AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 627 



for the most part are surrounded with trees about 300 or 400 yards. Behind the 

 beach road stretch sugar-fields for about a mile inland to where the mountains begin 

 to rise. Here there is no vegetation. Nothing but dry earth and volcanic rocks. 

 So then we only have a honey-field some two miles long by one broad. Here and 

 there in the sugar-fields are houses surrounded with groves of trees. The bees are 

 thus limited, but nevertheless they do well. But where a small apiary of 20 to 30 

 colonies would be successful, the apiary of 150 or 200 might be a failure. The old 

 bee-keeper already referred to has about 30 colonies of bees in soap and other 

 boxes, old style. Other people have bees, but one person has rarely more than two 

 or three colonies. 



The bees on this island are the ordinary English or German variety, but prob- 

 ably owing to the climate, having some decided characteristics of their own, the 

 queens and drones are small, some drones ridiculously small. The bees are bad 

 tempered, and require much smoke before they can be mastered. In fact, the 

 tropical climate has caused them to degenerate. I feel sorry for the queens, that 

 never seem to get any rest from their labors at all. I am informed by my friend, 

 the same old bee-keeper, that there are two swarming seasons in the year. 



Now, as to bee-pests : We have the moth, a much smaller one than the cousin 

 in New Zealand, and certainly more destructive in its depredations. Any little bit 

 of wax it can find is a happy find for it, and in the smallest chink of the hive is the 

 the dreaded grub to be found. Then the Mynah birds, the Indian starling, make 

 many a good feed on bees. They perch on or near the hives and pick the bees up in 

 the coolest manner possible. Other pests, such as foul brood and bee-diarrhea are, 

 I believe, unheard of here. 



As to these islands being well adapted to bee-culture, I should have some 

 doubts. Except in places here and there, there is no forest worthy of that name, 

 and a greater part of the islands are barren and desolate to a degree. True, in the 

 mountains there is a stunted forest, consisting of metrosideros and acacia trees, but 

 too hard of access for any one to pick on it for any apiary. The famed Honolulu 

 was at one time merely a desert. Every tree and shrub in and about the city has 

 been introduoed. And so on with other places. Nearly all our trees and flowers 

 are foreign introduction, while the native flora is not to be found except occasionally 

 on the mountains and in the gulches away from the ordinary haunts of man.— 

 Australian Bee-Bulletin. 



SOI»IB CAI^IFORXIA NOXES. 



[Mr. W. A. Pryal, one of our'California friends, has been traveling around the 

 northern part of the State lately with Messrs. J. H. Martin (Rambler) and H. E. 

 Wilder. Mr. Pryal kindly sends us some notes on his trip, from which we select the 

 following : — Editor.] 



I found several small apiaries in Humboldt county. The part of the county 

 where they were is not a great way from the ocean. I should think that it is not 

 as favorable a place for bees as it is here in this vicinity, excepting, though, that 

 there they seem to have a more sure yield of honey-producing flowers every year. 



I saw in the " American Bee Journal" some months ago, where one of your 

 correspondents disputed the fact that white clover was grown In this State. I knew 

 that we had small patches of it through this county (Alameda), but I never knew 

 until I was in Humboldfcounty, that it was cultivated as a crop. It is quite a dairy 

 county ; that is, a small portion of it is, for the county is almost " a complete aggre- 

 gation" of mountains and big hilsl. 



It is the great redwood countv of this State. There it is where one should go 



