Hello, I have just been reading about Chanel Cordell and her bees. Have to tell like it was in 1935 and 1936. 

When I was going to high school I worked 3 summers for a beekeeper. Mr. Reppert migrated from Iowa to Shreveport and made a good living from his bees.

I worked each summer. He paid me $1.00 a day the first year, $1.50 the second year and the princely sum of $2.00 the 3rd year. Mr. Reppert had about 300 hives of bees, and he kept them in yards of about 40 hives each. He kept them scattered around the army air force base, Barksdale field. Barksdale field consisted of thousands of acres, and it was covered with sweet clover.

We worked with a model B. Ford and had a honey wagon that had iron wheels. The wagon was about 15 feet long and had a metal top and screens to cover the sides. Inside we had an uncapping tank and an extractor that extracted 4 frames at a time.

We had a tank that held about 2 barrels of honey that we placed outside of the wagon on the ground adjacent to the extractor. Mr. Reppert would remove the honey combs from the hives and Sambo would transport them to the honey wagon. Then one of us would place them in the uncapping tank and uncap them. Then one of us would extract the honey and then Mr. Reppert would place the empty combs back on the hives. We usually robbed about 20 or 30 hives a day and got 2 or 3 barrels a day .

The price of honey was retailed at 25cents a pint 50 cents a quart and 75cents a gallon.