Title: American bee journal
Identifier: americanbeejourn5859hami ( find matches)
Year: 1861 ( 1860s)
Authors:
Subjects: Bee culture; Bees
Publisher: (Hamilton, Ill. , etc. , Dadant & Sons)
Contributing Library: UMass Amherst Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: UMass Amherst Libraries

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1918 AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 261 turned to the city of Fargo, late in the evening, through the swamps, the brush and the sand. The next morning I had the pleas- ure of visiting the Suwanee River, a wilderness stream, looking like a creek, there, only a few miles from its head, but which I am told widens into an immense river near its mouth, traveling through swamps most of the way. Along this stream, besides the tupelo gum is found the chincapin, castanea pumila, whose flowers produce very dark, inferior honey, but Mr. Wilder, who has a number of apiaries on the lower Suwanee, uses this honey for feed- ing. In all these southern, flat, pine timber lands, the principal business of a town is turpentine and lumber. The sawmill is the life of Fargo, for Fargo is no exception to the rule. On the day I was there the town was in a flurry, for the Mill Company had gone into bankruptcy two months before and on that day the mill was sold at auction, with all that be- longed to it. This included three- fourths of the houses and the hotel. It was sold in a lump to one party, and the old lady who kept the hotel wondered whether they would close the mill and turn her out of the ho- tel, which she had kept for a number of years. She was very talkative, and said to me: "I hope they will keep the business going until the war is over, for if they do not, I will starve." The next day I went to Cordele. where more apiaries were to be vis- ited by me. Beekeepers in the north who have wondered whether Mr. Wilder did not overstate when he wrote of his hundreds of apiaries, need not be in doubt, for he has apiaries all over the south, with re- liable men in charge. Mr. F. T. Branch, the man with whom I visited the bees around Cordele, has charge of 20 apiaries, some 1,200 colonies, and these are, like the ones in south- ern Georgia, located in the brush. Is the South, therefore a reliable country for beekeepers, and would it be profitable for a northern bee- keeper to move there? My answer is in the negative. The Wilder method is certainly good. Many api- aries, scattered over immense spaces, in charge of reliable men who know the resources of the country and can make a profitable season out of a small per-colony yield, bring results. But the drawbacks are numerous. Difficulties of travel, swamps, white sand, unimproved soil. The negroes seem to delight in building forest fires, without any very plain pur- pose, for after the land is cleared it is probably less valuable than when it had still a growth of young pitch pines. It looked very much as if they only wished to see the big blaze during the cool spring nights. These fires are very damaging to the apiarists, for they not only endanger the hives, but also destroy the im- mediate expectation of a crop from palmetto or gallberry or other low shrubbery. The only safe honey- producing trees after a forest fire are the tupelo gums, which grow with
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The Tupelo Gum of the South their foot in the water like the cy- press. Each country has its special re- sources, its methods, and it is de- lightful to go from one region to an- other and see the different crops, from different soils and entirely dif- ferent sources. But if you have a good location, do not seek a change. Wherever you go you will find diffi- culties to overcome and you must re- member that "a rolling stone gathers no moss." How Far Bees Will Go for Honey By L. B. Smith IF I am not mistaken (I haven't time to look up the files of the American Bee Journal that I have) I subscribed for this journal in the fall of 1881, while the late Thomas G. Newman was editor. I have been a constant reader of it ever since, with the exception of one year. I have read, and written more or less about bees in nearly all the bee- papers published in the United States and some that were published in other countries. I have been a close student of apiculture all my life. With this introduction to the read- ers of the American Bee Journal, I shall take up my subject of the dis- tance bees will travel, or fly, for honey. In the spring of 1882 I purchased my first yellow-banded bees—Italians and Cyprians. People came for miles to see those bees, as they were quite a novelty then. At that time I lived in what was known as the "cross timbers" of Johnson County. Not many bees were kept, and my yellow bees were the first of that color that had been brought into the country. The location was a poor one; all other bees in the community were either black or brown in color, and were as much alike as two black- eyed peas, as the expression is some- times used. But to get to my point, it was not infrequently that I saw those yellow bees of mine four and five miles out from home, busily en- gaged in gathering nectar from horse-mint, wild marigold and other plants in season. At that time I was

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