LOCUST 
571 
central portion of the State. Nevada is 
largely a desert, but the western counties 
produce the finest and whitest alfalfa hon¬ 
ey. The Salt River Valley of Arizona was 
for many years a famous country for bee¬ 
keeping, but during the World War, the 
great fields of alfalfa were ploughed, and 
seeded with long staple Egyptian cotton, 
which is largely used in the manufacture of 
automobile tires. The decline in the price 
of cotton has rendered its cultivation un¬ 
profitable, at least temporarily, and neither 
cotton nor alfalfa is likely to be exten¬ 
sively grown for a few years. 
Commercial beekeeping in Washington 
and Oregon is confined wholly to the irri¬ 
gated areas west of the Cascade Range. 
In the Yakima Valley, Washington, and in 
Umatilla County, Oregon, irrigated alfalfa 
is the chief honey plant. In the lumbered 
regions of the Coast Range, where there is 
a heavy rainfall, fireweed offers wonder¬ 
ful possibilities, but the colonies require 
special management and the nectar flow is 
not always reliable. Undoubtedly Califor¬ 
nia leads all the States of the Union in the 
total amount of honey produced. The most 
important honey plants are orange, the 
white, black, and purple sages, Lima bean, 
and alfalfa. The secretion of nectar is 
largely dependent on irrigation, rainfall, 
and fog. Alfalfa is the chief source of 
surplus in the Central Valley, but star 
thistle is very important northward. In 
the southwestern counties of Santa Bar¬ 
bara, Ventura, Los Angeles, Riverside, San 
Bernardino, Orange, and San Diego most of 
the commercial beekeepers are located. Mi¬ 
gratory beekeeping is extensively practiced. 
The home apiary is usually located in the 
foothills near the orange, groves. After 
the flow from orange bloom is over, it is 
moved to the sage ranges, then to the bean 
fields, and perhaps later to wild buckwheat. 
Within 150 miles of Los Angeles, says E. 
R. Root, there are more bees and beekeep¬ 
ers than in any other part of the United 
States, and full 50 per cent of them are 
located in the sage ranges. One difficulty in 
southern California is bee diseases, both the 
American and European foul brood. The 
bees breed almost every month in the year 
and of course the bi'ood diseases can con¬ 
tinue for ten or eleven months. It takes 
good beekeeping to overcome this and the 
tendency for the queens to wear out, leav¬ 
ing the colonies with insufficient brood at 
a time of the year when it is most needed 
to insure a force of bees for the orange. 
In the Imperial Valley the surplus flow 
comes almost wholly from irrigated alfalfa 
and cotton. A fair average is 75 pounds per 
colony and it is seldom that a crop is a fail¬ 
ure. Few bee ranges are unoccupied and 
no one should migrate to this section with¬ 
out first investigating. The valley was for¬ 
merly known as the Colorado Desert. 
In a general way it may be said that the 
yields per colony in the North are larger 
than in the South. Moreover the higher 
the altitude and the further north one goes, 
the better the quality of honey and the 
larger the average yields. 
LOCUST (Robinia Pseudo-Acacia ).— 
Variously called common locust, black lo¬ 
cust, white locust, yellow locust, false Aca¬ 
cia, pea flower, locust, post locust, and 
locust tree. This is one of the finest honey 
trees of the eastern and southern States. It 
belongs to the great family of the Legumi- 
nosae, which includes many of the best 
honey plants, as the clovers, sainfoin, red 
bud, honey locust, sweet clover, and hua- 
jilla. It is a native of the mountains from 
Pennsylvania to Georgia, and westward to 
Missouri and Arkansas; but has become ex¬ 
tensively naturalized in Canada, New Eng¬ 
land, and the eastern States. Large plan¬ 
tations of it have been made for timber. 
The wood is hard and very durable, and is 
much used for posts. There is a saying 
that stone will crumble before locust will 
rot. The tree grows to medium size, and 
is long-lived except when attacked by bor¬ 
ers. It spreads rapidly by, sprouts rising 
from the roots, which run under grourid 
for long distances near the surface. When 
the trees are cut or killed by borers the 
roots send up a great many sprouts, which 
grow very rapidly and flower within two 
or three years. 
The white, very fragrant flowers are simi¬ 
lar in form to the blossoms of the garden 
pea, but are in pendent clusters like those 
of wistaria. They appear in May or June, 
and the blooming period lasts for about 10 
days. Under favorable conditions a large 
amount of milk-white honey of heavy body 
and mild flavor is secured, but it is not a 
