ANIMAL INDUSTRIES 279 



sold at $100 each,, had become eighty-one by the fol- 

 lowing summer. Harbison is entitled to rank as the 

 premier pioneer in California beekeeping for he not 

 only began early but he invented an improved frame 

 hive which was largely used. He participated in the 

 development of the honey industry until his death 

 in 1912 in San Diego County, where he had estab- 

 lished himself in 1869 and where he had become at 

 one time, perhaps, the largest honey-producer in the 

 State. Harbison was one of a large group ol' bee- 

 keepers who moved the apiaries beyond the cultivated 

 area into the mountain canyons and upon the dry 

 plains where the nectar of wild sages and other desert 

 flora disputed superiority with white clover standard 

 and where the producer had the advantage of limit- 

 less free range and surprising production whenever 

 there was rainfall enough to make the desert bloom. 

 From such wild waste places a large export product of 

 honey came for several decades. More recently the 

 bees have reentered the cultivated area and the 

 product from wild ranges is now exceeded by bees 

 pastured on alfalfa, fruit-bloom, bean-bloom and 

 other nectar-yielding agricultural flora in different 

 parts of the State, even from the extremes of north 

 and south boundaries. 



Portability of apiaries, which became common at 

 first to meet the exigencies of seasonal variation in 

 honey flow on desert areas, has recently become sys- 

 tematically employed to meet bloom of large areas 

 of cultivated plants, not only for the good of the 

 bees but for the pollination of such bloom. Some 



