1905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



641 



Beekeeping IN the Southwest. 



BY LOUIS H.&CHOLL. COLLEGE STATION TEXAS 



San Antonio, Texas, is the next meeting- 

 place for the National. 



A few breeding-queens should be procured 

 for your yards each year from which to im- 

 prove your stock of bees. 



Rains, downpours, cyclones, floods, and a 

 dozen other things we have had here in Tex- 

 as, and yet prospects are promising. 



There has been a great demand for South- 

 ern queens so far this season, which I gath- 

 er from letters from some of our breeders. 



The Texans are at last glad to know that 

 the National will come to San Antonio this 

 fall. It is about time, too, that this deci- 

 sion were made. It will be only several 

 months until the meeting, and preparations 

 for the occasion are well under way. 



My first crop of this year's honey was ta- 

 ken May 10 from my home yard at Hunter, 

 Texas, and sold at 7 cts. per pound. It was 

 extracted honey of good quality, gathered 

 from various spring flowers. How does this 

 compare with bee-keeping in the North? 



I am indebted to Prof. Frank Benton, in 

 charge of apiculture. Bureau of Entomolo- 

 gy, Washington, D. C., for a complimenta- 

 ry copy of a revised edition of Farmers' 

 Bulletin No. 59 which treats on bees and 

 bee-keeping, especially for farmers. All 

 who are interested in bee-keeping should be 

 in possession of a copy. It is free. 



The bee-keepers of the Southwest will 

 confer a great favor if they will send me 

 news items on apiculture from all over our 

 part of the country. I shall be glad to re- 

 ceive and answer all letters that are sent 

 me, and I should like to keep posted upon 

 all topics relating to bee-keeping. Crop re- 

 ports especially will be appreciated. 



Cleaning the inside of the hives and the 

 frames of burr-combs and propolis, and re- 

 placing crooked and drone combs with good 

 worker combs, or foundation, in the spring, 

 when there is very little honey and brood in 

 the way, has been found very profitable. 

 Besides, it makes future manipulations very 

 much easier and more pleasant, while the 

 better combs result in less worry, fewer 

 drones, and more workers. This, I feel 

 sure, is worth thinking about. 



That "brick " of honey has partly melted' 

 down now; but the center and the upper 

 portion of the cake are still firm. The ex- 

 treme moisture of our season this year may 

 have had some effect upon the honey get- 

 ting soft, for a thin watery fluid has pene- 

 trated through the carton, which would show 

 that moisture was the cause. The brick is- 

 still being kept for further observations. 



" Spring cleaning " in bee-keeping is very 

 much like the spring cleaning with the good 

 housekeeper, and it is one of the things very 

 much neglected by too many bee-keepers. 

 It should include the cleaning-up of every 

 thing in and about the apiaries, and putting 

 all in apple-pie order for future work. This 

 will make the work more pleasant, and, at 

 the same time, more profitable. 



The spring honey crop has been very light 

 this year. In the greater part of the coun- 

 try there has been practically no crop so 

 far, and there has been no honey on the 

 market for several months. Even the larg- 

 er dealers have had none to supply demands. 

 I have been trying to get several hundred 

 pounds for our boys here at college, but I 

 could not obtain it. This is mainly due to 

 the excessive and continued heavy rains 

 which still prevail frequently to this date. 



Very few bee-keepers really know the 

 value of a Manum swarm-catcher for hiving 

 swarms until they have tried one. I say 

 this from my own experience. Before, I 

 used to think it was just so much saved if 

 the swarm-catcher were left out of the or- 

 der for equipment, but not so now. In fact, 

 I do not know of any thing better, especial- 

 ly if swarms settle in tall trees. To let the 

 swarm cluster on the suspended basket while 

 the hive is prepared to which the swarm is 

 then carried, makes the hiving much easier 

 and less disagreeable than the old ways. 



The control of swarming has been a prob- 

 lem this season here in the College Apiary. 

 The great abundance of spring honey-yield- 

 ing bloom produced overpopulous colonies 

 before they could be controlled. Once the 

 swarming fever was on, and the most favor- 

 able conditions existing, nothing would keep 

 them from swarming. Colonies that were 

 divided artificially would swarm, even if they 

 were on only half the number of combs in a 

 large hive. With such existing conditions, 

 all our pet-hobby non-swarming ideas are 

 knocked far and wide, and we begin to won- 

 der how we might control something for 

 which we had a " sure thing " before. 



£/ 



SHORT APICULTURAL TERMS. 



What shall we have next ? A shorter 

 term, "expressive, which would never lead 

 to any confusion, and I would suggest that 

 our correspondents adopt the term " — edito- 



