

 again, and steadily improved till 1894, with 

 the one exception of 1893. In 1894, as stat- 

 ed, it froze worse than ever before in the 

 history of white men in Florida. Formerly 

 it grew to a tree 18 or 20 feet in height, the 

 giant stumps and trunks of which can still 

 be seen — mute, gaunt monuments of those 

 earlier days, pathetic witnesses of an age 

 gone by. The year 1909, in the vicinity of 

 Hawks Park, was the first year since the 

 big freeze when mangrove has given any 

 suri)lus honey. Conditions have never been 

 the same since. that time. Whether those 

 days are gone for ever, remains to be seen. 

 Mr. Hart says, "Black mangrove is getting 

 of good size again, and I see no reason why 

 yields should not come back to the old fig- 

 ures once more." 



Before the freeze of 1894, ]Mr. O. <). Pop- 

 ])leton and Mr. E. M. Stover kept bees three- 

 fourths of the year at the fork of the St. 

 Lucie River, north of Stuart, Fla., and then 

 would migrate 150 miles to the vicinity of 

 Hawks Park for the mangrove. They se- 

 cured excellent results, says Mr. Poj)pleton. 

 Since 1895, the migrating practice has be- 

 come a habit with Mr. Poppleton, and he 

 has continued to migrate, but in an ojipo- 

 site direction. He no longer went north 

 but south from the St. lAicie to the large 

 keys of the southeast coast of the peninsula. 

 He still mo\es his bees over this route every 

 spring. More of this later. Bee-men still 

 sigh for the "olden golden glory" of the 

 mangrove days. 



It is probable that "trelddng," to use a 

 Boer term, has had its day. Henceforth 

 the out-apiary system will supplant migrat- 

 ing in great part, if not entirely, unless con- 

 ditions assume exactly the phase exhibited 

 between the years 188(5 and 1895. That the 



