VOL. LVIII— NO. S 



HAMILTON, ILL., AUGUST, 1918 



MONTHLY, $1.00 A YFAR 



A TRIP IN SOUTHERN GEORGIA 



The Editor Visits the Georgia Apiaries of J. J. Wilder, Tramping Through the 

 Swampy Underbrush to Get Close-hand Information 



RETURNING home in the last 

 days of March, I left wife be- 

 hind with our children, and was 

 advised by Mr. Wilder to stop at his 

 southern Georgia apiaries, in charge 

 of Mr. W. B. Bradley, with head- 

 quarters at Fargo, Ga., on the head 

 waters of the Suwanee River. My 

 wife, in her girlhood days, had often 

 sung of the "Suwanee River, Far, Far 

 Away," but had never known where 

 it was located, and was almost 

 tempted to go with me on that ac- 

 count. 



Many people have read of Wilder's 

 numerous apiaries, some rather in- 

 credulously, for he numbers them by 

 the hundreds and his colonies by the 

 thousands, shipping 10 or 15 carloads 

 of honey annually. Glints of dis- 

 belief have been emitted occasionally 

 by a reader. This was an excellent 

 opportunity to find out how much his 

 statements were worth. 



Mr. Bradley, a bright, wide-awake 

 young fellow, was at the station at 



Fargo when I arrived there in com- 

 pany with Mr. and Mrs. Wilder, who 

 were going home to Cordele and con- 

 tinued on the way. Bradley was go- 

 ing to an apiary 20 miles north, 

 where he had left his automobile, so 

 I got on the train again and we 

 stopped at Thelma. The apiary was 

 in sight of the station, right in the 

 middle of the woods. Imagine a flat 

 country of very straight, slim pines, 

 from which all the large trees have 

 been removed, leaving only the 

 stumps and a thick growth of un- 

 derbrush composed of saw palmetto, 

 seven or eight different kinds of 

 huckleberry brush, a large amount 



of gallberry brush (ilex globra"), and 

 an occasional cypress swamp with 

 shallow water where different water 

 bushes grow, among which the tupelo 

 gum, nyssa capitata or ogeechee 

 lime, furnishes abundance of honey- 

 producing flowers in April and May. 

 There, near an apiary of some 80 

 colonies, two men were working, pre- 

 paring supers and frames for the 

 harvest. The bee-house, measuring 

 about 20x36 feet, was full of extract- 

 ing half-story supers, with empty 

 combs in them, and a large lot of 

 barrels which had very evidently 

 contained honey the previous year. 

 It was a business-looking place. 



mi ii- and slenile 

 riiic^ in Southern Georgia 



\piu> at Fruitland, ik 



