Borodino, N. Y.
Bees in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Written for the American Bee Journal
BY S. L. WATKINS.
The honey season, the past year, was above the average, and bees have paid well. The last, two or three seasons I have not kept so many bees as I formerly did. I took up a piece of land here in the upper Sierras, and have been improving it. I have started in the nursery business, and I find that this goes splendidly with the bee-business. From now on, I shall increase my bees up, and go into the business extensively again. I shall place all my hives in a straight row, and build a car track behind them, and I can easily run all my honey into the extracting house. This will facilitate things greatly. The past summer I had my hives set on stumps, and I tell you it was a job to carry the combs to the house where I extracted.
Some will ask, why I kept my bees on stumps. Well, I had no other place to put them. This country is heavily timbered with yellow pine, sugar pine, incense cedar, cypress, spruce, fir, madrona, oaks, etc.; and it is extremely hard to clean, but after the land is once cleaned, it is very valuable.
Land that was one year ago covered with pine stumps, is now covered with strawberry plants, fruit trees, and ornamental plants, and they look splendidly, too. It took an immense amount of work, but it pays well.