278 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



Nature supplied California abundantly with wild 

 bees, both of the "honey" and "bumble" varieties, 

 and considerable business was done by bee-hunters 

 to supply the early American towns and mining 

 camps. The complaint lodged against the bees in 

 the records of the time was that they were too much 

 disposed to "select trees of large dimensions in places 

 not easy of access the felling of which requires exces- 

 sive labor and it is not uncommon for them to break 

 in falling, shattering the combs and rendering the 

 honey valueless." The difficulties in securing wild 

 honey profitably, coupled with the need for honey for 

 the flap- jack essential of the miners' menu, no doubt 

 hastened the enterprise of the pioneers to secure 

 tame bees whose sweets could be more conveniently 

 commandeered. Such bees were brought from the 

 Atlantic side by sea and were installed before 1856, 

 for in that year there were at last three apiaries of 

 more than a hundred hives each belonging to F. G. 

 Appleton, Mr. Briggs and Mr. Buck near San Jose 

 and they were surprisingly productive both of swarms 

 and honey and in the value thereof. It is recorded 

 that four, six and, in one case, eight swarms came 

 from one hive; that the value of a hived swarm was 

 $100 and the price of honey 50 cents and $1 a pound, 

 prices which endured for several years. It is, there- 

 fore, not strange that importations of bees continued. 

 In 1857 J. S. Harbison brought bees from the East 

 to the vicinity of the Sacramento Eiver where it was 

 prophesied bees could not live, and the fifty-four 

 hives he imported in December, less twenty which he 



