332 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



October 



such a location the beekeeper must 

 take the manipulation necessary to 

 control of disease as a matter of 

 course and give it the same atten- 

 tion that he finds necesary with 

 swarm control or other timely activ- 

 ity. 



With the extension of the sweet 

 clover area, there has grown up an 

 organization of beekeepers known as 

 "The Western Honey Producers' As- 

 sociation," which handles a large part 

 of the honey produced in that re- 

 gion. There seems' to be a general 

 impression that they are dealers 

 rather than producers. While, as a 

 matter of course, they do purchase a 

 great deal of honey in the open mar- 

 ket to supply their trade, they are 

 essentially producers. They are very 

 probably the most extensive produc- 

 ers of honey in Iowa, if not the Mid- 

 dle West. At the time of my visit, in 

 July, the sweet clover flow was just 

 on and they were operating twelve 

 hundred colonies of bees within a 

 radius of about twenty miles of 

 Sioux City. 



Seven or eight years ago the idea 

 of an organization of honey produc- 

 ers who should market their own 

 product through a central packing 

 plant was conceived by E. G. Brown 

 and Thomas Chantry, living at that 

 time near Salix. W. P. Southworth, 

 also a beekeeper of that locality, was 

 interested in the plan, and they 

 started out to form such an organi- 

 zation. As with most co-operative 

 ideas, there was difficulty in holding 

 the producers together, and while sev- 

 eral manifested a good deal of inter- 

 est for a time, they failed to stick. 

 Chantry moved to Utah, leaving 

 Southworth and Brown as the sole 

 survivors of the party who started 

 out to form their own marketing or- 

 ganization. 



Brown had been a beekeeper since 

 infancy, his father having been one 

 of the first commercial honey pro- 

 ducers in the Middle West. When 

 Ed was 16 he left school to take 

 charge of the bees. From that day 



till this he has been a honey pro- 

 ducer and has seen all the ups and 

 downs of the business, from a big 

 crop and no market, to a big market 

 and no crop. Southworth was a mer- 

 chant for a long time and kept bees 

 as a side line. As his bees increased 

 he became more impressed with the 

 possibilities of the business, His 

 mercantile experience stood him in 

 good stead when it came to market- 

 ing the crops. The packing plant 

 had not long been in operation, when 

 it became apparent that, in order to 

 market their own product to good 

 advantage, they must be able to sup- 

 ply their trade with honey through 

 the entire year. This involved buy- 

 ing honey and packing under their 

 own label to insure that they would 

 be able to fill all orders promptly as 

 received. One serious obstacle in es- 

 tablishing honey as a staple article 

 has been the difficulty of providing a 

 dependable supply. The grocer does 

 not care to waste his time creating a 

 demand for a product that he will 

 not be able to supply more than six 

 months in the year. In the past the 

 beekeepers have sold their crop as 

 quickly as possible after it was pro- 

 duced. This made a dull market at 

 one season of the year with a bare 

 one at another. The man who starts 

 out to supply a regular trade soon 

 learns that he can't get very far 

 without being able to supply the de- 

 mand constantly. 



As the trade in bottled honey grew 

 it seemed desirable to secure better 

 railroad facilities and other conven- 

 iences lacking in a small town. They 

 accordingly moved to Sioux City and 

 last year erected a fine building with 

 the latest equipment for bottling 

 honey. The filling of the packages 

 is done by machinery which weighs 

 the contents exactly. Even the la- 

 bels are pasted on the pails by ma- 

 chinery. With their own plant in 

 operation, the handling of supplies 

 along with honey was a very natural 

 step. With twelve hundred colonies 

 of bees of their own and a much 



Hospital colony - 

 with foulbrood 

 emerged. 



: brood from colonies 

 piled up till all has 



rs* outyards. 



greater expansion contemplated, 

 their own orders for supplies are 

 such that it pays to buy in carlots. 

 What more natural then than to sup- 

 ply the many beekeepers in the vi- 

 cinity of Sioux City? 



Although Southworth and Brown 

 are all that remain of the original 

 members of the enterprise, others 

 have associated with them since that 

 time. Among them should be men- 

 tioned C. S. Engle, formerly of Bee- 

 ville, Texas, and C. E. Kautz, former- 

 ly of Brighton, Iowa. Both are ex- 

 perienced and practical beemen who 

 are now in charge of part of the 

 company apiaries. Each man has 

 charge of a certain number of apia- 

 ries for which he is individually re- 

 sponsible. Sweet clover is grown so 

 extensively that many of their loca- 

 tions will support from 100 to 200 or 

 more colonies of bees. The great 

 difficulty is not in finding pasture 

 but in securing a location in an ac- 

 cessible place, and also in getting 

 far enough from disease centers that 

 the bees are not reinfected with 

 foulbrood with discouraging fre- 

 quency. 



Since foulbrood is so thoroughly 

 established in every direction the 

 best they can do is to get locations 

 as far from other bees as possible 

 and then be constantly on the watch 

 for it. At the time of my visit En- 

 gle was treating a few colonies 

 where it was of recent development. 

 It is never allowed to advance far in 

 anj colony. The colony is treated 

 before it becomes weakened, this 

 making a minimum of loss with each 

 case. His method was to shake the 

 bees with queen onto full sheets of 

 foundation. An excluder was placed 

 above the hive and the brood-nest 

 replaced. After an hour or two, 

 when the bees had become quiet, he 

 removed the brood-chamber and car- 



