The best locations for beekeeping in Arkansas are found on the bottom-lands in the river valleys in the eastern and southern portions of the state. In the Mississippi, Red, St. Francis, Arkansas, and Ouachita valleys white clover grows in profusion, and secretes nectar well in favorable seasons, since the soil is very fertile. Holly in the southern portion yields a large surplus of honey, taking the place of gallberry in North Carolina and Georgia. Beekeeping is in an almost wholly undeveloped state, employing crude apparatus and methods, and, strictly speaking, there are not more than two or three commercial apiaries in the state.
TEXAS
Total area, 265,780 square miles. Texas, which is 740 miles in length and 825 miles in breadth, is nearly the same size as France, and its area is about one-twelfth of that of the entire United States. Its soils, rainfall, temperature, surface features, and flora vary widely in different portions of the state. From the low coast marshes along the Gulf of Mexico, covered with reeds and cypress-trees, the land gradually rises in altitude until on the high treeless plains in the northwest it reaches an elevation of 4000 feet and in the Rocky Mountains west of the Pecos River a height of 9000 feet. From over 60 inches in the northeastern Coastal Plain the annual rainfall decreases to 25 inches in the center of the state and to less than 10 inches at El Paso. The varied and dense vegetation of eastern Texas, consisting largely of a mixed forest and many prairie flowers, gives place in the almost rainless desert of the Trans-Pecos region to cactus, yucca, and agave. According to a conservative estimate about one-half of the land, or 85,000,000 acres, can be cultivated; but at present less than one-third of this area is under tillage. Irrigation is practiced to a limited extent in many counties; but, except in connection with rice-growing along the coast, the most extensive irrigated areas are in he valleys of the Rio Grande, Pecos, and Nueces rivers.
Notwithstanding its immense area and great diversity of physical features, Texas may be divided into six fairly well-defined physiographic regions: Northeastern Texas, or the east Texas timbered region; Southeastern Texas, or the Rio Grande Plain; the Black Prairie, or the cotton belt; Central Texas; the Staked Plains, or high plains; and the Trans-Pecos, or mountainous region west of the Pecos River.
Northeastern Texas, or the east Texas timbered region, is an agricultural section, but about one-third of its territory is covered with a mixed forest of longleaved pine, short-leaved pine, loblolly pine, and post oak on the higher land, and a variety of hardwood trees on the river-bottoms. This forest is the southern termination of the great mixed forest of the Gulf states, its farther extension being checked by the decreasing rainfall. In the timberland along the rivers the following trees and shrubs secrete nectar: black tupelo, white tupelo, honey locust, sweet bay, willow, persimmon, redbud, red maple, papaw, catalpa, basswood, sumac, buckthorn, plum, cherry, gallberry, dwarf palmetto, holly, rattan-vine, and yellow jessamine. In the low flat lands of the coast in the underthicket are found holly and gallberry, and on the dryer land blueberry. The banks of the Neches River are lined with black tupelo and white tupelo, the belt of timber being one to two miles wide. In the Coast Prairies there occur almost impenetrable thickets of holly, thornbush, chinquapin, and magnolia. There are many peach and pear trees in the northeastern counties, and in the vicinity of Galveston a large acreage of orange trees.