292 KESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



ber, and store honey, twice as rapidly as in New York. Bees 

 here are not idle during six months of the year as there, but 

 busy during nine or ten months. They find their food in wild 

 and cultivated flowers, in the blossoms of manzanita bushes, 

 fruit-trees, grasses, clovers, and grains, in grapes, fruits, and 

 honey-dew. They seem to thrive in the dryest portions 

 of the State, where there are DO cultivated fields and no 

 flowers or green herbage. They are very fond of apricots, 

 which they eat in places where the skin has been previously 

 cut through by bugs. When the latter have made a hole, 

 the bees come and eat side by side with the bugs, which are 

 of the " lady-bug" kind, and other similar species. Many of 

 the bees lose their lives in consequence of their fondness for 

 the apricot. Either they eat too much, or they eat the meat 

 after it has passed into the alcoholic fermentation ; but wheth- 

 er intoxicated or surfeited, they are unable to get home, and 

 they perish during the night. In places where the honey-dew 

 is abundant, especially in the mountains on the eastern border 

 of the Tulare Valley, the bees make honey very rapidly. In : 

 deed, it has been the custom of several bee-keepers in Califor- 

 nia to move their bees about from place to place, according 

 to the pasture and the season. Many swarms have gone off 

 into the mountains, where they occupy holes in trees and clefts 

 in rocks. The mountain honey resembles in taste that of the 

 Eastern States and Northern Europe, while that made in the 

 Coast Valleys has a peculiar flavor, which, it is said, is much 

 like the honey of Mount Hymettus, where the bees have ac- 

 cess to a great variety of wild flowers. 



The State has 30,000 bee-hives, including 3,000 each in Mon- 

 terey and Los Angeles Counties, 2,000 in San Diego, 1,500 in 

 Sacramento, and 1,000 each in San Joaquin, Santa Clara, and 

 Siskiyou. The hives are increasing in number more rapidly in 

 Los Angeles and San Diego than in any other district. It is 

 not rare for a hive to make two hundred pounds of honey in 

 a season. The bees are exposed to constant danger from the 



