IS TO 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



298 



SWEETS BY THE CAK I.OAl>. 



Tv. o liimdicd tliousantl pounds of Cali- 

 fornia. Sioney. 



WHERE A VAST TEREITOKY, HITHERTO ALMOST WOETH- 



LESS, HAS BEEN MADE MOST VALUABLE.— DIFFICULTIES 



OYEECOilE IN BEE CULTURE. 



M'R. J. S. Harbison, of San Diego county, CaHfornia, 

 arrived in this city yesterday witli ten car loads of 



' honey, each car containing 20,000 pounds. This 



vast aggregation of bee labor was taken from Sir. Harbi- 

 son's six apiaries on the sides of the Coast Range of moun- 

 tains, as near to the Mexican line as they well can be and 

 yet el.i'm the protection of the Stars and Stripes. Twenty- 

 five years ajo 31r. Harbison made a stir in the bee world 

 by selling at one time two thousand pounds of honej', the 

 product of his apiary, near New Castle, Pa. So much 

 honey had never before been raised by a single producer, 

 and the sale led hundreds of staid farme-s to embark in 

 what looked like a most profitable field of industrj'. The 

 result was not flattering. Short seasons and limited bee 

 pasturage forbade profitable bee euUurc. Old-fashioned 

 hives were th?n the only kind known. The modern 

 means of robbing bees without killing; them had not then 

 been thought of. 



Having invented a hive that enabled the ciilturist to 

 obtain successive crops of honey from tlje same colony of 

 bees, Mr. Harbison began to look for a I'egion that would 

 supply the food for the bees. He searched for this in the 

 equable climate of the Pacific coast, and found it in a 

 narrow stiip of country in the extreme south-western 

 corner of the United States, now knovi-n as tlie bee belt 

 of California, Sheep raising was the only industry of the 

 natives found by j\Ir. Harbison when he first visited the 

 country. The country inland was thought good enough 

 for sheep pasturing, but n) one dreamed that the soil 

 could be mide to produce grain in paying quantities. 

 Timber was confined to the bottoms of running streams 

 and to the canons, the valleys and hill sides being covered 

 with a growth of .stunted brushwood from which sprang 

 a luxuriant grovith of white sage, sumac, and other flow- 

 ering shrubs, which bloom there nine months of the year. 



Mr. Harbison's first apiary was started on a mountain 

 side, twenty miles east of San Diego. He embarked for 

 the West with seventy hives of bees, bat these were re- 

 duced to sixty-two by casualties. From them he nc w 

 has six apiaries, and a total of 3,000 hives. He employs 

 fifteen men constantly, and is reaping rich profits from 

 many thousands of acres that must otherwise have been 

 a barren waste. He soon had many imitators, and now 

 not less than three hundred persons are taking honey 

 along the "Bee Belt." 



Samples of the honey and a stock of bees, brought East 

 in one of Mr. Harbison's hives, are on exhibition in H. K. 

 Thurber & Co.'s ware-rooms. 



The California bee season, Mr. Harbison says, begins by 

 Feb. I. In March or April the bees swarm, and the bee 

 culturist has lively times in saving the swarais. The 

 science has become so systematized now that the apicul- 

 turist knows within a day or two when a given hive may 

 be expected to sv/arm, and as the young bees always set- 

 tle near the parent hive at least once before selecting 

 their new quai'ters, a swarm is seldom lost. The flowei's 

 are at the height of their luxuriance in May and June, 

 and the taking of honey is begun usually about May 20, 

 and the bees are kept at work as long as the flowers last. 

 They cease to bloom in sufficient quantity to more than 

 subsist the bees in the early part of August ; but the little 

 workers are able to find enough to live on without con- 

 suming their stores as late as October. It will thus be 

 seen that the harvest time is never longer than three 



months and is often much less. After October begins. 

 although the air is still mill and sin'ing-like, the baes 

 cease to work, and retire into a semi- dormant condition. 

 Once everj' eight or ten days a colony will turn out at 

 midday and fly around for an hour or two iti the sunshine 

 but they never fly far from the hive, and are never seen 

 at work. 



The food of the bees in the bee belt is generally the flow- 

 er of the white sage, a plant that closely resembles the 

 garden sage. This is not to be confounded with the sage 

 brush of Nevada and Utah, which is of the wormwood 

 sjiecies, and has the family bitterness. Next to the sage in 

 importance as bee food is the sumac, a shrub that grows in 

 California without poisonous quality. In fact, there is no 

 poisonousfioweringplant in the bee range, and the honey 

 has none of the colicky qualities that make Eastern grown 

 honey objectionable. The honey is graded by the cultur- 

 ist according to the plant from which it is derived. That 

 made from sage flowers, being clearest and most aromatic, 

 is most valuable. 



Mr. Harbison siys thit notwithstanding tho gre:it crop 

 he Ins brought to this market, h3 will pi'ob vbly not realize 

 more than §1.000 after deducting expenses and interest 0!i 

 cajntal. He had to dig his bee ranch out of the wilderness. 

 The ro:\ds thereto over rocky mountain sides and deej) 

 canons, were bull t at heavy cost. The continu jus labor of 

 fifteen men is needed in the care of propagation and liar- 

 vesthig. The hives, boxes for shipment, and houselnll 

 supplies have all to be transported from Sin Diega, fjrty 

 miles from his most remote apiary. It costs about f jur 

 cents, gold, to freight a pound of honey by water to S:in 

 Francisco and by rail to New York. Taking into consider- 

 ation the commissions and currency v?.lues realized hec:, 

 thereisnogreat mirgin left for profi".— JVaiw York S: i. 



Tl^ANSFERKIIVG. 



S I think transferring and fastening combs in the 

 JG'\s fi'ames can be done much move rapidly in my way 



' than in any I have seen, I will take tin libjrty of 



describing it to you. If honey is plenty and bees not in- 

 clined to rob, blow a little smoke into the hive, (on the 

 old stand) split it in pieces, have some clean boards 

 ready, brush off the bees, sort out the combs and put 

 eachkindby itself so you can get any of them you want 

 to put into the frames. To prepare the frames, stick 

 small tacks in th5 top and bottom of the frame, take a 

 piece of fine wire long enough to go across as many times 

 as you wish, fasten the wire to one corner, put it 

 around two tacks from top to bottom on one side and 

 fasten. Lay the frame on a board with the wire down, 

 fit in your combs and continue to wind the wire on the 

 other side around the same tacks. If there is a bad place 

 in the comb and the wire does not come in the right 

 place you can stick in more tacks and continue the wire 

 until it will support heavy combs. I think I can transfer 

 a stock in this way as quickly as I can diviile a swarm 

 into an empty box the old way. I have packed my 

 bees in sawdust, shavings from planing mills, and chatf 

 since 1870. To make my boxes I get inch boards, get 

 them resawed, get out cleats one inch square and the 

 length of box ; nail on the board on two sides half inch 

 from end of board, the other two sides nail one inch from 

 end of board ; that makes the corner come right. I drive 

 nails in the corners and tij with annealed wire, but; per- 

 haps some would prefer hooks. Slant the roof four inches, 

 make the cover by putting on cleats. These parts of 

 the boxes are handy to use in summer when hiving, and 

 in case you have no grape vines they can be used for 

 shading the hives. I remove them from the hive just as 

 apple trees b'ossom. I put up seventy this way last 

 winter, and they wintered well. When I removed the 

 boxes I found plenty of brood in the hives ; one had 



