THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



187 



choice; and as I am no queen breeder 

 I almost always directed to him. Al- 

 though Cyprus can be reached from 

 Jaffa in 24 hours I never thought it 

 would pay to go there myself; but I 

 wanted a little bit of fresh sea-air. 

 The trip to Cyprus and back was sup- 

 posed to take four days, I T p coast 

 the steamer passes Gesarea Palestina, 

 mentioned in the Acts, where St. Paul 

 was tried before King Herod and 

 Felix, and here he appealed unto 

 Cresar. Only ruins of bygone beauty 

 mark the place, and a Bosnian colony 

 of Mohammedan emigrants are now 

 building up into a new ('a- -area. 



After six hours by sea the steamer 

 anchors in the bay of Acre, at the 

 foot of Mt. Carmel, where a German 

 settlement is nourishing in all but bee- 

 keeping. Some have clay cylinder- 

 hives, others box hives, and some 

 Dathe Dzierzon, and other German 

 hives. They average very little 

 honey, owing to want of pasturage 

 in the immediate vicinity of the town 

 of Haifa and the want of knowledge. 

 Mt. Carmel itself is beutifully covered 

 with melliferous plants, sages, thymes, 

 and others. In one of tho Russian- 

 Jewish refugee colonies on Mt. Carmel 

 one of my scholars is putting up an 

 apiary, after the Langstroth system 

 and seems to have done tolerably well. 



Going up the coast we passed Tyre 

 and Sidon by night, and morning 

 found us at the foot Mt. Lebanon, 

 Two days were lost at anchor at Bey- 

 routh. A gale would not allow the 

 steamer to discharge the goods: and 

 when, on the morning of the third day. 

 we arrived at Larnaca, in Cyprus, the 

 steamer had gone, and I was told that 

 before a fortnight was over, I could 

 not go back again. What a dull hope, 



to be walking about a small town, with 

 the prospect of enjoying its crumbled 

 walls and Cypriotes for a fortnight, 

 while the bees in Palestine are in 

 vain awaiting me to take them to 

 pastures new! I then concluded not 

 to leave home again, at least not in 

 May, accross the sea, when work is 

 pressing. How often did 1 hear 

 about this "abode of the gods"! but 

 the Turks have done their part in de- 

 stroying nature and art. It is not 

 now to be envied. The position is 

 good; the climate, like all Mediteran- 

 ean countries, is haunted with fever 

 in the lowlands; but, besides this, 

 loucasts have been roaming over the 

 land, and destroying what little green 

 the numerous goats left, which them- 

 selves have been gnawing the young 

 growth, preventing, in connection with 

 Turkish misrule, the restoration to its 

 charms. The British Government is 

 trying to restore the island; but it 

 certainly will be long before the in- 

 habitants will awake from their drowsy 

 nap. And right here friends Jones 

 and Benton first brought American 

 ideas and bar frame hives; and the 

 only thing I found here was two two- 

 frame nuclei in the hou^e of Mr. Der- 

 wishian, a graduate of Benton's 

 school. The day before I arrived, 

 another of Benton's scholars had 

 gathered every movable hive and had 

 steered into Egypt to improve the 

 Egyptians, as I understood; but not 

 having seen him I was sorry to find 

 I had come here to go hack again 

 without taking even a Cyprian queen 

 with me. 



The two two-frame nuclei at Mr. 

 Derwishians were as cross as cross can 

 be. Smokers and veils of enormous- 

 size availed nothing. I never saw 

 such a bad lot, even in Palestine, ex- 

 cept when the camels had upset quite 

 a numberrtf hives, and they were piteh- 

 ingatus in fury, Mr. J), attributed this 

 behavior to MrS. G.'s rough handling 

 the day before, or three days before. 

 Mr. D. insisted on working them 

 without smoke, which was just the 

 right thing to keep us at a distance, 



