California Agriculturist and Live Stock Journal. 



SID * ■» 



Bee Culture in California.^ 



P to the time of the influx of the gold 

 hunters in 18i8 9, sayB the Sficrnraento 

 BccoTd, tha honey bee was nnknown in 

 California, and it was as lute as 1856 or 

 '57, we think before any were intro- 

 dneed. The tirflt brought into the eonutry 

 found a profusion of wild flowers every where 

 and as a consequence increased in numbers 

 ■with a rapidity unparalleled in the history of 

 bee-keeping, and made a quantity of honey 

 theretofore unheard of by the most experi- 

 enced apiarians of the world. While this 

 honey lacked the peculiar and familiar flavor 

 of the white clover and other cultivated crops 

 of the Eastern States and Europe, it was stiU 

 of an excellent flavor and unexceptional in 

 color, and of course in a new country, where 

 delicacies and luxuries had been scarce and 

 costly, commanded a good price and fuund a 

 ready market. This attracted the attention of 

 speculators who knew nothing of the science 

 or art of bee-keeping, and soon the country 

 ■was flooded with bees imported from all parts 

 of the Eastern country. Having been sub- 

 jected to improper treatment, want of ventila- 

 tion, sweating, etc., on the passage, and not 

 being properly cared for on arrival, the worst 

 kinds of bee disease soon became very preva- 

 lent, and for a number of years the mortality 

 more than equaled the increase. This unex- 

 pected turn in the business brought the value 

 of stands or hives down from the speculative 

 price of from $100 to $il30 each, to which 

 they reached at the high tide of excitement, to 

 a mere nominal sum, and those who had 

 rushed into the bee business now as anxiously 

 and hurrietUy rushed out of it. Many who 

 could not sell theii- stock at any price simply 

 abandoned them to take care of themselves. 

 A few men, however, who had been trained 

 to the business, and who entered into it at 

 first as a legitimate business, believing they 

 could with careful management make it pay 

 them a proper return for the investment of 

 their means and their labor, worked right 

 along through all this excitement and sjiecu- 

 lation, and through the following depression, 

 keeping their bees in a healthy condition, and 

 adopting all the improvements in hives and in 

 management, and increasing their stock and 

 improving it by the sul:>stitution of the yellow 

 Italian for the black German bee, and barely 

 paying their expenses from the pro- 

 ducts of their apiaries, and looking to outside 

 operations for the maintenance of their fami- 

 bes. To add to the discouragements and dif- 

 ficulties of these few men who had once been 

 cheated out of the fmr and natural reward 

 for their enterprise and labor by the over- 

 speculation and then the following depression, 

 just as they began again to see a better time 

 coming, when they should have a clear field in 

 ■which their bees could gather honey, and a 

 growing market for the products of those 

 bees, another difficulty, more serious because 

 more permanent than the f ormi r stared them 

 in the face. 



The open country that had formerly been 

 covered with wild flowers upon which the bees 

 had fed, and from which they had gathered 

 the only good honey, was now being appro- 

 priated for stock or for wheat, and for other 

 agrieirltural purposes. The whole natural 

 bee food was being rapidly destroyed, and none 

 of the crops cultivated stijiplied the place of 

 it. The peculiarity of the California climate 

 precluded the successful cultivation of the 

 white clover so universal in the eastern coun- 

 try, and which there more than comjjensated 

 for the wild flowers supplanted by it. With a 

 large stock of bees on hand these few legiti- 

 mate apiarist found themselves thus deprived 

 of all feed for them, from which any paying 

 amount of honey of good mcrehantablo 

 quality could bo made. Tlien came the divid- 

 ing up of the apiaries, and an attempt to 

 adopt the nomadic i)lan of beo-kceping. Some 



were sent to the raoitntains and some towards 

 the sea, among the tule islands. This plan 

 gave hopes and some promise of sueces.s. A 

 fair amount of pretty good honey was gath- 

 ered some seasons in the mountains, but the 

 prevalence of the buckeye in these districts, a 

 '*«leadly poison to the bee, was found a great 

 drawback, and finally compelled the abandon- 

 ment of these fields. A fair amount of honey 

 wa.s gathered from the low tule lands, but of 

 poor quality. As a consequence of these dis- 

 couragements, the number of those who per- 

 severed in the business was continually grow- 

 ing less. 



About five years since, however, J. S. Har- 

 bison, the leading apiarist of the State, made 

 a trip through the southern counties in search 

 of bee pasture. He found such good promise 

 that soon after his return he removed a small 

 apiary, in the ownership of which he had as- 

 sociated a Mr. Clark with himself, to San 

 Diego. These were the first bees in that 

 county. The success with which this small 

 venture was attended has induced Mr. Harbi- 

 son to gather tip all his bees from all other 

 localities and transfer them to the same 

 county. Mr. Harbison has now in that coun- 

 ty two thousand hives of bees, which last 

 year produced 150,000 pounds, or 75 tons of 

 surplus hauey of a very excellent quality. Of 

 this he has shipped per railroad over CO tons 

 to the Eastern States, mostly to Chicago and 

 New York. His sales of honey for the year 

 will equal the nice little sum of $30,000. 



This places Mr. Harbison the foremost bee 

 man in the world. So far as money making 

 from the business is concerned, and he un- 

 doubtedly occupies the same position as to 

 the knowledge of the business, there not be- 

 ing in the world his eqiial in this respect. 

 The labor in and about all his apiui'ies is now 

 done by apprentices, who are availing them- 

 selves of the opportunity to learn the business 

 while their labor pays their personal expenses. 

 Eight young men are thus engaged, and some 

 of them have become so expert as to be in- 

 trusted with the entire management of some 

 of his apiaries. Other parties, since they 

 have learned the success attending the bee 

 business in San Diego county, have also re- 

 moved a large number there, and good jiidges 

 estimate the product of the apiaries of the 

 country last year at $100,000. 



EXTENT AND NATURE OF BEE PASTtlKES. 



The bee pastures of the southern counties 

 extend from Santa Barbara to Lower Califor- 

 nia, occupying a belt of counti-y about eight 

 miles wide — commencing about on an aver- 

 age of ten miles from the coast — approaching 

 nearer or receding further back, according to 

 the topography of the country. This belt is 

 a very irregular, broken mountainous country, 

 mostly unfit for general agricultural purposes, 

 and on this the bee-keepers place their hopes 

 of immunity from the encroaches which have 

 proved their discomfiture in other portions of 

 the State. Experience has shown that the 

 best localities for the apiai-y is neither at the 

 highest elevation or deepest depression, 

 neither on the mountain nor in the valley be- 

 low, but at a ijoiut half way between the two. 

 At this point a medium temperature is secured, 

 and the bees are thus placed where they have 

 access to the earliest food in the valleys be- 

 low and the latest on the mountain above. 

 The distance the bees have to fly to obtain 

 their food is thus divided, which is -no small 

 consideration. One can ap])reciate this last 

 proposition when he reflects that the bees of 

 Mr. Harbison last year gathered up and car- 

 ried to his several apiaries 150,000 pounds of 

 honey. The honey is gathered from a great 

 variety of flowers, but the chief dependence is 

 on a .species of white sage which is found in 

 great abundance on the entire range of coun- 

 ti-y, from Sautji Barbara to Lower California, 

 averaging about eight miles wide. 



The bee men are rapidly taking up and oc- 

 cu]iying the best locations in all this ri'gion. 

 They are laying out the proceeds of their en- 

 terprise ami labor in permanent improvements 

 and arc preparing to make permiment homes. 

 Though the principal business and depend- 



ence is the apiary, they all cultivate some 

 land and keep some cows, Bome horses and 

 hogs, and some of them some sheep. We are 

 informed that the bee men alone have done 

 more in the settlement of the county of Han 

 Diego than all other classes, in the past five 

 years. The land being occupied by the bee- 

 keepers has not yet been surveyed and pnt 

 into the market by' the General Government, 

 but they are taking it up with a view to pre- 

 empting it as soon as they can do so, and ■we 

 understand they propose asking Congress for 

 special legislation to enable them to obtain 

 title to large tracts each. 



Natorb op Bees. — Mr. S. 8. Lauderff'com- 

 muni<;ates to the CfrrisiiuH Leader a long arti- 

 cle on bees, from which we make the follow- 

 ing extracts : 



The bee has never failed to attract the at- 

 tention and study of all naturalists, and of all 

 who feel an .interest in the works of nature. 

 Their skillful work seems to manifest the in- 

 telligence belonging to the higher orders of 

 animals, and even to surpass, is some respects 

 the intellectual faculties of man. 



In a perfect hive of bees, there are three 

 kinds. The "queen," the mother of the 

 whole colony, the " workers, ' ' of the neuter 

 gender, those that do all the work, and the 

 "drones," the male bees, inho take up room 

 in the hive, live on the products of the work- 

 er, but bring in no honey. These three kinds 

 of bees have very difl'erent organizations and 

 instincts, and their offices in the hive are en- 

 tirely difl'erent, and yet each is necessary to 

 the others, and all are indispensable to the 

 existence and continuation of the colony. 



The queen is a fully developed female. In 

 all animated nature, we usually find the male 

 and female of about the same number, but 

 bees are an exception to this law. Here there 

 is b nt one female to many hundreds of males, 

 and many thousands of workers which are of 

 neither gender. 



The queen is impregnated by copulating 

 but once in her lifetime with the drone while 

 on the wing, high up in the air, and in forty- 

 six hours after her fecundations, all things 

 being right, she begins to lay eggs, and it is 

 stated by those who profess to know, that she 

 is capable of laying 2,000 eggs in twenty -four 

 hours. Huber, a bhnd Swiss natiualist of 

 great celebrity, advocated the idea that the 

 ovaries of the queen contain a regular succes- 

 sion of the difl'erent kinds of eggs necessary 

 to produce the three kinds of bees we find in 

 a hive. He made an experiment which proved 

 to him that if the hive contained no drone 

 comb, she dropped her male eggs at random, 

 and no males were produced, and so if there 

 was no worker comb, she dropped her worker 

 eggs anywhere, and no workers were reared. 

 This, in substance, if the theory of Professor 

 Agassiz, as advanced in his lecture, " Life in 

 the Bee Hive." 



But the most generally recognized opinion 

 on this subject now is, that the eggs of the 

 queen are all alike, and that it is only the 

 difl'erent kind of cells in which they are laid 

 whether drone or worker, and the different 

 kinds of food and treatment they receive from 

 the workers in their embryo state, that make 

 the three kinds of bees. If this theory be 

 true, and it has many facts in its stipport, 

 the queen has no knowledge of the kind of 

 eggs she is depo-siting in the difl'erent cells, 

 nor does she know what kind of bees they 

 will produce. And yet there are facts which 

 favor the other sidc^ of the question. 



The fact that all eggs laid before fecunda- 

 tion produce drones only, seems to favor the 

 Huber theory. The queen has a sting which 

 she only uses to sting another queen. She 

 can bo handled without any more fear of be- 

 ing stung by her than by a drone, which has 

 no sting. She lives four or five years, if no 

 accident happens to hor; but in the latter [lart 

 of her life she ceases to be prolific, and the 

 colony ]irocced at once to raise another <iueen 

 to take her place. This they do by building 

 a queen cell, and if when the cell isabuut half 



