Bee-Culture at Present 385 



store phenomenal quantities of sweets. Another year or 

 succession of years the wild-flower crop will not prosper, 

 and then, indeed, the bees undergo great hardships, and 

 pine and die in large numbers. The wild plants suffer 

 even more from adverse weather than do the cultivated 

 ones, and a season of drought will often extinguish hun- 

 dreds of acres of bloom. Muir tells us : — 



" Bees suffer sadly from famine during the dry years 

 which occasionally occur in the southern and middle 

 portions of the State." He says further, describing the 

 severe drought of 1877: — 



" But the fate of the bees that year seemed the saddest 

 of all. In different parts of Los Angeles and San Diego 

 counties, from one-half to three-fourths of them died of 

 sheer starvation. Not less than eighteen thousand colonies 

 perished in these two counties alone, while in adjacent 

 counties tlie death rate was hardly less. 



" Even the colonies nearest to the mountains suffered this 

 year, for the smaller vegetation on the foot hills was affected 

 by the drought almost as severely as that of the valleys 

 and plains, and even the hardy, deep-rooted chaparral, the 

 surest dependence of the bees, bloomed sparingly, while 

 much of it was beyond reach. Every swarm could have 

 been saved, however, by promptly supplying them with 

 food when their own stores began to fail, and before they 

 became enfeebled and discouraged ; or by cutting roads 

 back into the mountains and taking them into the heart 

 of the flowery chaparral." 



This method of transporting bees to flowery regions was 

 practised in early times, and is still carried on in many 

 countries. 



Pliny says : — 



" There is a village, called Hostilia, on the banks of the 

 river Padus : the inhabitants of it, when food fails the bees 



25 



