3o8 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



sacred soil. I was shown several of his 

 personal belongings — his old red lantern 

 by which he developed his negatives, his 

 "jouncer," and his automatic strainer by 

 which he could easily and quickly bring 

 into use a fresh surface of cloth when 

 the portion in use had become filled with 

 stickiness. 



There is a certain sort of romance about 

 working with bees away up in a moun- 

 tain canyon, but I can imagine that after 

 a few days of hard work, in the hot sun, 

 with cross bees, and only warm cistern 

 water to drink, that much of the picnic 

 feature would wear off. It would be al- 

 most impossible to get a well of good 

 water up on the mountains, ( ihere is one 

 at the Rambler ajM iry, made by digging 

 and blasting a tunnel b^ck into tlie 

 mountain al)out 75 feet. We walked into 

 it and carried a Liiitern when we went 

 after a pail of water) and rain water is 

 caught in the big galvanized iron tanks. 

 You can imagine how warm it gets in the 

 sun. There is, however, a sort of com- 

 panionship about the mountains that I 

 think would require (juile a lot of hard- 

 ships to make me entirely' forget it. I 

 stayed one night with Mr. Mendelson at 

 his apiary in the can)'on, and, as we sat 

 out in front of his cabin in the evening, 

 and saw the hills grow purple with twi- 

 light, and the stars come glimmering out, 

 there came over me a feeling as though 

 the surrounding mountains were protect- 

 ing friends. 



GOOD LOCATIONS IN CAI.1 FORNIA NEARLY 

 ALL OCCUPIED. 

 Let no one think that he can go to Cal- 

 ifornia and pick up a good honey location 

 anywhere. The orange blossoms some- 

 times furnish quite a quantity of honey, 

 and there are some portions of the state 

 where alfalfa is grown under irrigation, 

 and there are some districts where lima 

 beans are grown in the valleys and fur- 

 nish quite good crops of honey, but the 

 great crops of California honey are from 

 the black sage, and this does not flourish 

 all over the state, as I have already ex- 

 plained. Southern California, of which 



IvOS Angeles is the metropolis, if not the 

 geographical center, is the great honey 

 producing district of California, and 

 nearly all of the desirable locations are 

 already occupied. Occasionally there is 

 a canyon without an apiary, but there is 

 usually some good reason why it is un- 

 occupied. If a man wishes to locate in 

 California as a bee-keeper, the most feas- 

 ible plan is for him to buy out some one 

 already located. It would be a long, 

 tedious, precarious task for a man to 

 start with a few colonies and build up 

 into a prosperous business. Sometimes 

 there are two, three, or even four j'ears 

 (although the latter is very unusual) of 

 drouth in which the bees do well if they 

 get a living. Tlie only hope is in hav- 

 ing several apiaries, and then when there 

 comes a good year the owner can reap a 

 harvest of 50,000 pounds, or 75,000, or 

 even too, 000 pounds, as has been done, 

 and all of these thousands of pounds will 

 keep the owner over until another good 

 year. Then, again, men who have the 

 capital and foresight, keep their honey 

 until a dry year, when prices go up, 

 and thus make the poor year help 

 them in the way of selling to advantage. 



CALIFORNIA'S ONE GREAT DRAWBACK — 

 DRY YEARS. 



The dry years are the one drawback to 

 California bee-keeping. There cotne 

 years in which thousands of colonies of 

 bees starve to death. I was told of one 

 year in which ten car loads of empty 

 combs were gathered up by an enterpris- 

 ing firm and made into wax. The prob- 

 lem in such years is to keep the bees 

 alive without feeding. There is one ad- 

 vantage, and that is that the bee-keeper 

 knows in the spring if there is going to 

 be no harvest and he can prepare for it. 

 The remedy is to take away several combs 

 of honey, from each colony, in the spring, 

 contracting the brood-nest. This will 

 curtail the production of brood, and save 

 the consumption of honey that would 

 have been used in rearing brood if it had 

 been left in the hives. After the swarm- 

 ing season and the desire for brood-rear- 



