THE BEE-PASTURES
When California was wild, it was one sweet bee-garden throughout its
entire length, north and south, and all the way across from the snowy
Sierra to the ocean.
Wherever a bee might fly within the bounds of this virgin
wilderness—through the redwood forests, along the banks of the rivers,
along the bluffs and headlands fronting the sea, over valley and plain,
park and grove, and deep, leafy glen, or far up the piny slopes of the
mountains—throughout every belt and section of climate up to the timber
line, bee-flowers bloomed in lavish, abundance. Here they grew more or
less apart in special sheets and patches of no great size, there in
broad, flowing folds hundreds of miles in length—zones of polleny
forests, zones of flowery chaparral, stream-tangles of rubus and wild
rose, sheets of golden composite, beds of violets, beds of mint, beds
of bryanthus and clover, and so on, certain species blooming somewhere
all the year round.
But of late years plows and sheep have made sad havoc in these glorious
pastures, destroying tens of thousands of the flowery acres like a
fire, and banishing many species of the best honey-plants to rocky
cliffs and fence-corners, while, on the other hand, cultivation thus
far has given no adequate compensation, at least in kind; only acres of
alfalfa for miles of the richest wild pasture, ornamental roses and
honeysuckles around cottage doors for cascades of wild roses in the
dells, and small, square orchards and orange-groves for broad
mountain-belts of chaparral.
The Great Central Plain of California, during the months of March,
April, and May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so
marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to the other, a
distance of more than 400 miles, your foot would press about a hundred
flowers at every step. Mints, gilias, nemophilas, castilleias, and
innumerable compositae were so crowded together that, had ninety-nine
per cent. of them been taken away, the plain would still have seemed to
any but Californians extravagantly flowery. The radiant, honeyful
corollas, touching and overlapping, and rising above one another,
glowed in the living light like a sunset sky—one sheet of purple and
gold, with the bright Sacramento pouring through the midst of it from
the north, the San Joaquin from the south, and their many tributaries
sweeping in at right angles from the mountains, dividing the plain into
sections fringed with trees.
Along the rivers there is a strip of bottom-land, countersunk beneath
the general level, and wider toward the foot-hills, where magnificent
oaks, from three to eight feet in diameter, cast grateful masses of
shade over the open, prairie-like levels. And close along the water’s
edge there was a fine jungle of tropical luxuriance, composed of
wild-rose and bramble bushes and a great variety of climbing vines,
wreathing and interlacing the branches and trunks of willows and
alders, and swinging across from summit to summit in heavy festoons.
Here the wild bees reveled in fresh bloom long after the flowers of the
drier plain had withered and gone to seed. And in midsummer, when the
“blackberries” were ripe, the Indians came from the mountains to
feast—men, women, and babies in long, noisy trains, often joined by the
farmers of the neighborhood, who gathered this wild fruit with
commendable appreciation of its superior flavor, while their home
orchards were full of ripe peaches, apricots, nectarines, and figs, and
their vineyards were laden with grapes. But, though these luxuriant,
shaggy river-beds were thus distinct from the smooth, treeless plain,
they made no heavy dividing lines in general views. The whole appeared
as one continuous sheet of bloom bounded only by the mountains.
When I first saw this central garden, the most extensive and regular of
all the bee-pastures of the State, it seemed all one sheet of plant
gold, hazy and vanishing in the distance, distinct as a new map along
the foot-hills at my feet.
Descending the eastern slopes of the Coast Range through beds of gilias
and lupines, and around many a breezy hillock and bush-crowned
headland, I at length waded out into the midst of it. All the ground
was covered, not with grass and green leaves, but with radiant
corollas, about ankle-deep next the foot-hills, knee-deep or more five
or six miles out. Here were bahia, madia, madaria, burrielia,
chrysopsis, corethrogyne, grindelia, etc., growing in close social
congregations of various shades of yellow, blending finely with the
purples of clarkia, orthocarpus, and oenothera, whose delicate petals
were drinking the vital sunbeams without giving back any sparkling
glow.
[Illustration: A BEE-RANCH IN LOWER CALIFORNIA.]
Because so long a period of extreme drought succeeds the rainy season,
most of the vegetation is composed of annuals, which spring up
simultaneously, and bloom together at about the same height above the
ground, the general surface being but slightly ruffled by the taller
phacelias, pentstemons, and groups of _Salvia carduacea_, the king of
the mints.
Sauntering in any direction, hundreds of these happy sun-plants brushed
against my feet at every step, and closed over them as if I were wading
in liquid gold. The air was sweet with fragrance, the larks sang their
blessed songs, rising on the wing as I advanced, then sinking out of
sight in the polleny sod, while myriads of wild bees stirred the lower
air with their monotonous hum—monotonous, yet forever fresh and sweet
as every-day sunshine. Hares and spermophiles showed themselves in
considerable numbers in shallow places, and small bands of antelopes
were almost constantly in sight, gazing curiously from some slight
elevation, and then bounding swiftly away with unrivaled grace of
motion. Yet I could discover no crushed flowers to mark their track,
nor, indeed, any destructive action of any wild foot or tooth whatever.
The great yellow days circled by uncounted, while I drifted toward the
north, observing the countless forms of life thronging about me, lying
down almost anywhere on the approach of night. And what glorious
botanical beds I had! Oftentimes on awaking I would find several new
species leaning over me and looking me full in the face, so that my
studies would begin before rising.
About the first of May I turned eastward, crossing the San Joaquin
River between the mouths of the Tuolumne and Merced, and by the time I
had reached the Sierra foot-hills most of the vegetation had gone to
seed and become as dry as hay.
All the seasons of the great plain are warm or temperate, and
bee-flowers are never wholly wanting; but the grand springtime—the
annual resurrection—is governed by the rains, which usually set in
about the middle of November or the beginning of December. Then the
seeds, that for six months have lain on the ground dry and fresh as if
they had been gathered into barns, at once unfold their treasured life.
The general brown and purple of the ground, and the dead vegetation of
the preceding year, give place to the green of mosses and liverworts
and myriads of young leaves. Then one species after another comes into
flower, gradually overspreading the green with yellow and purple, which
lasts until May.
The “rainy season” is by no means a gloomy, soggy period of constant
cloudiness and rain. Perhaps nowhere else in North America, perhaps in
the world, are the months of December, January, February, and March so
full of bland, plant-building sunshine. Referring to my notes of the
winter and spring of 1868-69, every day of which I spent out of doors,
on that section of the plain lying between the Tuolumne and Merced
rivers, I find that the first rain of the season fell on December 18th.
January had only six rainy days—that is, days on which rain fell;
February three, March five, April three, and May three, completing the
so-called rainy season, which was about an average one. The ordinary
rain-storm of this region is seldom very cold or violent. The winds,
which in settled weather come from the northwest, veer round into the
opposite direction, the sky fills gradually and evenly with one general
cloud, from which, the rain falls steadily, often for days in
succession, at a temperature of about 45° or 50°.
More than seventy-five per cent. of all the rain of this season came
from the northwest, down the coast over southeastern Alaska, British
Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, though the local winds of these
circular storms blow from the southeast. One magnificent local storm
from the northwest fell on March 21. A massive, round-browed cloud came
swelling and thundering over the flowery plain in most imposing
majesty, its bossy front burning white and purple in the full blaze of
the sun, while warm rain poured from its ample fountains like a
cataract, beating down flowers and bees, and flooding the dry
watercourses as suddenly as those of Nevada are flooded by the
so-called “cloudbursts.” But in less than half an hour not a trace of
the heavy, mountain-like cloud-structure was left in the sky, and the
bees were on the wing, as if nothing more gratefully refreshing could
have been sent them.
By the end of January four species of plants were in flower, and five
or six mosses had already adjusted their hoods and were in the prime of
life; but the flowers were not sufficiently numerous as yet to affect
greatly the general green of the young leaves. Violets made their
appearance in the first week of February, and toward the end of this
month the warmer portions of the plain were already golden with myriads
of the flowers of rayed composite.
This was the full springtime. The sunshine grew warmer and richer, new
plants bloomed every day; the air became more tuneful with humming
wings, and sweeter with the fragrance of the opening flowers. Ants and
ground squirrels were getting ready for their summer work, rubbing
their benumbed limbs, and sunning themselves on the husk-piles before
their doors, and spiders were busy mending their old webs, or weaving
new ones.
In March, the vegetation was more than doubled in depth and color;
claytonia, calandrinia, a large white gilia, and two nemophilas were in
bloom, together with a host of yellow composite, tall enough now to
bend in the wind and show wavering ripples of shade.
In April, plant-life, as a whole, reached its greatest height, and the
plain, over all its varied surface, was mantled with a close, furred
plush of purple and golden corollas. By the end of this month, most of
the species had ripened their seeds, but undecayed, still seemed to be
in bloom from the numerous corolla-like involucres and whorls of chaffy
scales of the composite. In May, the bees found in flower only a few
deep-set liliaceous plants and eriogonums.
June, July, August, and September is the season of rest and sleep,—a
winter of dry heat,—followed in October by a second outburst of bloom
at the very driest time of the year. Then, after the shrunken mass of
leaves and stalks of the dead vegetation crinkle and turn to dust
beneath the foot, as if it had been baked in an oven, _Hemizonia
virgata_, a slender, unobtrusive little plant, from six inches to three
feet high, suddenly makes its appearance in patches miles in extent,
like a resurrection of the bloom of April. I have counted upward of
3000 flowers, five eighths of an inch in diameter, on a single plant.
Both its leaves and stems are so slender as to be nearly invisible, at
a distance of a few yards, amid so showy a multitude of flowers. The
ray and disk flowers are both yellow, the stamens purple, and the
texture of the rays is rich and velvety, like the petals of garden
pansies. The prevailing wind turns all the heads round to the
southeast, so that in facing northwestward we have the flowers looking
us in the face. In my estimation, this little plant, the last born of
the brilliant host of compositae that glorify the plain, is the most
interesting of all. It remains in flower until November, uniting with
two or three species of wiry eriogonums, which continue the floral
chain around December to the spring flowers of January. Thus, although
the main bloom and honey season is only about three months long, the
floral circle, however thin around some of the hot, rainless months, is
never completely broken.
How long the various species of wild bees have lived in this
honey-garden, nobody knows; probably ever since the main body of the
present flora gained possession of the land, toward the close of the
glacial period. The first brown honey-bees brought to California are
said to have arrived in San Francisco in March, 1853. A bee-keeper by
the name of Shelton purchased a lot, consisting of twelve swarms, from
some one at Aspinwall, who had brought them from New York. When landed
at San Francisco, all the hives contained live bees, but they finally
dwindled to one hive, which was taken to San José. The little
immigrants flourished and multiplied in the bountiful pastures of the
Santa Clara Valley, sending off three swarms the first season. The
owner was killed shortly afterward, and in settling up his estate, two
of the swarms were sold at auction for $105 and $110 respectively.
Other importations were made, from time to time, by way of the Isthmus,
and, though great pains were taken to insure success, about one half
usually died on the way. Four swarms were brought safely across the
plains in 1859, the hives being placed in the rear end of a wagon,
which was stopped in the afternoon to allow the bees to fly and feed in
the floweriest places that were within reach until dark, when the hives
were closed.
In 1855, two years after the time of the first arrivals from New York,
a single swarm was brought over from San José, and let fly in the Great
Central Plain. Bee-culture, however, has never gained much attention
here, notwithstanding the extraordinary abundance of honey-bloom, and
the high price of honey during the early years. A few hives are found
here and there among settlers who chanced to have learned something
about the business before coming to the State. But sheep, cattle,
grain, and fruit raising are the chief industries, as they require less
skill and care, while the profits thus far have been greater. In 1856
honey sold here at from one and a half to two dollars per pound. Twelve
years later the price had fallen to twelve and a half cents. In 1868 I
sat down to dinner with a band of ravenous sheep-shearers at a ranch on
the San Joaquin, where fifteen or twenty hives were kept, and our host
advised us not to spare the large pan of honey he had placed on the
table, as it was the cheapest article he had to offer. In all my walks,
however, I have never come upon a regular bee-ranch in the Central
Valley like those so common and so skilfully managed in the southern
counties of the State. The few pounds of honey and wax produced are
consumed at home, and are scarcely taken into account among the coarser
products of the farm. The swarms that escape from their careless owners
have a weary, perplexing time of it in seeking suitable homes. Most of
them make their way to the foot-hills of the mountains, or to the trees
that line the banks of the rivers, where some hollow log or trunk may
be found. A friend of mine, while out hunting on the San Joaquin, came
upon an old coon trap, hidden among some tall grass, near the edge of
the river, upon which he sat down to rest. Shortly afterward his
attention was attracted to a crowd of angry bees that were flying
excitedly about his head, when he discovered that he was sitting upon
their hive, which was found to contain more than 200 pounds of honey.
Out in the broad, swampy delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin
rivers, the little wanderers have been known to build their combs in a
bunch of rushes, or stiff, wiry grass, only slightly protected from the
weather, and in danger every spring of being carried away by floods.
They have the advantage, however, of a vast extent of fresh pasture,
accessible only to themselves.
The present condition of the Grand Central Garden is very different
from that we have sketched. About twenty years ago, when the gold
placers had been pretty thoroughly exhausted, the attention of
fortune-seekers—not home-seekers—was, in great part, turned away from
the mines to the fertile plains, and many began experiments in a kind
of restless, wild agriculture. A load of lumber would be hauled to some
spot on the free wilderness, where water could be easily found, and a
rude box-cabin built. Then a gang-plow was procured, and a dozen
mustang ponies, worth ten or fifteen dollars apiece, and with these
hundreds of acres were stirred as easily as if the land had been under
cultivation for years, tough, perennial roots being almost wholly
absent. Thus a ranch was established, and from these bare wooden huts,
as centers of desolation, the wild flora vanished in ever-widening
circles. But the arch destroyers are the shepherds, with their flocks
of hoofed locusts, sweeping over the ground like a fire, and trampling
down every rod that escapes the plow as completely as if the whole
plain were a cottage garden-plot without a fence. But notwithstanding
these destroyers, a thousand swarms of bees may be pastured here for
every one now gathering honey. The greater portion is still covered
every season with a repressed growth of bee-flowers, for most of the
species are annuals, and many of them are not relished by sheep or
cattle, while the rapidity of their growth enables them to develop and
mature their seeds before any foot has time to crush them. The ground
is, therefore, kept sweet, and the race is perpetuated, though only as
a suggestive shadow of the magnificence of its wildness.
The time will undoubtedly come when the entire area of this noble
valley will be tilled like a garden, when the fertilizing waters of the
mountains, now flowing to the sea, will be distributed to every acre,
giving rise to prosperous towns, wealth, arts, etc. Then, I suppose,
there will be few left, even among botanists, to deplore the vanished
primeval flora. In the mean time, the pure waste going on—the wanton
destruction of the innocents—is a sad sight to see, and the sun may
well be pitied in being compelled to look on.
The bee-pastures of the Coast Ranges last longer and are more varied
than those of the great plain, on account of differences of soil and
climate, moisture, and shade, etc. Some of the mountains are upward of
4000 feet in height, and small streams, springs, oozy bogs, etc., occur
in great abundance and variety in the wooded regions, while open parks,
flooded with sunshine, and hill-girt valleys lying at different
elevations, each with its own peculiar climate and exposure, possess
the required conditions for the development of species and families of
plants widely varied.
Next the plain there is, first, a series of smooth hills, planted with
a rich and showy vegetation that differs but little from that of the
plain itself—as if the edge of the plain had been lifted and bent into
flowing folds, with all its flowers in place, only toned down a little
as to their luxuriance, and a few new species introduced, such as the
hill lupines, mints, and gilias. The colors show finely when thus held
to view on the slopes; patches of red, purple, blue, yellow, and white,
blending around the edges, the whole appearing at a little distance
like a map colored in sections.
Above this lies the park and chaparral region, with oaks, mostly
evergreen, planted wide apart, and blooming shrubs from three to ten
feet high; manzanita and ceanothus of several species, mixed with
rhamnus, cercis, pickeringia, cherry, amelanchier, and adenostoma, in
shaggy, interlocking thickets, and many species of hosackia, clover,
monardella, castilleia, etc., in the openings.
The main ranges send out spurs somewhat parallel to their axes,
inclosing level valleys, many of them quite extensive, and containing a
great profusion of sun-loving bee-flowers in their wild state; but
these are, in great part, already lost to the bees by cultivation.
Nearer the coast are the giant forests of the redwoods, extending from
near the Oregon line to Santa Cruz. Beneath the cool, deep shade of
these majestic trees the ground is occupied by ferns, chiefly
woodwardia and aspidiums, with only a few flowering plants—oxalis,
trientalis, erythronium, fritillaria, smilax, and other shade-lovers.
But all along the redwood belt there are sunny openings on hill-slopes
looking to the south, where the giant trees stand back, and give the
ground to the small sunflowers and the bees. Around the lofty redwood
walls of these little bee-acres there is usually a fringe of Chestnut
Oak, Laurel, and Madroño, the last of which is a surpassingly beautiful
tree, and a great favorite with the bees. The trunks of the largest
specimens are seven or eight feet thick, and about fifty feet high; the
bark red and chocolate colored, the leaves plain, large, and glossy,
like those of _Magnolia grandiflora_, while the flowers are
yellowish-white, and urn-shaped, in well-proportioned panicles, from
five to ten inches long. When in full bloom, a single tree seems to be
visited at times by a whole hive of bees at once, and the deep hum of
such a multitude makes the listener guess that more than the ordinary
work of honey-winning must be going on.
How perfectly enchanting and care-obliterating are these withdrawn
gardens of the woods—long vistas opening to the sea—sunshine sifting
and pouring upon the flowery ground in a tremulous, shifting mosaic, as
the light-ways in the leafy wall open and close with the swaying
breeze—shining leaves and flowers, birds and bees, mingling together in
springtime harmony, and soothing fragrance exhaling from a thousand
thousand fountains! In these balmy, dissolving days, when the deep
heart-beats of Nature are felt thrilling rocks and trees and everything
alike, common business and friends are happily forgotten, and even the
natural honey-work of bees, and the care of birds for their young, and
mothers for their children, seem slightly out of place.
To the northward, in Humboldt and the adjacent counties, whole
hillsides are covered with rhododendron, making a glorious melody of
bee-bloom in the spring. And the Western azalea, hardly less flowery,
grows in massy thickets three to eight feet high around the edges of
groves and woods as far south as San Luis Obispo, usually accompanied
by manzanita; while the valleys, with their varying moisture and shade,
yield a rich variety of the smaller honey-flowers, such as mentha,
lycopus, micromeria, audibertia, trichostema, and other mints; with
vaccinium, wild strawberry, geranium, calais, and goldenrod; and in the
cool glens along the stream-banks, where the shade of trees is not too
deep, spiraea, dog-wood, heteromeles, and calycanthus, and many species
of rubus form interlacing tangles, some portion of which continues in
bloom for months.
Though the coast region was the first to be invaded and settled by
white men, it has suffered less from a bee point of view than either of
the other main divisions, chiefly, no doubt, because of the unevenness
of the surface, and because it is owned and protected instead of lying
exposed to the flocks of the wandering “sheepmen.” These remarks apply
more particularly to the north half of the coast. Farther south there
is less moisture, less forest shade, and the honey flora is less
varied.
The Sierra region is the largest of the three main divisions of the
bee-lands of the State, and the most regularly varied in its
subdivisions, owing to their gradual rise from the level of the Central
Plain to the alpine summits. The foot-hill region is about as dry and
sunful, from the end of May until the setting in of the winter rains,
as the plain. There are no shady forests, no damp glens, at all like
those lying at the same elevations in the Coast Mountains. The social
compositae of the plain, with a few added species, form the bulk of the
herbaceous portion of the vegetation up to a height of 1500 feet or
more, shaded lightly here and there with oaks and Sabine Pines, and
interrupted by patches of ceanothus and buckeye. Above this, and just
below the forest region, there is a dark, heath-like belt of chaparral,
composed almost exclusively of _Adenostoma fasciculata_, a bush
belonging to the rose family, from five to eight feet high, with small,
round leaves in fascicles, and bearing a multitude of small white
flowers in panicles on the ends of the upper branches. Where it occurs
at all, it usually covers all the ground with a close, impenetrable
growth, scarcely broken for miles.
Up through the forest region, to a height of about 9000 feet above
sea-level, there are ragged patches of manzanita, and five or six
species of ceanothus, called deer-brush or California lilac. These are
the most important of all the honey-bearing bushes of the Sierra.
_Chamaebatia foliolosa_, a little shrub about a foot high, with flowers
like the strawberry, makes handsome carpets beneath the pines, and
seems to be a favorite with the bees; while pines themselves furnish
unlimited quantities of pollen and honey-dew. The product of a single
tree, ripening its pollen at the right time of year, would be
sufficient for the wants of a whole hive. Along the streams there is a
rich growth of lilies, larkspurs, pedicularis, castilleias, and clover.
The alpine region contains the flowery glacier meadows, and countless
small gardens in all sorts of places full of potentilla of several
species, spraguea, ivesia, epilobium, and goldenrod, with beds of
bryanthus and the charming cassiope covered with sweet bells. Even the
tops of the mountains are blessed with flowers,—dwarf phlox,
polemonium, ribes, hulsea, etc. I have seen wild bees and butterflies
feeding at a height of 13,000 feet above the sea. Many, however, that
go up these dangerous heights never come down again. Some, undoubtedly,
perish in storms, and I have found thousands lying dead or benumbed on
the surface of the glaciers, to which they had perhaps been attracted
by the white glare, taking them for beds of bloom.
From swarms that escaped their owners in the lowlands, the honey-bee is
now generally distributed throughout the whole length of the Sierra, up
to an elevation of 8000 feet above sea-level. At this height they
flourish without care, though the snow every winter is deep. Even
higher than this several bee-trees have been cut which contained over
200 pounds of honey.
The destructive action of sheep has not been so general on the mountain
pastures as on those of the great plain, but in many places it has been
more complete, owing to the more friable character of the soil, and its
sloping position. The slant digging and down-raking action of hoofs on
the steeper slopes of moraines has uprooted and buried many of the
tender plants from year to year, without allowing them time to mature
their seeds. The shrubs, too, are badly bitten, especially the various
species of ceanothus. Fortunately, neither sheep nor cattle care to
feed on the manzanita, spiraea, or adenostoma; and these fine
honey-bushes are too stiff and tall, or grow in places too rough and
inaccessible, to be trodden under foot. Also the cañon walls and
gorges, which form so considerable a part of the area of the range,
while inaccessible to domestic sheep, are well fringed with
honey-shrubs, and contain thousands of lovely bee-gardens, lying hid in
narrow side-cañons and recesses fenced with avalanche taluses, and on
the top of flat, projecting headlands, where only bees would think to
look for them.
But, on the other hand, a great portion of the woody plants that escape
the feet and teeth of the sheep are destroyed by the shepherds by means
of running fires, which are set everywhere during the dry autumn for
the purpose of burning off the old fallen trunks and underbrush, with a
view to improving the pastures, and making more open ways for the
flocks. These destructive sheep-fires sweep through nearly the entire
forest belt of the range, from one extremity to the other, consuming
not only the underbrush, but the young trees and seedlings on which the
permanence of the forests depends; thus setting in motion a long train
of evils which will certainly reach far beyond bees and beekeepers.
[Illustration: WILD BEE GARDEN.]
The plow has not yet invaded the forest region to any appreciable
extent, neither has it accomplished much in the foot-hills. Thousands
of bee-ranches might be established along the margin of the plain, and
up to a height of 4000 feet, wherever water could be obtained. The
climate at this elevation admits of the making of permanent homes, and
by moving the hives to higher pastures as the lower pass out of bloom,
the annual yield of honey would be nearly doubled. The foot-hill
pastures, as we have seen, fail about the end of May, those of the
chaparral belt and lower forests are in full bloom in June, those of
the upper and alpine region in July, August, and September. In
Scotland, after the best of the Lowland bloom is past, the bees are
carried in carts to the Highlands, and set free on the heather hills.
In France, too, and in Poland, they are carried from pasture to pasture
among orchards and fields in the same way, and along the rivers in
barges to collect the honey of the delightful vegetation of the banks.
In Egypt they are taken far up the Nile, and floated slowly home again,
gathering the honey-harvest of the various fields on the way, timing
their movements in accord with the seasons. Were similar methods
pursued in California the productive season would last nearly all the
year.
The average elevation of the north half of the Sierra is, as we have
seen, considerably less than that of the south half, and small streams,
with the bank and meadow gardens dependent upon them, are less
abundant. Around the head waters of the Yuba, Feather, and Pitt rivers,
the extensive tablelands of lava are sparsely planted with pines,
through which the sunshine reaches the ground with little interruption.
Here flourishes a scattered, tufted growth of golden applopappus,
linosyris, bahia, wyetheia, arnica, artemisia, and similar plants; with
manzanita, cherry, plum, and thorn in ragged patches on the cooler
hill-slopes. At the extremities of the Great Central Plain, the Sierra
and Coast Ranges curve around and lock together in a labyrinth of
mountains and valleys, throughout which their floras are mingled,
making at the north, with its temperate climate and copious rainfall, a
perfect paradise for bees, though, strange to say, scarcely a single
regular bee-ranch has yet been established in it.
Of all the upper flower fields of the Sierra, Shasta is the most
honeyful, and may yet surpass in fame the celebrated honey hills of
Hybla and hearthy Hymettus. Regarding this noble mountain from a bee
point of view, encircled by its many climates, and sweeping aloft from
the torrid plain into the frosty azure, we find the first 5000 feet
from the summit generally snow-clad, and therefore about as honeyless
as the sea. The base of this arctic region is girdled by a belt of
crumbling lava measuring about 1000 feet in vertical breadth, and is
mostly free from snow in summer. Beautiful lichens enliven the faces of
the cliffs with their bright colors, and in some of the warmer nooks
there are a few tufts of alpine daisies, wall-flowers and pentstemons;
but, notwithstanding these bloom freely in the late summer, the zone as
a whole is almost as honeyless as the icy summit, and its lower edge
may be taken as the honey-line. Immediately below this comes the forest
zone, covered with a rich growth of conifers, chiefly Silver Firs, rich
in pollen and honey-dew, and diversified with countless garden
openings, many of them less than a hundred yards across. Next, in
orderly succession, comes the great bee zone. Its area far surpasses
that of the icy summit and both the other zones combined, for it goes
sweeping majestically around the entire mountain, with a breadth of six
or seven miles and a circumference of nearly a hundred miles.
Shasta, as we have already seen, is a fire-mountain created by a
succession of eruptions of ashes and molten lava, which, flowing over
the lips of its several craters, grew outward and upward like the trunk
of a knotty exogenous tree. Then followed a strange contrast. The
glacial winter came on, loading the cooling mountain with ice, which
flowed slowly outward in every direction, radiating from the summit in
the form of one vast conical glacier—a down-crawling mantle of ice upon
a fountain of smoldering fire, crushing and grinding for centuries its
brown, flinty lavas with incessant activity, and thus degrading and
remodeling the entire mountain. When, at length, the glacial period
began to draw near its close, the ice-mantle was gradually melted off
around the bottom, and, in receding and breaking into its present
fragmentary condition, irregular rings and heaps of moraine matter were
stored upon its flanks. The glacial erosion of most of the Shasta lavas
produces detritus, composed of rough, sub-angular boulders of moderate
size and of porous gravel and sand, which yields freely to the
transporting power of running water. Magnificent floods from the ample
fountains of ice and snow working with sublime energy upon this
prepared glacial detritus, sorted it out and carried down immense
quantities from the higher slopes, and reformed it in smooth,
delta-like beds around the base; and it is these flood-beds joined
together that now form the main honey-zone of the old volcano.
Thus, by forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive, has Mother
Nature accomplished her beneficent designs—now a flood of fire, now a
flood of ice, now a flood of water; and at length an outburst of
organic life, a milky way of snowy petals and wings, girdling the
rugged mountain like a cloud, as if the vivifying sunbeams beating
against its sides had broken into a foam of plant-bloom and bees, as
sea-waves break and bloom on a rock shore.
In this flowery wilderness the bees rove and revel, rejoicing in the
bounty of the sun, clambering eagerly through bramble and hucklebloom,
ringing the myriad bells of the manzanita, now humming aloft among
polleny willows and firs, now down on the ashy ground among gilias and
buttercups, and anon plunging deep into snowy banks of cherry and
buckthorn. They consider the lilies and roll into them, and, like
lilies, they toil not, for they are impelled by sun-power, as
water-wheels by water-power; and when the one has plenty of
high-pressure water, the other plenty of sunshine, they hum and quiver
alike. Sauntering in the Shasta bee-lands in the sun-days of summer,
one may readily infer the time of day from the comparative energy of
bee-movements alone—drowsy and moderate in the cool of the morning,
increasing in energy with the ascending sun, and, at high noon,
thrilling and quivering in wild ecstasy, then gradually declining again
to the stillness of night. In my excursions among the glaciers I
occasionally meet bees that are hungry, like mountaineers who venture
too far and remain too long above the bread-line; then they droop and
wither like autumn leaves. The Shasta bees are perhaps better fed than
any others in the Sierra. Their field-work is one perpetual feast; but,
however exhilarating the sunshine or bountiful the supply of flowers,
they are always dainty feeders. Humming-moths and hummingbirds seldom
set foot upon a flower, but poise on the wing in front of it, and reach
forward as if they were sucking through straws. But bees, though, as
dainty as they, hug their favorite flowers with profound cordiality,
and push their blunt, polleny faces against them, like babies on their
mother’s bosom. And fondly, too, with eternal love, does Mother Nature
clasp her small bee-babies, and suckle them, multitudes at once, on her
warm Shasta breast.
Besides the common honey-bee there are many other species here—fine
mossy, burly fellows, who were nourished on the mountains thousands of
sunny seasons before the advent of the domestic species. Among these
are the bumblebees, mason-bees, carpenter-bees, and leaf-cutters.
Butterflies, too, and moths of every size and pattern; some
broad-winged like bats, flapping slowly, and sailing in easy curves;
others like small, flying violets, shaking about loosely in short,
crooked flights close to the flowers, feasting luxuriously night and
day. Great numbers of deer also delight to dwell in the brushy portions
of the bee-pastures.
Bears, too, roam the sweet wilderness, their blunt, shaggy forms
harmonizing well with the trees and tangled bushes, and with the bees,
also, notwithstanding the disparity in size. They are fond of all good
things, and enjoy them to the utmost, with but little troublesome
discrimination—flowers and leaves as well as berries, and the bees
themselves as well as their honey. Though the California bears have as
yet had but little experience with honeybees, they often succeed in
reaching their bountiful stores, and it seems doubtful whether bees
themselves enjoy honey with so great a relish. By means of their
powerful teeth and claws they can gnaw and tear open almost any hive
conveniently accessible. Most honey-bees, however, in search of a home
are wise enough to make choice of a hollow in a living tree, a
considerable distance above the ground, when such places are to be had;
then they are pretty secure, for though the smaller black and brown
bears climb well, they are unable to break into strong hives while
compelled to exert themselves to keep from falling, and at the same
time to endure the stings of the fighting bees without having their
paws free to rub them off. But woe to the black bumblebees discovered
in their mossy nests in the ground! With a few strokes of their huge
paws the bears uncover the entire establishment, and, before time is
given for a general buzz, bees old and young, larvae, honey, stings,
nest, and all are taken in one ravishing mouthful.
Not the least influential of the agents concerned in the superior
sweetness of the Shasta flora are its storms—storms I mean that are
strictly local, bred and born on the mountain. The magical rapidity
with which they are grown on the mountain-top, and bestow their charity
in rain and snow, never fails to astonish the inexperienced lowlander.
Often in calm, glowing days, while the bees are still on the wing, a
storm-cloud may be seen far above in the pure ether, swelling its pearl
bosses, and growing silently, like a plant. Presently a clear, ringing
discharge of thunder is heard, followed by a rush of wind that comes
sounding over the bending woods like the roar of the ocean, mingling
raindrops, snow-flowers, honey-flowers, and bees in wild storm harmony.
Still more impressive are the warm, reviving days of spring in the
mountain pastures. The blood of the plants throbbing beneath the
life-giving sunshine seems to be heard and felt. Plant growth goes on
before our eyes, and every tree in the woods, and every bush and flower
is seen as a hive of restless industry. The deeps of the sky are
mottled with singing wings of every tone and color; clouds of brilliant
chrysididae dancing and swirling in exquisite rhythm, golden-barred
vespidae, dragon-flies, butterflies, grating cicadas, and jolly,
rattling grasshoppers, fairly enameling the light.
[Illustration: IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.—WHITE SAGE.]
On bright, crisp mornings a striking optical effect may frequently be
observed from the shadows of the higher mountains while the sunbeams
are pouring past overhead. Then every insect, no matter what may be its
own proper color, burns white in the light. Gauzy-winged hymenoptera,
moths, jet-black beetles, all are transfigured alike in pure, spiritual
white, like snowflakes.
In Southern California, where bee-culture has had so much skilful
attention of late years, the pasturage is not more abundant, or more
advantageously varied as to the number of its honey-plants and their
distribution over mountain and plain, than that of many other portions
of the State where the industrial currents flow in other channels. The
famous White Sage (_Audibertia_), belonging to the mint family,
flourishes here in all its glory, blooming in May, and yielding great
quantities of clear, pale honey, which is greatly prized in every
market it has yet reached. This species grows chiefly in the valleys
and low hills. The Black Sage on the mountains is part of a dense,
thorny chaparral, which is composed chiefly of adenostoma, ceanothus,
manzanita, and cherry—not differing greatly from that of the southern
portion of the Sierra, but more dense and continuous, and taller, and
remaining longer in bloom. Stream-side gardens, so charming a feature
of both the Sierra and Coast Mountains, are less numerous in Southern
California, but they are exceedingly rich in honey-flowers, wherever
found,—melilotus, columbine, collinsia, verbena, zauschneria, wild
rose, honeysuckle, philadelphus, and lilies rising from the warm, moist
dells in a very storm of exuberance. Wild buckwheat of many species is
developed in abundance over the dry, sandy valleys and lower slopes of
the mountains, toward the end of summer, and is, at this time, the main
dependence of the bees, reinforced here and there by orange groves,
alfalfa fields, and small home gardens.
The main honey months, in ordinary seasons, are April, May, June, July,
and August; while the other months are usually flowery enough to yield
sufficient for the bees.
According to Mr. J.T. Gordon, President of the Los Angeles County
Bee-keepers’ Association, the first bees introduced into the county
were a single hive, which cost $150 in San Francisco, and arrived in
September, 1854.[1] In April, of the following year, this hive sent out
two swarms, which were sold for $100 each. From this small beginning
the bees gradually multiplied to about 3000 swarms in the year 1873. In
1876 it was estimated that there were between 15,000 and 20,000 hives
in the county, producing an annual yield of about 100 pounds to the
hive—in some exceptional cases, a much greater yield.
In San Diego County, at the beginning of the season of 1878, there were
about 24,000 hives, and the shipments from the one port of San Diego
for the same year, from July 17 to November 10, were 1071 barrels,
15,544 cases, and nearly 90 tons. The largest bee-ranches have about a
thousand hives, and are carefully and skilfully managed, every
scientific appliance of merit being brought into use. There are few
bee-keepers, however, who own half as many as this, or who give their
undivided attention to the business. Orange culture, at present, is
heavily overshadowing every other business.
A good many of the so-called bee-ranches of Los Angeles and San Diego
counties are still of the rudest pioneer kind imaginable. A man
unsuccessful in everything else hears the interesting story of the
profits and comforts of bee-keeping, and concludes to try it; he buys a
few colonies, or gets them, from some overstocked ranch on shares,
takes them back to the foot of some cañon, where the pasturage is
fresh, squats on the land, with, or without, the permission of the
owner, sets up his hives, makes a box-cabin for himself, scarcely
bigger than a bee-hive, and awaits his fortune.
Bees suffer sadly from famine during the dry years which occasionally
occur in the southern and middle portions of the State. If the rainfall
amounts only to three or four inches, instead of from twelve to twenty,
as in ordinary seasons, then sheep and cattle die in thousands, and so
do these small, winged cattle, unless they are carefully fed, or
removed to other pastures. The year 1877 will long be remembered as
exceptionally rainless and distressing. Scarcely a flower bloomed on
the dry valleys away from the stream-sides, and not a single
grain-field depending upon rain was reaped. The seed only sprouted,
came up a little way, and withered. Horses, cattle, and sheep grew
thinner day by day, nibbling at bushes and weeds, along the shallowing
edges of streams, many of which were dried up altogether, for the first
time since the settlement of the country.
[Illustration: A BEE-RANCH ON A SPUR OF THE SAN GABRIEL RANGE.
CARDINAL FLOWER.]
In the course of a trip I made during the summer of that year through
Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles
counties, the deplorable effects of the drought were everywhere
visible—leafless fields, dead and dying cattle, dead bees, and
half-dead people with dusty, doleful faces. Even the birds and
squirrels were in distress, though their suffering was less painfully
apparent than that of the poor cattle. These were falling one by one in
slow, sure starvation along the banks of the hot, sluggish streams,
while thousands of buzzards correspondingly fat were sailing above
them, or standing gorged on the ground beneath the trees, waiting with
easy faith for fresh carcasses. The quails, prudently considering the
hard times, abandoned all thought of pairing. They were too poor to
marry, and so continued in flocks all through the year without
attempting to rear young. The ground-squirrels, though an exceptionally
industrious and enterprising race, as every farmer knows, were hard
pushed for a living; not a fresh leaf or seed was to be found save in
the trees, whose bossy masses of dark green foliage presented a
striking contrast to the ashen baldness of the ground beneath them. The
squirrels, leaving their accustomed feeding-grounds, betook themselves
to the leafy oaks to gnaw out the acorn stores of the provident
woodpeckers, but the latter kept up a vigilant watch upon their
movements. I noticed four woodpeckers in league against one squirrel,
driving the poor fellow out of an oak that they claimed. He dodged
round the knotty trunk from side to side, as nimbly as he could in his
famished condition, only to find a sharp bill everywhere. But the fate
of the bees that year seemed the saddest of all. In different portions
of Los Angeles and San Diego counties, from one half to three fourths
of them died of sheer starvation. Not less than 18,000 colonies
perished in these two counties alone, while in the adjacent counties
the death-rate was hardly less.
[Illustration: WILD BUCKWHEAT.—A BEE RANCH IN THE WILDERNESS.]
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. The Santa Lucia, San
Rafael, San Gabriel, San Jacinto, and San Bernardino ranges are almost
untouched as yet save by the wild bees. Some idea of their resources,
and of the advantages and disadvantages they offer to bee-keepers, may
be formed from an excursion that I made into the San Gabriel Range
about the beginning of August of “the dry year.” This range, containing
most of the characteristic features of the other ranges just mentioned,
overlooks the Los Angeles vineyards and orange groves from the north,
and is more rigidly inaccessible in the ordinary meaning of the word
than any other that I ever attempted to penetrate. The slopes are
exceptionally steep and insecure to the foot, and they are covered with
thorny bushes from five to ten feet high. With the exception of little
spots not visible in general views, the entire surface is covered with
them, massed in close hedge growth, sweeping gracefully down into every
gorge and hollow, and swelling over every ridge and summit in shaggy,
ungovernable exuberance, offering more honey to the acre for half the
year than the most crowded clover-field. But when beheld from the open
San Gabriel Valley, beaten with dry sunshine, all that was seen of the
range seemed to wear a forbidding aspect. From base to summit all
seemed gray, barren, silent, its glorious chaparral appearing like dry
moss creeping over its dull, wrinkled ridges and hollows.
Setting out from Pasadena, I reached the foot of the range about
sundown; and being weary and heated with my walk across the shadeless
valley, concluded to camp for the night. After resting a few moments, I
began to look about among the flood-boulders of Eaton Creek for a
camp-ground, when I came upon a strange, dark-looking man who had been
chopping cord-wood. He seemed surprised at seeing me, so I sat down
with him on the live-oak log he had been cutting, and made haste to
give a reason for my appearance in his solitude, explaining that I was
anxious to find out something about the mountains, and meant to make my
way up Eaton Creek next morning. Then he kindly invited me to camp with
him, and led me to his little cabin, situated at the foot of the
mountains, where a small spring oozes out of a bank overgrown with
wild-rose bushes. After supper, when the daylight was gone, he
explained that he was out of candles; so we sat in the dark, while he
gave me a sketch of his life in a mixture of Spanish and English. He
was born in Mexico, his father Irish, his mother Spanish. He had been a
miner, rancher, prospector, hunter, etc., rambling always, and wearing
his life away in mere waste; but now he was going to settle down. His
past life, he said, was of “no account,” but the future was promising.
He was going to “make money and marry a Spanish woman.” People mine
here for water as for gold. He had been running a tunnel into a spur of
the mountain back of his cabin. “My prospect is good,” he said, “and if
I chance to strike a good, strong flow, I’ll soon be worth $5000 or
$10,000. For that flat out there,” referring to a small, irregular
patch of bouldery detritus, two or three acres in size, that had been
deposited by Eaton Creek during some flood season,—“that flat is large
enough for a nice orange-grove, and the bank behind the cabin will do
for a vineyard, and after watering my own trees and vines I will have
some water left to sell to my neighbors below me, down the valley. And
then,” he continued, “I can keep bees, and make money that way, too,
for the mountains above here are just full of honey in the summer-time,
and one of my neighbors down here says that he will let me have a whole
lot of hives, on shares, to start with. You see I’ve a good thing; I’m
all right now.” All this prospective affluence in the sunken,
boulder-choked flood-bed of a mountain-stream! Leaving the bees out of
the count, most fortune-seekers would as soon think of settling on the
summit of Mount Shasta. Next morning, wishing my hopeful entertainer
good luck, I set out on my shaggy excursion.
[Illustration: A BEE-PASTURE ON THE MORAINE DESERT, SPANISH BAYONET.]
About half an hour’s walk above the cabin, I came to “The Fall,” famous
throughout the valley settlements as the finest yet discovered in the
San Gabriel Mountains. It is a charming little thing, with a low, sweet
voice, singing like a bird, as it pours from a notch in a short ledge,
some thirty-five or forty feet into a round mirror-pool. The face of
the cliff back of it, and on both sides, is smoothly covered and
embossed with mosses, against which the white water shines out in showy
relief, like a silver instrument in a velvet case. Hither come the San
Gabriel lads and lassies, to gather ferns and dabble away their hot
holidays in the cool water, glad to escape from their commonplace
palm-gardens and orange-groves. The delicate maidenhair grows on
fissured rocks within reach of the spray, while broad-leaved maples and
sycamores cast soft, mellow shade over a rich profusion of bee-flowers,
growing among boulders in front of the pool—the fall, the flowers, the
bees, the ferny rocks, and leafy shade forming a charming little poem
of wildness, the last of a series extending down the flowery slopes of
Mount San Antonio through the rugged, foam-beaten bosses of the main
Eaton Canon.
From the base of the fall I followed the ridge that forms the western
rim of the Eaton basin to the summit of one of the principal peaks,
which is about 5000 feet above sea-level. Then, turning eastward, I
crossed the middle of the basin, forcing a way over its many
subordinate ridges and across its eastern rim, having to contend almost
everywhere with the floweriest and most impenetrable growth of
honey-bushes I had ever encountered since first my mountaineering
began. Most of the Shasta chaparral is leafy nearly to the ground; here
the main stems are naked for three or four feet, and interspiked with
dead twigs, forming a stiff _chevaux de frise_ through which even the
bears make their way with difficulty. I was compelled to creep for
miles on all fours, and in following the bear-trails often found tufts
of hair on the bushes where they had forced themselves through.
For 100 feet or so above the fall the ascent was made possible only by
tough cushions of club-moss that clung to the rock. Above this the
ridge weathers away to a thin knife-blade for a few hundred yards, and
thence to the summit of the range it carries a bristly mane of
chaparral. Here and there small openings occur on rocky places,
commanding fine views across the cultivated valley to the ocean. These
I found by the tracks were favorite outlooks and resting-places for the
wild animals—bears, wolves, foxes, wildcats, etc.—which abound here,
and would have to be taken into account in the establishment of
bee-ranches. In the deepest thickets I found wood-rat villages—groups
of huts four to six feet high, built of sticks and leaves in rough,
tapering piles, like musk-rat cabins. I noticed a good many bees, too,
most of them wild. The tame honey-bees seemed languid and wing-weary,
as if they had come all the way up from the flowerless valley.
After reaching the summit I had time to make only a hasty survey of the
basin, now glowing in the sunset gold, before hastening down into one
of the tributary cañons in search, of water. Emerging from a
particularly tedious breadth of chaparral, I found myself free and
erect in a beautiful park-like grove of Mountain Live Oak, where the
ground was planted with aspidiums and brier-roses, while the glossy
foliage made a close canopy overhead, leaving the gray dividing trunks
bare to show the beauty of their interlacing arches. The bottom of the
cañon was dry where I first reached it, but a bunch of scarlet mimulus
indicated water at no great distance, and I soon discovered about a
bucketful in a hollow of the rock. This, however, was full of dead
bees, wasps, beetles, and leaves, well steeped and simmered, and would,
therefore, require boiling and filtering through fresh charcoal before
it could be made available. Tracing the dry channel about a mile
farther down to its junction with a larger tributary cañon, I at length
discovered a lot of boulder pools, clear as crystal, brimming full, and
linked together by glistening streamlets just strong enough to sing
audibly. Flowers in full bloom adorned their margins, lilies ten feet
high, larkspur, columbines, and luxuriant ferns, leaning and
overarching in lavish abundance, while a noble old Live Oak spread its
rugged arms over all. Here I camped, making my bed on smooth
cobblestones.
[Illustration: A BEE-KEEPER’S CABIN.—BURRIELIA (ABOVE).—MADIA (BELOW).]
Next day, in the channel of a tributary that heads on Mount San
Antonio, I passed about fifteen or twenty gardens like the one in which
I slept—lilies in every one of them, in the full pomp of bloom. My
third camp was made near the middle of the general basin, at the head
of a long system of cascades from ten to 200 feet high, one following
the other in close succession down a rocky, inaccessible cañon, making
a total descent of nearly 1700 feet. Above the cascades the main stream
passes through a series of open, sunny levels, the largest of which are
about an acre in size, where the wild bees and their companions were
feasting on a showy growth of zauschneria, painted cups, and
monardella; and gray squirrels were busy harvesting the burs of the
Douglas Spruce, the only conifer I met in the basin.
The eastern slopes of the basin are in every way similar to those we
have described, and the same may be said of other portions of the
range. From the highest summit, far as the eye could reach, the
landscape was one vast bee-pasture, a rolling wilderness of
honey-bloom, scarcely broken by bits of forest or the rocky outcrops of
hilltops and ridges.
Behind the San Bernardino Range lies the wild “sage-brush country,”
bounded on the east by the Colorado River, and extending in a general
northerly direction to Nevada and along the eastern base of the Sierra
beyond Mono Lake.
The greater portion of this immense region, including Owen’s Valley,
Death Valley, and the Sink of the Mohave, the area of which is nearly
one fifth that of the entire State, is usually regarded as a desert,
not because of any lack in the soil, but for want of rain, and rivers
available for irrigation. Very little of it, however, is desert in the
eyes of a bee.
Looking now over all the available pastures of California, it appears
that the business of beekeeping is still in its infancy. Even in the
more enterprising of the southern counties, where so vigorous a
beginning has been made, less than a tenth of their honey resources
have as yet been developed; while in the Great Plain, the Coast Ranges,
the Sierra Nevada, and the northern region about Mount Shasta, the
business can hardly be said to exist at all. What the limits of its
developments in the future may be, with the advantages of cheaper
transportation and the invention of better methods in general, it is
not easy to guess. Nor, on the other hand, are we able to measure the
influence on bee interests likely to follow the destruction of the
forests, now rapidly falling before fire and the ax. As to the sheep
evil, that can hardly become greater than it is at the present day. In
short, notwithstanding the wide-spread deterioration and destruction of
every kind already effected, California, with her incomparable climate
and flora, is still, as far as I know, the best of all the bee-lands of
the world.
[1] Fifteen hives of Italian bees were introduced into Los Angeles
County in 1855, and in 1876 they had increased to 500. The marked
superiority claimed for them over the common species is now attracting
considerable attention.