712 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



November, 1919 



of garden truck grown there, and many of 

 the plants are raised for seed — especially 

 celery and parsnip; and right here is where 

 my story really begins. Celery and parsnip 

 honey is stored in skyscraper hives. Here is 

 a photo showing one of the skyscrapers in 

 Mr. Gear's yard near Walnut Grove, and 

 Mr. Gear standing alongside. His apiaries 

 are located along the river in peach and 

 prune groves. While the bees get a great 

 deal of benefit from the early fruit bloom, it 

 is equally true that the fruit-growers them- 

 selves are benefited ten times as much in 

 more and better fruit. But it is not this 

 fruit bloom that yields the main crop. As 

 is usually the case, the fruit bloom gives the 

 bees a good boost for the heavier flows that 

 come later — in this case from the garden 

 plants when they are allowed to go to seed. 



Honey-producing Plants of the Garden- 

 truck Lands. 



At the time of my visit at Mr. Gear's 

 I saw many of the hives stacked five or 

 six high and on opening them we found 

 them completely jammed full of honey; in 

 fact the bees should have had room long be- 

 fore but Mr. Gear had had difficulty in get- 

 ting help, and the bees had got ahead of 

 him. The colonies were so crowded that the 

 space between the cover and the tops of the 



Fig. 3. — The top of one of Mr. Lii.ii ., luve.s, show- 

 ing that the bees are jamming in the celery and 

 parsnip honey or they would not have built so many 

 lnirr-conib.s. Owing to the difficulty of getting help 

 Mr. Gear acknowledged that the bees had got ahead 

 of him, and that he must immediately put on more 

 supers. 



frames were built full of burr-combs as 

 shown in Fig. 2. All this honey was from 

 celery and jiarsnip — at least that is whatMr. 

 Gear told me. While I did not tell him so, I 

 wanted the iiroof. We went down the river 



Fig. 1. — A view looking down the Sacramento 

 River. The picture was taken from the top of one 

 of the levees that are made to prevent the river from 

 overflowing its banlcs in the spring and ruining the 

 truck gardens. During the summer season the 

 gardens are irrigated with water from the river. In 

 some cases it flows by gravity on the land, and in 

 other cases it is pumped where the laud is above the 

 level of the water in the river. 



a little way to see some of the big celery 

 and parsnip fields that were in bloom and 

 going to seed. On our arrival at the field 

 it was very easy to be seen that there was 

 honey in the blossoms. In the sunlight the 

 little drops of nectar gleamed like myriads 

 of little diamonds — no question about it. 

 The nectar was there in great abundance, 

 both on the celery and parsnip blossoms, 

 and the bees, fully conscious of the fact, 

 were right there on the job. I tasted some 

 of the raw nectar from the celery. Sure 

 enough, there was quite a strong suggestion 

 of celery flavor. 



There are other plants in that garden- 

 truck land that yield honey likewise; but 

 the celery and parsnip were the most impor- 

 tant. There is not a large amount of al- 

 falfa, and what there was seemed to be 

 scattered along the levees. 



Bee Ranges Protected. 



There are l)ut comparatively few beekeep- 

 ers in that garden-truck country, and the 

 few in that territory are pretty evenly di- 

 vided. There is not a chance for another 

 man to get in edgewise; and most of the 

 California beekeepers today are wise enough 

 not to encroach on the territory of another. 

 Mr. Gear has plenty of neighbors, but they 

 are all at respectable distances, and each 

 enjoys his own field. 



The Quality of Garden-truck Honey. 



Garden-truck honey is not of the best — it 

 is a mixture, a little of everything, but 



