190" 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



401 



BEE KEEPING 

 TEXAS. 



IN 



A Visit to some of the 

 Apiaries in the Vicin- 

 ity of Uvahle. 



BY H. H. ROOT. 



At the National Bee- 

 keepei's' convention in 

 San Antonio, Nov. 8, !i. 

 and 10, of last year, Mr 

 D. M. Edwards asked mv 

 to come out to Uvaldi 

 and look over the coun- 

 try. This southern coun- 

 try was all new to me, si > 

 I was very glad to go. 

 after the bee-inspectors' 

 meeting was over that 

 followed the regular convention. 



It was with the greatest of interest that I 

 stepped from the train when we pulled into 

 Uvalde, for I knew something of the reputa- 

 tion which that locality had. Still, it was a 

 surprise to me to tiud out later, that, in the 

 year 1903, a million and a half pounds of 

 honey had been shipped from that very sta- 

 tion. Is it any wonder, then, that bee-keep- 

 ei"s there were almost as numei'ous as poul- 

 try-raisei"s here in the North? 



The Southern Pacific Railroad does not go 

 through the town, but passes within a mile 

 of it. Hacks were waiting to take the pas- 

 sengers into town. Although this was the 

 13th of November, the weather was very 

 warm and the roads deep with dust. My 

 overcoat hanging limply over my arm made 

 me warmer still, and for once I wished for 



FIG. 3. — BUKKETTS SOLAK WAX-EXTKACTOK. 



FIG. 1. — ONE OF THE DRY RIVERS OF TEXAS. 



the cold winds and the freezing weather of 

 the North. 



Mr. Edwards was waiting for me when we 

 drove up to the house, and it wasn't very 

 long before we had started in a light buggy 

 for his ranch, twelve miles from town, in- 

 tending to stop at several apiaries on the 

 way. We tools a somewhat roundabout 

 route — one that Mr. Edwards had not been 

 over for some time, and we had all kinds of 

 trouble for the reason that, within the last 

 year or two, wire fences had been put up in 

 many places, preventing any one from driv- 

 ing promiscuously "across lots," and some 

 of these lots, by the way, are rather large. 

 Oae pasture was over thirteen miles long. 

 Think of going after the cows in the evening 

 and finding them at the other end of the pas- 

 ture ! Some will wonder how we could drive 

 without any roads; but, as a mat- 

 ter of fact, the natural surface of 

 the ground is as level as a table, 

 and. in many places, almost as 

 hard. Whenever a track becomes 

 rutty it is easier just to drive to one 

 side of it than to fix it up. We 

 lost our way for quite a while, and 

 at two different times had to cross 

 one of the dry rivers, about a quar- 

 ter of a mile in width, which are 

 made up of stones worn round and 

 smooth, about the size of water- 

 melons — see Fig. 1. Except when 

 it is very wet, the water is not high 

 enough to cover the stones, but 

 runs far beneath the surface. 



We did not reach the first apiary 

 until after sundown, and then we 

 found the owner, O. T. Burkett, 

 had been extracting, evidently, but 

 had just gone away. Although it 

 was getting dark I managed to 

 take a genei'al view of his yard, 

 which is shown in Fig. 3, and also 

 of his solar wax-extractor. Fig. 3. 

 The hot sun that shines almost all 

 the time makes the solar extractor 

 very valuable. Mr. Burkett's api- 

 ary looks as though it were situat- 

 ed in a remarkably well-kept or- 



