1918 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



51 



Porto Rico Beekeeping 



By Henry Brenner 



MY brother beekeepers who 

 think me in Porto Rico will be 

 surprised to see these lines 

 dated from Santo Domingo. I cer- 

 tainly had a fine time in Porto Rico 

 and enjoyed very much my experi- 

 ences, the land, people, scenery, and 

 especially my observations on Porto 

 Rican beekeeping. I do not think 

 that from November, 1916, till Sep- 

 tember, 1917, I ever spent more than 

 two days at one time in towns, al- 

 ways in camp and apiaries in differ- 

 ent places. The best kept apiaries 1 

 visited were those of Dr. Henry 

 Smoyer in Naranjito and Corozal; 

 the Warner apiaries in Comerio, Sa- 

 bana, Naranjito and Aguas Cuenas ; 

 Rudolfo del Valle's two up-to-date 

 apiaries in Ponce, and Wm. De Cha- 

 berts' in Rio Piedras. 



These gentlemen are experienced 

 beekeepers and some belong to the 

 pioneers. Every one of their api- 



boards in use. I discarded both. 

 When the hands were done extract- 

 ing I let them rest a day or two and 

 started anew. With my powerfully 

 strong colonies and a young, vigor- 

 ous queen and only one or at most 

 two supers, we kept continually at it. 

 We picked out the ripe honey, shook 

 the bees off and replaced right away 

 with empty comb. In some of the 

 apiaries where the hands followed 

 my instructions, rearing cells, mak- 

 ing the virgins in the supers and 

 extracting we more than doubled the 

 honey yield. I also made the ac- 

 quaintance of smaller beekeepers 

 and beginners. 



In the parts of Porto Rico which I 

 visited the main honey-flow starts in 

 June and ends in September, and it 

 is possible to keep the bees continu- 

 ally at work if proper attention is 

 paid to the brood-nest and the 

 queen. 



The main sources of nectar are the 

 shade trees in the coffee plantations. 

 Coffee blossoms several times and 



DON RODULFO DEL VALLE'S APIARY AT PONCE, rORTO RICO 



aries has an extracting house, dwell- 

 ing house for the manager and his 

 family and a reservoir to catch the 

 rain water. Two and four-frame ex- 

 tractors, capping melters, honey 

 tanks I have also noticed. 



In the Smoyer apiaries they use 

 steam heated uncapping knives. The 

 apiaries are without exception well 

 kept and clear of grass and weeds 

 and the hives well painted. 



In the Warner apiaries I started 

 extensive queen rearing from Texas 

 queens I brought along from home. 

 In March or April Mr. Warner sent 

 the first small shipment of 25 queens 

 to New York and received orders for 

 all the queens he could send at once. 

 Of course, we needed the young 

 queens ourselves to build up the 

 colonies and to re-queen and for in- 

 crease. 



For every apiary I found queen — or 

 better-honey excluders and escape- 



yields nectar also. Wild flowers and 

 numerous shrubs and bushes produce 

 nectar and pollen also. In the citrus 

 plantations the flow is during the 

 bloom and is very heavy, but of short 

 duration. 



I opened- thousands of hives in 

 Porto Rico and a good many here in 

 Santo Domingo, but have not found 

 a single diseased colony. In one of 

 the apiaries I saw in January bees 

 crawling along the ground snowing 

 decided symptoms of paralysis. I ex- 

 amined the colonies and found, in 

 two, fermented honey of sour taste. 

 I marked these colonies and found at 

 my next visit the honey good and 

 sweet and not a sign of paralysis. 



A large business can be built here 

 in the Tropics in shipping combless 

 bees in pound packages. The only 

 precaution to be taken is to ship 

 gentle bees, not the vicious brutes or 

 hybrids. I intend to go into this 



DON RODULFO DEL VALLE. 



business in Santo Domingo and have 

 already ordered more breeding 

 queens from Texas. 



One of my proudest days in Porto 

 Rico has been when Mr. Henry 

 Smoyers visited me and told me that 

 he succeeded in getting more queen 

 cells, and good ones, introduced in 

 the supers and had a larger percent- 

 age of matings than myself. 



I have now been five weeks in 

 Santo Domingo and had the good 

 fortune to meet with Dr. Maldonado 

 in Sanches, in whose apiaries I am 

 trying my hand at present. Have 

 queens laying in the supers already, 

 from hybrid queens I brought along 

 from Porto Rico, and am waiting for 

 my Texas queens to improve the 

 bees faster. 



DON RAFAEL SERRA AND HENRY 

 BRENNER IN DON RODULFO DEL 

 VALLE'S APIARY. 



