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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 composita, 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 four hundred miles, your
foot would press about a hundred flowers at every step. Mints, gilias,
nemophilas, castilleias, and innumerable composita 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 foothills, 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 foothills 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 foothills, 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.
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 everyday 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 foothills 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 18. 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 rainstorm 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 45º or 50º.
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 water-courses
as suddenly as those of Nevada are flooded by the so- called "cloud-bursts."
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 composit.
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 sun- fling
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
composita3, 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 composit. 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 three thousand 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
composite 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 skillfully 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 foothills 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 kive,
which was found to contain more than two hundred 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-plough 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
plough 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 four thousand 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
red-wood walls of these little bee acres there is usually a fringe of
chestnut oak, laurel, and madroflo, 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 harmolly, 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,
spiraa, dogwood, 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 foothill 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 compositoe of the plain, with a few added species, form the bulk of
the herbaceous portion of the vegetation up to a height of fifteen hundred
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 nine thousand 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. Chamcobatiafoliolosa, 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 thirteen thousand
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 eight
thousand 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 two hundred 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, spiraa, 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 canons 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
bee-keepers.
The plough has not yet
invaded the forest region to any appreciable extent, neither has it
accomplished much in the foothills. Thousands of bee-ranches might be
established along the margin of the plain, and up to a height of four
thousand 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 foothill 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 heathy 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 five thousand 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 one thousand 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 huckle bloom, 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 honey bees, 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, larv, 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 chrysidida dancing and swirling in exquisite rhythm, golden-barred
vespithe, dragon-flies, butterflies, grating cicadas, and jolly, rattling
grasshoppers, fairly enameling the light.
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 skillful 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 one
hundred and fifty dollars in San Francisco, and arrived in September, 1854.
[Fifteen hives of Italian bees were introduced into Los Angeles County in
1855, and in 1876 they had increased to five hundred. The marked superiority
claimed for them over the common species is now attracting considerable
attention.
] In April, of the following
year, this hive sent out two swarms, which were sold for one hundred dollars
each. From this small beginning the bees gradually multiplied to about three
thousand swarms in the year 1873. In 1876 it was estimated that there were
between fifteen and twenty thousand hives in the county, producing an annual
yield of about one hundred 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 twenty-four thousand
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
ninety tons. The largest bee ranches have about a thousand hives, and are
carefully and skillfully 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 beekeeping, 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
beehive, 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.
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 eighteen thousand colonies perished in these two
counties alone, while in the adjacent counties the death-rate was hardly
less.
Even the colonies nearest to
the mountains suffered this year, for the smaller vegetation on the
foothills 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 beekeepers, 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 cordwood. 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 five or ten
thousand dollars. 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.
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 Cañon.
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 five thousand 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 one hundred 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 muskrat 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 canons 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 canon, 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.
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 two hundred feet
high, one following the other in close succession down a rocky, inaccessible
cañon, making a total descent of nearly seventeen hundred 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 "sagebrush 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
bee-keeping 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 axe. As to the sheep evil, that can
hardly become greater than it is at the present day. In short,
notwithstanding the widespread 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. |
