June, 1914. 



193 



American Hee Jonrnal 



Another View of Mr. Schunchels Apiary. 

 Notice the decoy hive in the tree to the right. 



frozen, but is coming out well this 

 season. 



The " wild buckwheat " is a species 

 of I'.rioi^onum. It grows in almost all 

 localities, but in some, yields a much 

 better grade of honey than in others. 

 Near the coast its honey is apt to be 

 dark and not of a good flavor, while 

 back in the canons bordering on the 

 desert it yields better, and is of good 

 quality. 



The "coffee berry" is a beautiful 

 dark green shrub with dark glossy 

 foliage. Its fruit which changes color 

 from red to black, resembles the ber- 

 ries of the true coffee. It grows only 

 in the cool damp canons, and gives a 

 good flow of amber honey. 



The "California holly" (which is not 

 a holly at all, being a member of the 

 rose family), yields very freely for but 

 a short time. The honey is white. This 

 is one of our most beauti ul mountain 

 shrubs. Its dark green leaves and 

 heavy panicles of heavy white blos- 

 soms make it showy in summer, while 

 its brilliant crimson berries in mid- 

 winter brighten the whole landscape. 

 This furnishes the Christmas decora- 

 tions for all California ; hence the term 

 " holly " by which it is known. 



There is a gorgeous yellow pentste- 

 mon, shrubby in growth, distributed 

 freely along many canons. Its flowers 



resemble the snapdragon in shape, and 

 are nectar yielding. The dark chamiso 

 or " chaparral," as it is also called, 

 whose clusters of bloom now whiten 

 the mountain sides, is a great favorite 

 with bees, but chiefly for pollen. This 

 is the chief use also of the gray arte- 

 misia, which lends much of the gray to 

 the landscape. This plant furnishes 

 abundant stores of winter pollen, but it 

 has of late years spread to such an ex- 

 tent as to crowd out many a worthier 

 plant. 



The hoarhound was introduced here. 

 It is a steady yiel 'er, but the honey 

 from it is very dark, and the plant 

 itself is such a pest that most people, 

 even bee-men, regret its introduction. 



The wild lilac, a beautiful shrub 

 whose sweet-scented, lilac-colored blos- 

 soms furnish much pollen, is notice- 

 able on account of its blue pollen. I 

 had a hurry call from a beginner not 

 long ago who thought he had disease 

 among his bees. On inspection it was 

 the blue pollen that had caused the 

 alarm. The bees were rather weak 

 owing to local conditions, but perfectly 

 healthy. 



I have mentioned only the most im- 

 portant of the native plants. There 

 are many others which give us nectar 

 in varying quantities. 



Conducted by J. L. Ever. Mt Joy. Ontario. 



Crop Prospects, Outlook, Etc. 



May 12, sugar maples and yellow wil- 

 lows are in bloom. But with weather 

 cool and a dri'.zling east rain falling, 

 the prospect is not pleasant for the 

 beekeeper who would like to see the 

 bees carrying great loads of pollen 



from the maples, and an abundance of 

 much needed nectar from the willows. 

 I say "needed nectar," for although 

 there may be lots of old stores in the 

 hives, nothing seems to be quite as 

 good to cause a great boom in brood- 

 rearing as some nice fresh nectar in 

 combination with the natural pollen 



gathered at this time of the year. To 

 date of writing the weather lias been 

 steadily cool with little precipitation; 

 in fact, unless we soon get rain a short 

 crop of hay is assured. 



But bees wintered well, and j 'dging 

 from present appearances they are 

 steadily building i p, even if the days 

 they can fly and bring in nectar and 

 pollen are few and far between. The 

 little clover we had last fall is now past 

 the danger point, and in our section at 

 least it has wintered well. 



In another 10 days fruit bloom will 

 be on, and if weather permits queen 

 clipping and other work of the season 

 will be in order. After the long time 

 since active work with bees, we look 

 forward with pleasure to being in the 

 harness again. Only a few weeks at 

 most until the harvest, great or small, 

 will be a thing of the past, and the bee- 

 keeper can again take it easy if he 

 wishes. This is one of the drawbacks 

 of beekeeping, looking at it from one 

 angle, for if the great amount of work 

 that is often crowded into a few weeks 

 could be divided up into that many 

 months, it would make things easier 

 all around. But no doubt it is much 

 better than we could possibly arrange 

 it for ourselves. 



Newspaper Advertising of Honey Too 

 Expensive 



Constantly we hear about the benefits 

 of advertising honey so as to increase 

 the consumption of this useful and 

 toothsome delicacy and food. Any 

 kind of advertising is to be commend- 

 ed as long as it is truthful and not mis- 

 representing, and while each individual 

 beekeeper can do much in his own 

 neighborhoodto increase the consump- 

 tion of honey, the longer I study the 

 question the more it seems to me that 

 extensive newspaper advertising is im- 

 possible. Why ? Because the cost of 

 producing honey is too near the sell- 

 ing price to allow much money to be 

 paid for advertising. 



Take the various patent medicines, 

 breakfast foods and drinks, different 

 kinds of corn syrups, etc., the names 

 so common to us all through seeing 

 them in the papers that any child could 

 give a list off hand. In almost, if not 

 in all of these cases, the selling price 

 is many times the cost of production, 

 so it is easy to see why they can adver- 

 tise so extensively. Then, again, each 

 firm is advertising an article produced 

 only by themselves, and they get the 

 benefit of all the advertising done. In 

 the case of honey, if my neighbor bee- 

 keeper across the road advertises the 

 good qualities of honey, the chances 

 are that if the ad.ertisement does any 

 good I will share equally, even when I 

 am not paying a cent for advertising. 



Newspaper advertising costs a tre- 

 mendous amount of money if done at 

 all extensively. This means that other 

 forms of publicity will have to be em- 

 ployed if we ever expect to increase 

 the consumption of honey by means of 

 advertising. If I could truthfully ad- 

 vertise that my honey was better than 

 anybody's else, it might pay me to adver- 

 tise ; but no matter how good a pro- 

 duct we had, very few of us would 

 make such a decided statement as that. 

 I remember tasting a sample sent in 



