1967 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1313 



BLE. KEEPING 



IN THE ^OUTHVEST 



^ LOUIS SCliOLL 



Texas must now be in the lead as a honey- 

 producing State. Its 1907 crop has been fair; 

 and for producing at least some honey, year 

 after year, I doubt whether any other State 

 can beat it. 



To make a success of bee-keeping as a bus- 

 iness is what I am trying to do, and this has 

 been a busy season. Thei'e ai'e now ifourteen 

 apiaries scattered far and wide. If no hon- 

 ey is obtained at one place I ought to get it 

 at another. 



It is not how much we make, but how 

 much of that is profit. What does it profit a 

 man if it costs him eleven cents to produce a 

 ten-cent pound of honey, fussing with some 

 of the systems (?) given occasionally in our 

 journals. Get a system that lessens the cost 

 of production. 



Honey exhil)its are good advertisements. 

 They help to sell honey. Bee-keepers are be- 

 ginning to understand this better than ever; 

 and the consequence is, nearly every fair will 

 have its bee-depai"tment and a generous 

 premium-list. 



Requeening should not be overlooked by 

 the honey-producer. Every spring there will 

 be quite a numlier of queens that "come up 

 missing," and many fail to come up to the 

 desired standard, and this keeps on through- 

 out the entire season. It is caused by allow- 

 ing old, worn-out, and worthless queens to 

 remain too long in the hives. The remedy 

 is to requeen all such before they become 

 worthless. 



The best results in my apiaries are obtain- 

 ed from queens reared the previous fall, and 

 they will do two good years' work; then they 

 should be replaced in the fall, or after the 

 honey season with fall-raised queen. In this 

 way good results should be obtained year 

 after year. Of course, there will always be 

 some that will fail sooner than others, and 

 must be replaced sooner. 



For years it has been one of my greatest 

 desires to make my own hives and supers, 

 but "I never got to it." Now I am glad / 

 did not; for of the many, many home-made 

 hives I have seen and used, very, very few 

 meet with satisfaction with me. There are 

 many who make their own hives, and are 

 satisfied with them; Vjut it is impossible to 

 make them so they will always tit snugly as 

 a hive only should. The greatest objection 

 to them here is the yellow pine lumber which 

 either warps or splits, but always shrinks 

 more or less. A super made the right depth 



^v ill be \ inch too shallow later, and the 

 frames rest on those below them. If this 

 shrinkage were the same in all of the lum- 

 ber, sufficient allowance might be made when 

 cutting the hive parts; but some boards 

 shrink more than others. Besides, the bod- 

 ies and supers are very heavy. With white- 

 pine lumber at hand I'd make my own sup- 

 plies. Now I make only the bottom- boanls 

 and covers out of yellow pine. They last 

 longer, and are better than the light tlimsy 

 ones offered on the mai'ket. 

 ^^ 

 Nothing enthuses a bee-keeper more than 

 to be visited by another one of his craft, when 

 a regular convention can be had and ideas 

 exchanged face to face. Such has been my 

 happy lot recently when one of my old col- 

 lege chums while at the Ohio State Univer- 

 sity together, and also a bee-keeper, Arthur 

 H. McCray, of Duvall, O., "came to Texas " 

 and spent nearly a month here. He came 

 just in time to help me take off part of my 

 crop of honey, some 20,000 pounds, and to be 

 with me night and day, and on my rouuils 

 to a dozen apiaries. Yes, and he learned, 

 he said, something of managing apiaries on 

 a large scale, as well as something of Texas. 

 So well pleased was he that he hated to go 

 back. Yes, Texas is a great country, and 

 we know it. 



My main sources for surplus are- the mes- 

 quite-trees and the cotton-tields, cotton being 

 the second of importance in the central ami 

 northern part of the State, or throughnut 

 the black-land regions. On sandy or light 

 soil cotton produces very little honey. Jn 

 the picture shown on p. 1331, is one of the 

 Brazos River " bottoms " cotton plantations, 

 some of which contain several thousand 

 acres of cotton-tields. I have two apiaries 

 here, and cotton is the only source, as no 

 mesquite predominates. The yield is good, 

 averaging about 75 pounds of bulk comb 

 honey a year. One year it was over 100 

 pounds. Honey from cotton is very light in 

 color, the comb very white, and of excellent 

 flavor when well ripened. As soon as cool 

 weather sets in this honey fairly draws out 

 in long strings when handled with a spoon. 

 .^ 

 "poisoned" cotton and bees. 



Several enquiries have come to mH from 

 time to time, asking if bee-keepers need fear 

 any danger to their bees where poison is 

 used on the growing cotton to destroy the 

 leaf-worm and other injurious insecls. Ac- 

 cording to several items in some of our lead- 

 ing newspapers there would be no danger; 

 but the facts are that dangerous results might 

 follow. Several serious cases have come un- 

 der my observation. One of these happened 

 on our own home farm where one of the ten- 

 ants had applied London purple to abimt ten 

 acres of cotton to poison the leaf-worm. 

 This cotton was on low land where the leaf- 

 worm was doing the most damage. It being 

 of more luxuriant growth, this cotton yield- 

 ed nectar more abundantly, and the bees 



