APRIL 15, 1914 



303 



l,eu(_;il.i plus 

 regular ; 



about as bad sbape fi- 

 nancially as tlie bees. 

 Well, 1 did not see 

 how I could buy sugar 

 to carry them through 

 another season. Still 

 1 did not want to see 

 them starve, so I de- 

 cided to bring the re- 

 mains of my three api- 

 aries to town and give 

 them the advantage of 

 the fruit-bloom. This 

 I did. During the 

 bloom the bees did 

 well, making a living 

 and a little more; but 

 in the fall, when the 

 fruit - drying season 

 commenced, it brought 

 trouble. The first inti- 

 mation I had was 

 when I was summoned 

 to the place of one of 

 the fruit-dryers. This 

 diyer had about half an acre covered witli 

 trays of drying fruit; and when I arrived 

 I found that the trays were literally covered 

 with bees. Not only did the bees visit the 

 fruit on the trays, but they also took an 

 interest in the fruit that was being prepared 

 for the trays, and two or three of the girls 

 got stung on the hands, causing the work- 

 ing force to become demoralized. The re- 

 sult was that, within a few days after the 

 commencement of the fruit-drying season, I 

 decided that the best thing to do was to 

 move my bees out of town. But the matter 

 did not end with the removing of my bees, 

 as the fruit-dryer claimed that, with every 

 drop of juice that the bees removed from 

 the drying fruit, they took a certain amount 

 of sugar; and every thing that the bees got 

 that was of use to them was to the direct 

 loss of the fruit ; that where the bees ob- 

 tained a pound of sugar, the fruit was in 

 consequence a pound short in weight, and 

 this I am inclined to believe was true, and 

 I later agreed to recompense him for the 

 probable loss." 



There is another matter to be observed in 

 the keeping of bees in cities; and that is, to 

 see that they are not situated in such a 

 position that people who are unacquainted 

 with bees are apt to run afoul of them and 

 be perhaps seriously stung. For the benefit 

 of those who contemplate city beekeeping it 

 might be well to state two instances that 

 occurred during the time my bees were situ- 

 ated in the garden. The first instance was 

 when a young lady in a nearby house wan- 

 dered out one bright sunny morning to dry 



). 1 lie t«u Irees to llie riyiit iii ihe foregiuuiui are 

 ;-iiins; the one to the left is a Ijliie gum.- 



her hair and sat down in the grass directly 

 in front of the hive, and about two feet 

 from the entrance. She knew nothing of 

 bees, and might have been seriously stung 

 had she not been warned. The other in- 

 stance was when a child of some four years 

 wandered into the garden, and, when dis- 

 covered, was trying his best to remove the 

 cover from the hive. So it behooves him 

 who contemjilates keeping a colony or so of 

 bees within town or city to see that they 

 are placed in such a position that it is im- 

 possible for some innocent person to be 

 stung by them. 



THE QUESTION OF PASTURAGE. 



As pasturage has played an important 

 part in my outlaw operations, a short dis- 

 cussion of the subject would perhaps not be 

 out of place. As every practical honey- 

 producer knows, the first essential to suc- 

 cessful beekeeping, be it either city or 

 country, is pasturage. My own observa- 

 tions here led me to the conclusion that, for 

 the man with just a few colonies of bees, 

 and who keeps them only as a hobby, the 

 average city affords better pasturage than 

 the country. While cities seldom have flora 

 that produces heavy flows of honey, as in 

 the sage regions for instance, yet they do 

 have a larger variety of flora that produces 

 honey for a greater number of days ; so 

 while it does not yield a profusion of hon- 

 ey, there is a longer and steadier flow. 

 Then, too, the flora of the cities is not as a 

 rule atfected by drouth, as any natural lack 

 of Avater is supplied by artificial means. 



California cities, as a rule, are peculiarly 



