1901 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



941 



be found more profitiible, in point of hajs 

 to cut early and often, and before full 

 bloom, the ranchmen will, of course, look 

 to their own interests, and not to those of 

 the bee-keepers. There is a bare possibil- 

 it3' that the time will come when bee-keep- 

 ing' in the alfalfa reg'ions, where hay is the 

 sole object, will not be as profitable as 

 now. Those who think of g"oing- into these 

 new localities would do well to take this 

 into consideration. 



THK BKKS UNDER THE MACHINE-SHOP. 



I HAVi'; just been down in our bee-cellar 

 under the inachine-shop — see p. 868. There 

 was a perfect rumble and roar of machine- 

 ry overhead. Every now and then some 

 one would drop a heavy casting- on the 

 floor, kUhmnp. This produced no disturb- 

 ance that I could discover. I then turned 

 on the electric lights, and still the bees 

 seemed perfectly quiet. Indeed, I stuck an 

 electric-light globe clear up to the entrance 

 of one hive, and not a bee came out to "see 

 what was up. " 



We are trying the experiment of opening 

 the cellar-door at night and closing- it in 

 the morning-, before daylight sets in. As a 

 natural result, the Jiir in the cellar smells 

 sweet and clean; and those magnificent 

 clusters of bees, so quiet, are indeed a 

 pretty sight. Perhaps the fun will come 

 next spring-, for there are 250 colonies in a 

 space 8X37; but loose burlap hangs over 

 one end of the inclosure, so the bees really 

 have the air of a cellar 48x96. One thing 

 we have so far demonstrated is that noise, 

 even violent, continual, or intermittent, does 

 not disturb the bees, and this makes it all 

 the better when we enter the cellar, because 

 they have somehow become accustomed to a 

 disturbance. 



mountains; what are they cooij fok? 



These great excrescences of rock and earth 

 that tower thousands of feet into the skies, 

 standing-, as it would seem, in some cases 

 as impassable barriers to the vang-uard of 

 civilization, barren and bleak, wild and 

 dangerous from their rocky precipices, are 

 in realit\' Godsends to that same civiliza- 

 tion. What would the g-reat deserts of the 

 West do without irrigation? and how could 

 there be irrigation unless there were mil- 

 lions of tons of snow and ice stored on top 

 of those lofty peaks? The water from wells 

 in those regions is generally brackish, and 

 unfit for any purpo.se; but melted snow, 

 right from the very heavens — what could be 

 better for man or beast? A barren plain 

 remote from the mountains will probably 

 always be a desert; but some of the most 

 arid portions of our country, within one or 

 two hundred miles of those " impassable 

 barriers," have been reclaimed, and there 

 are millions of acres more just like those 

 that will be made wonderfully productive 

 as fast as civilization pushes onward. 



In some cases I found that a triple use is 

 made of this snow. Standing thousands of 



feet up in the air on the plateaus, or in the 

 canyons of the mountains, it melts and runs 

 into a reservoir, natural or artificial. It is 

 then conve3'ed by an enormous flume down 

 to some power-house that may utilize anj-- 

 where from five to ten thousand horse pow- 

 er. This water is made to drive immense 

 turbines, and these in turn furnish whole 

 cities with power and light; and all this 

 comes from the mere force of gravity. Aft- 

 er the water has subserved its purpose in 

 making electricity it is then diverted into 

 the city mains to supply the city with wa- 

 ter; and whatiis left — and that constitutes 

 by far the g-reater portion of it, is used for 

 irrig-ation. 



There is any quantity of melting- snow 

 now g-oing to waste that might be similarly 

 used. It onl}' awaits the progress of Young- 

 America to dam it up and run it into the 

 valleys. If I ever felt like seconding- Hor- 

 ace Greeley's injunction to "go west, 3'oung 

 man," I do now since I have seen the great 

 possibilities of the West. "But, " you say, 

 "what has all of this to do with bee-keep- 

 ing? Mountains mean snow; snow n-ieans 

 water; water, irrigation; irrigation, alfal- 

 fa; alfalfa, honey. 



I used to wonder, when I was a small 

 boy, why God, when he made this earth, 

 did not make it perfectly level; and espe- 

 cially was the conviction forced on me when 

 riding a bicycle in later years. But sup- 

 pose he had made it level — what then? 

 Saying- nothing- about the mineral wealth, 

 possibly half of this land of ours would be 

 an irreclaimable desert, and the same 

 would be true of other parts of the world. 

 But we of the East, with our rainfalls, often 

 pity those who have to depend on irriga- 

 tion. Last year, when there was such a 

 drouth in Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa, 

 the people in California, Colorado, Arizona, 

 and in all irrig-ated regions, were fairly 

 laughing in their sleeves. Said they, 

 "Thisgreat drouth will rhake honey scarce; 

 we fear no drouth, because we can always 

 have water. We can have moist soils when 

 we want them; we can control the condi- 

 tions. When there is a heavy drouth in 

 the East, there will be a scant supply of 

 honey in New York and Chicago. But we 

 who have plenty of water on tap, and can 

 make the ground moist or Avy, just as we 

 want it, we will go in, produce the honey, 

 and rake in tlic stickets;'' and they have. 



At another time I will have something to 

 say about how those Western people actual- 

 ly make water run up liill. No, they do not 

 overcome the law of gravity, but in effect 

 thej' cause the water to flow over the entire 

 land, on the hills and in the valleys, everj'- 

 where, without pumps or engiiaes. 



honey and its tifferent flavors. 

 I think mention has been made already 

 of the carload of honey from California. 

 Mr. Calvert says the freight alone on it was 

 almost SIOOO (really $934.00). Well, while 

 they were putting it up for shipment in dif- 



