1906 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1179 



of coml) honey, which I sokl in Havana at 9 

 fts. per lb. 



I had been in Cuba from August till May, 

 and never saw rain. At night. May 15, it 

 began to rain, and poured down all night. 

 It rained all next day, all night too. I got 

 afraid about the river rising. I was not too 

 soon, for the river rose four feet in the bee- 

 yard. There was two feet of water every- 

 where, and many hives atioat. I put the 

 bees as high as possible, yet the water reach- 

 ed them, and I lost many, and many colo- 

 nies were weakened. No more hone_y came 

 after this storm, which was incessant for 

 three days and nights, until August, when I 

 got 1200 lbs. of section honey. After this, 

 little honey came until December, when this 

 past season, which was the poorest Cuba 

 ever had, began. 



After losing 150 colonies by ants I still had 

 500 left when the season liegan. In Novem- 

 ber it was cool: in December it was colder: 

 and in January the thermometer w'ent down 

 to 84 — never went above 53 all day, with the 

 exception of a three-days' rain. This was 

 the only day when the bees did not liy in 

 Cuba in two years. However, I would say 

 that in Havana the lowest recorded temper- 

 ature was 55: yet the last nine days in Feb- 

 ruary it was below 50, and as low as 43 sev- 

 eral days. 



In the United States you get the crop when 

 the hives are full of liees, but not so here. 

 The bees with the first cool nights in No- 

 vember till the bottom with honey and crowd 

 out the brood, leaving only thi'ee or four 

 frames. These few bees, about a hatful, 

 make from one to ten pounds a week, and 

 many don't make a pound all winter. You 

 wonder why it is nei'essary to keep from one 

 to tive thousand colonies here. For the rea- 

 son that a hive contains only about a fourth 

 of a good swarm in the honey season, which 

 lasts al)out six months here. The remaining 

 six months the colonies are kept weak, as 

 they need feeding. Up to this writing 1 

 have taken only 15.000 Uis.. and I think the 

 season is nearly o\'er. though in my locality 

 I have a honey-tl(jw nearly all the year and 

 never feed. The entire output of comb 

 honev in Cuba was onlv 60.000 lbs. this vear. 

 and about 100.000 11 )S. last year. 



Next year I think 1 shall be the only 

 comb-honey pro(Uu-er on the island. All the 

 rest are preparing for extracted: and I don't 

 know but extracted, where there is any dai'k 

 honey, pays the better. I have dark honey 

 only in October, and not much then. The 

 honey 1 raise now is as light as water, and 

 capped as white as snow. 



t'uban honey is said to lie inferior in fla- 

 vor. I would say that it is like the different 

 honeys in the United States. In Felton. 

 Del., I raised comb honey that could not be 

 eaten, on account t)f its l)itter and nasty fla- 

 vor. When near Smyrna the honey all had 

 a tine flavor, though no better than any 

 honey I raise in this district. 



After the late war. when every thing was 

 grown up in weeds and vines, lai'ge crops 

 were po.ssible: but now when the ground is 



being cleared up for cane you can not e.x- 

 pect much honey except where it is impossi- 

 ble for white men to live. 



Large crops from single hives are impossi- 

 ble here. In Delaware I extracted every 

 other day for 80 days, and got 800 Hjs. froiu 

 one hive in that time. It will take fully a 

 year here for a colony to do that. The very 

 best I knew a colony to do here was an av- 

 erage of 15 lbs. of "comb honey a week for 

 two months, manv others not making one 

 pound a week, if you average a pound a 

 day of coml) honey you do very well. In 

 New York I got 50 "lbs. of comb honey in-^ 

 one week from one hive having two supers; 

 on. Here I never have more t^an one su- 

 per on at a time. The bees will not w^ork in 

 two supers — in fact, they will, most of the 

 time, work in only four or five sections at a 

 time, complete them, and work in others. 



There will be many bee-keepers dropping 

 by the wayside in Cuba this year, for I do 

 not see how they can feed 1000 lbs. a day 

 when one man's entire output fnjm 2000 col- 

 onies was only 3000 lbs. of comb honey. 



Help must be kept in Cuba, if f(n- no' other 

 purpose than to watch the yard to keep the 

 honey frcjm being stolen, and any thing that 

 can be laiil hands on. Last January I had 

 200 lbs. of comb honej^ stolen in less than 

 two weeks, besides many other things. In 

 two yards I have men all the time, and the 

 other yard I run myself, having 200 colonies 

 in each yard. My thermometer has been 

 stolen lately, which is of no value to Cubans, 

 as they use those on the Centigrade scale. I 

 have use for Spaniards only from Galicia to 

 work for me. Cubans are not trustworthy. 

 In the war time the Cubans learned to steal, 

 anil they have not yet forgotten the art. 



Cuba has two seasons — rainy and dry. 

 We had not a drop of rain from October to 

 March 15, and now we shall have rain every 

 day till October — no rain such as you have 

 in the United States. Imt showers lasting from 

 a few minutes to four hours. I have seen 

 six inches of rain fall here in as many hours. 

 Now our ground is water-soaked all the 

 time, and all this water gathers in low 

 ■places or goes into natural holes in the 

 ground which do not exist in the United 

 States. Here whole rivers disappear in the 

 ground, and you hardly know where, as the 

 stones are all full of holes made by insects. 



The mutl in Cuba is like putty, and it is 

 almost impossible to walk in it. The horses 

 get sore feet from the water and mud. and 

 you are compelled to walk sometimes. I 

 have lived in town now for a year and a 

 half, finding it impossible to live in the 

 country on account of mosquitoes. In the 

 town the fleas nearly eat me up. I can not 

 sleep at night without sprinkling the bed 

 with coal oil. I would say that coal oil costs 

 60 cents a gallon here. 



Fleas and mosquitoes are not the only bad 

 things. You will have live worms and liv- 

 ing bugs in your feet. There are tarantu- 

 las and .scorpions, snakes of all sizes, lizards 

 and chameleons. The living here I have 

 found almost unendurable. I know that 



