By John Andrews

2009 was a rough year for South Dakota beekeepers.

Numbers released by the Department of Agriculture's Statistics Service show honey production in South Dakota in 2009 was down 17 percent to 17.8 million pounds. Still, that makes us the second highest honey-making state behind North Dakota (34.7 million pounds).

The honey business, like most agricultural ventures, is unpredictable, and the last five years have been especially turbulent. In 2005 bees made 17 million pounds of honey. In 2006 (a drought year) production dropped to 10.5 million pounds. 2007 rebounded to 13.26 million pounds, and 2008 skyrocketed to 21.38 million pounds.

South Dakota is consistently among the top five honey-producing states in the nation. Bees like our abundance of sweet clover and alfalfa. The nectar from those plants produces light honey, which is always in high demand. But beekeepers have run into the host of problems in recent years, most notably Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious disease that kills large numbers of bees and is currently ravaging colonies wintering in California.

Richard Adee is South Dakota's honey king. He started in 1958 and has grown his Adee Honey Farm, headquartered in Bruce, to 80,000 colonies, making it the largest operation in the world. When we did a story on South Dakota's honey farms in 2008,  Adee told us that keeping a few hives was once a nice hobby, but today it requires a serious commitment. "Unless they're really committed, and really want to learn and study what the problems are and how to take care of them, they just better not do it," he told us of people interested in the business.

By Bernie Hunhoff

During the legislative session, I get a daily chance to read the Pierre Capitol Journal. Though it is one of the smallest dailies in the West, the staff does an admirable job with day-to-day news.

And they do better than any South Dakota daily at news from long ago. Matthew Reitzel compiles a column, "Down By The Old Missouri," that gleams interesting items from 25, 50 and 100 years ago.

Today the Capitol Journal noted that Gov. William Bulow died 50 years ago at age 91. He was governor in the late 1920s and then served as a U.S. senator. He was known in Washington for giving few and brief speeches, and for his 10-gallon hat.

Despite his quiet behavior in Washington, he was regarded as a humorist in Pierre, and is credited with the now-stock answer when asked how many persons work in the statehouse. "Oh, about half," he quipped.

And when Al Capone, Public Enemy Number One, was offered haven in the Black Hills, Bulow cautioned, "We've got too many Republican candidates for governor already."

By John Andrews

Did you know that sculptor Gutzon Borglum's eccentric social attitudes once drew the ire of Adolf Hitler? We didn't either, until we read a column from the Twin Falls (Idaho) Times-News that a reader recently sent to us.

Much of the column was about Borglum's ties to the Ku Klux Klan. He supposedly joined the Klan after starting work on a bust of Robert E. Lee in Georgia. Before long he was a member of the Koncilium and was rubbing elbows with Klan leader D.C. Stephenson.

The Klan in the 1920s and 1930s was much more anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish and anti-immigration than the Klan that appeared immediately following the Civil War. The 20th century version was most popular in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. South Dakota even had small Klan populations in the Black Hills and in the southeastern corner of the state.

While Borglum had many Jewish friends, who often defended the eccentric artist, he still believed Jews were "greedy and antisocial." But when Hitler embarked upon his anti-Semetic campain in the 1930s, while Borglum toiled on Mount Rushmore, the sculptor called him barbaric. So when Hitler's army invaded Poland, he destroyed a statue of Woodrow Wilson that Borglum sculpted. Surely Hitler destroyed the statue partly because of what it represented: Wilson was president during World War I and served in the peace negotiations that placed blame for the war and heavy reparations on Germany (perhaps inevitably leading to World War II). But he couldn't avoid a dig at Borglum and his artistic abilities. Hitler said the statue was an eyesore, and "all out of proportion."

By John Andrews

History buffs in Minnehaha County will want to attend this month's meeting at the Old Courthouse Museum March 18 at 7 p.m. Emma Abbott, a recent graduate of Augustana College, will talk about John Dillinger and his brazen robbery of the Security National Bank on March 6, 1934.

We wrote about the robbery in our Jan/Feb 1993 issue, and told the story of a second, lesser known encounter that a Centerville man had with Public Enemy Number 1. Shortly after 10 a.m., on the morning of March 6, Dillinger and his gang entered the bank. They stashed $49,500 in sacks and made five bank employees stand on the running boards of their Packard as they escaped. A policeman managed to put a few bullets into the car's radiator, so they stole another and eventually got out of town. Lawmen lost their trail around Redwood Falls, Minn.

Dillinger also made an appearance in Centerville during that spring of 1934. Fred Mart recalled seeing him, Baby Face Nelson and a local banker playing cards in the back room of the Bloody Bucket on Main Street. Mart returned to town late one evening after working on a radio for a friend and decided to stop at the Bucket to visit his friend, Bert Hart, and get a midnight snack of some of Bert's famous baked beans. When Fred arrived, a nervous Bert urged him to stay, and led him to the back room. Nelson was engrossed in the card game, but after a while Fred remembered he noticed the stove and asked what was cooking. "Beans," Fred told him.

"Well, let's flavor them up!" Nelson shouted, and fired his gun into the stove.

Fred never did get his midnight snack. As Dillinger ushered him out the back door, he gently reminded Fred that if anyone asked, he had gone straight home that night.

Our article also indicated that local historians wanted to place a marker commemorating Dillinger's robbery at the site, but the building's owner protested. But a marker dedication is on the agenda at this month's historical society gathering.

By John Andrews

From 1880 to the 1930s, you could find corn and grain palaces in 24 towns in eight cities across the Midwest. We know this because today we received a book by Rod Evans entitled Palaces of the Prairie. Evans, a scholar and playwright living in Aberdeen, researched and wrote about every one of them.

The most famous, and the only one left, is the Mitchell Corn Palace, but at one time you could find palaces in Plankinton, Aberdeen, Ipswich, Gregory, Timber Lake, Rapid City and St. Francis. All towns had their own reasons for building one, mostly promotional. The Gregory palace was fueled by the town's rivalry with nearby Dallas.

As Evans explains, Dallas was founded in 1896. Eight years later a group of settlers and speculators established Gregory about four miles northwest. The biggest kick for Dallas came when the railroad decided it was going to bypass town and extend its line to Gregory. Dallas business owners began moving their buildings to Gregory, but when the bank was on its way the team of 76 horses pulling it bypassed town and settled five miles farther west, so the battle for supremacy continued.

The two towns continued to fight during ensuing land lotteries, where homesteaders tried to secure a piece of the former Rosebud reservation, which was initially opened for settlement in 1904. In 1909 Gregory beat Dallas in the competition for a land office, and in 1911 city leaders decided to turn the Krotter lumber yard into a corn palace to exhibit agricultural goods while homesteaders filed for land. Future president Harry Truman, who went to Gregory hoping to win a land lottery, visited the palace but was none too impressed. He called it simply "a wooden shack."

The palace was only decorated for a few years and the building was torn down in 1952.

Photo: Mitchell's corn palace in about 1907.

By John Andrews

We're finishing up a story on South Dakota filmmakers for our May/June issue. During the course of research we discovered that Chad Coppess, a photographer for the state's tourism department and a frequent contributor to the magazine, is a film buff, especially when it comes to films produced in South Dakota. He also stays in the loop regarding film news in the state and blogs about it all.

Check out Chad's Cinema South Dakota blog. You'll find history, photos and all sorts of information about South Dakota films.

By John Andrews

Is there anything South Dakotans won't race? We do all the mainstream stuff, like cars and horses. But people in Chamberlain race lawnmowers, and the residents of Volin race turtles. This weekend, the good citizens of Nemo will race outhouses.

Competitors build their own privy, mount it on something that will traverse snowpack well and race around a track, one at a time. One team member rides inside while the others push and pull.

The races are the focal point, but it's really an all-day extravaganza that benefits the local fire department. Here's a look at the schedule for Saturday, Feb. 27:

8 to 10 AM — Check in of Outhouses
9 to Noon — Toilet paper toss and outhouse horseshoes
10 AM — Deadline for outhouse check in and inspection
10:30 AM — Outhouse inspections – following inspection there will be a parade with Chinese fire drill practice
11 AM — Shovel races for kids (bring your own shovels)
11: AM – 1 PM — Chili Tasting
11:30 AM to Noon — Voting for people’s choice award
High Noon — Gun Fight at the Nemo Corral
12:35 PM — Captains meeting (MANDATORY)
1 PM — Outhouse Races start

It's either really poor planning or sheer genius to schedule the outhouse races after two hours of eating chili. And note they also recruit children to race with shovels.

Maybe with enough publicity this can become a winter Olympic event in 2014. There's already one event in which contestants ski for a while and then shoot things. And then there's curling. So why not outhouse racing?

For more information call the Nemo Guest Ranch at (605) 578-2708.

By John Andrews

It had to happen sooner or later. With all the snow and cold we've received, people are starting to compare the winter of 2009-10 to the doozy of 1996-97.

I get little sympathy around here when I talk about the winter of 1996-97. It's clearly the worst winter I can remember. I recall snow piled high, power outages, no school for days and wind chills of -70 to -80. (Scientists have changed the way they calculate wind chill since then, so we don't see numbers that dramatic any more).

When I bring it up, folks here look at me strangely and mutter something about how it wasn't that bad. Well, it wasn't. A quick search of the Internet reminds me that we got the brunt of it in north-central and northeastern South Dakota. Some places up that way got more than 100 inches of snow. Here's a map showing the moisture content of that snow. Notice the really dark swath through Hamlin County, where I grew up. Many more people were affected in the spring, when it all began to melt. Some places experienced "once in 500 years" flooding. Here's a synopsis from the USGS.

People in the Glacial Lakes country think this winter is comparable to '96-'97. Here's an article from the Webster Reporter & Farmer about the troubles school bus drivers are having. And here's a forum started last week at the Watertown Public Opinion for people to share memories.

State leaders are already preparing for massive flooding this spring, but let's hope it's none of that 500-year variety. After all, it's only been 13 years since the last one.