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Show --. A LAND OF HONEY. WIh-i Itusy Ilee" I'lml a Mint Concenlul lfm S.N FRAN'risco, a feature ff Ho'.uliern California most Kurprisimf to ino is the honey industry. Strie thereof, which sound like the wildest ex-Hi'u'evat ex-Hi'u'evat ion. nro told in almost every lev ! cality of that part of tint , ate. If they i veto not so amply corroborated one would lie justified in placing theiu in the ; category of fish and snake yarns, but as ( it is the stranger cannot but marvel at what ho sees and hears of in tho honey j line. It is. of conr.se, well known that Southern California in general, and San Diego county in particular, is tho center or the Honey ministry in tins country. ! This is easily understood when one remembers that it is a land of perpetual per-petual flowers, in which bees can work nil tho year round, and have no occasion to lay up in their hives from four to sis tiiontlisofthoyoartoe.it up the product prod-uct of their summer's work. But that tho bees should so overrun tho country tis to almost render themselves nuisances I was not prepared to believe. During n casual conversation at Log Angeles, in which tho subject of bees came up, I was told of an incident .which excited my interest in the question, and I made it a point to bring up the subject in each town Hubseiiuently vi.-iled. At a village near Lo Angeles, when carpenters went to overhaul the school-house school-house after tho vacation, they found tho doors to the cloak rooms apparently hermetically her-metically Mealed. They Ruceeeiled after an effort in prying open the doors, and found f ho cloak rooms literally packed full of honey, colonies of bees having settled in the rooms during the vacation. My informant did not know how much honey was taken from tho peculiarly located lo-cated colonies, but aid two pailfuls fell to his share in tho distribution. At Riverside I was shown a church, in the steeple" of which bees had colonized, and nearly a ton of honey rewarded the daring of the man who took tho job of ridding tho church of its unwelcome tenants. It is not uncommon for bees to settle aown to tho task of filling the spaces be-t be-t ween tho walls of residences with honey, and an open attic window but invites wandering swarms of bees to locate therein. They settle down to business in vine-yard.sand vine-yard.sand literally burden thejihort stocks of vines with great sheets of honeycomb in the open air. In every cavity in .tho scrub oaks and other scattering tree they take up their abode, and in the foothills foot-hills the caves and gopher holes invite Kfraying colonies to set up in business. It mxins that they accumulate more rapidly rap-idly than the farmers care to have them, and in such cases many young colonies nra permitted to swram and depart in search of a home without any effort to prevent them leaving. Many extensive bee ranches are to be found on every hand, nnd a vast amount of honey is annually put on tho markets from this region. At Santa Anna I shipped home a case of the purest and riclio: t honey I ever tasted, produced on the ranch of Mine. Modjeska, who owns a large place a short distance from that .,fn mill irliih.ii vi.-.-imna fv,, Im 1...JI town, and whoso revenue from ner bees : alone is ample to keep the wolf from her door without her ever again appearing I behind the f'ootliglits. j I Comb honey brings the highest prices, j but I am told that tiiero is more clear money iu strained honey at even less i thau half tho price of comb, because of ! the added expense and labor necessary ! to obtain the perfect comb product. Greater care is necessary in the hives, ! the little squares of which have to ba measured with precision as to weight when filled in order to make the comb ' perfect nnd ready to be transferred from the hivo to tho shelf of the grocer and I thence to the table of tho epicure without with-out being touched. Empty goods boxes and barrels set upside down are good cnoiu;h for hives, and will be filled with equally pure honey, but not in such shape as to be handled in the comb without with-out breaking and runninjr out. It makes no difference how roughly it may ba handled when it is to bo strained, hence strained honey may be readily bought at first hand at from three to five cents a pound. Four cents may be considered an average price to the producer, and at that figure a good profit may bo realized. To my surprise, for I had wondered what on earth it was made for, the omnipresent om-nipresent white sjijij brush of these im-meiuie im-meiuie stretches of ver Jureless and waterless water-less prairies produces tho best honey. Whitosnge honey is almost as translucent and pure as water, aud has a peculiarly delicate flavor. To get tho best resuits from bees, even in this region whoro they thrive so abundantly, requires intelligent care in providing them with tho proper kinds of "forage." Cerium blossoms, it seems, carry offensive flavors into tho honey, mil if one tM-eks quantity alone rathr than quality it is an easy matter to induce in-duce the bees, unconsciously to themselves, them-selves, to adulterate their product. Com'.- cheap brown sugar or glucose placed near to hives will be rapidly transferred to the ci ib by the bees. They have no secret chemical laboratory labora-tory in which to change tue nature ot the baser subtiiute into real honey, so that the fact that you buy honey in the comb is no guarantee that it is not adulterated. adul-terated. But I did not learn of any extensive ex-tensive doctoring of the natural product of flowers during my brief and superficial super-ficial study of thu question in southern California. W. G. Bextos. |