United States or Netherlands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
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.
Orange groves, peach orchards, prune orchards, wheat raising, lumbering, horse-farms; chicken-ranches, bee-ranches, sheep-breeding, seal-poaching, cod-fishing, salmon-canning each of these has held out the same glittering possibility. Even the humblest ventures have caught the prevailing tone of speculation.
Far up in the hollows can be seen the little white houses of the people who keep the bee-ranches. They live up so high because the flowers last longer there. The mountains form a semicircle on one side of the town; on the other is the beach.
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.
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.
Word Of The Day