280 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



beekeepers now do a good business in renting the 

 services of their bees in pollination of field plants and 

 fruit-trees to increase seed or fruit production. A 

 concrete instance of transforming bees into commer- 

 cial travelers^ as practiced during 1920, is the fol- 

 lowing : 



"The owner of 200 stands of bees started the sea- 

 son in a large Santa Clara county prune orchard, 

 where he was paid $2 per stand to keep the bees in 

 the orchard during the blooming period. In addition 

 to the money the beekeeper extracted a ton of honey 

 and the bees built up strong colonies, which he 

 moved over two hundred miles eastward to the 

 orange orchards in Tulare county, with his hives 

 filled with bees able to gather more honey than bees 

 wintered in the district. The Tulare orange bloom 

 lasted about five weeks, owing to cool weather. And 

 then the bees were moved northward one hundred 

 and fifty miles into Stanislaus county to get the 

 benefit of various wild flowers and alfalfa bloom. In 

 July the honey was extracted, the bees shaken from 

 their hives into wire cages (to escape transmission 

 of bee diseases), and then taken about two hundred 

 miles northeastward into Nevada, placed in new, 

 clean hives, and there gathered honey from alfalfa 

 and wild flowers until fall when they were taken 

 back to California in the wire cages. Thus the bees 

 passed the season working full blast in four different 

 localities ; their honey was taken all away from them ; 

 and they were not even permitted to swarm. 



"This great amount of moving is exceptional. It 



