. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. Fig. 2. The soapbush is ahl best all-round source of honey in their locality. It blooms sometimes in spring, sometimes in fall. Some years it blooms several times and yields at irregular periods. Mesquite also blooms at two or more periods during summer. The cactus or prickly pear, which is so common everywhere in the southwest, is val- ued especially for pollen. Its period of blooming is reported as more regu- lar. Beginning in July, it blossoms in to six weeks About one year in four it yields some surplus honey, but the flow is usuallj verj short, c
. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. Fig. 2. The soapbush is ahl best all-round source of honey in their locality. It blooms sometimes in spring, sometimes in fall. Some years it blooms several times and yields at irregular periods. Mesquite also blooms at two or more periods during summer. The cactus or prickly pear, which is so common everywhere in the southwest, is val- ued especially for pollen. Its period of blooming is reported as more regu- lar. Beginning in July, it blossoms in to six weeks About one year in four it yields some surplus honey, but the flow is usuallj verj short, continuing but four or live days. The honey is peculiar in ap pearance, granulating in large crys- tals in clear liquid. It is often spoken of as buttermilk horn cause of this peculiarity. E. ' i Li Stourgeon reports one year an av- erage yield of 87 pounds per colony from prickly pear in Atascosa county. Horsemint is found in every part of Texas which I visited. It is re- garded as an important source of nectar from the Rio Grande valley to shower is all that is necessary to bring some of them into bloom. It sometimes happens, as was the case last year, that the flora remains dor- mant to the extent that little bloom is open. Then bees suffer severely. In 1917-18 the losses were from 25 to 75 per cent in many counties in southwest Texas. The losses were most severe at a distance from the streams, where the upland flora fur- nished the entire dependence. The most serious feature at such times is the shortage of pollen. At some points in the western portion of the mesquite region, the bees were un- able to continue brood-rearing when fed with sugar syrup, and swarmed out and left the hives in large num- bers. Along the streams where some pollen was available, the losses were much lighter, and in some cases there were none. At some points along the Nueces river, there was a secretion from live oak balls which saved the bees in 1917. George Schmidt, at Crystal City, reports this as
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