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Bee-Culture at Present: Greeks

Columella tells us that the Greeks, too, took their bees in search of honey, wandering from Achaia as far as Attica for the purpose.

Bees were also conveyed from Eubœa and the Cyclad Islands to Syrus, and to Hybla from other parts of Sicily. Huish says:- "It is the custom of the modern Greeks who inhabit the coast of Asia Minor, towards the islands of the Archipelago, to transport their hives by sea in order to procure an abundance of food for their bees." Urquhart, in his "Spirit of the Orient," tells us that upon the shores of Thessaly the bees are carried about by boats, to gather honey wherever flowers are abundant.

From Kohl's "Southern Russia " we learn that the Armenians on the steppes of the Black Sea wander about like nomads with their bee-hives, pitching their tents in flowery places and placing the hives in a long line until the honey of that region has all been gathered, and that sometimes there will be as many as a thousand hives together.

In Spain the bees are carried from place to place on the backs of mules, while in Palestine, where modern bee-keep- Bee-Culture at Present ing has been introduced strange to say from America, "Some the transportation is yet more unique. Five brothers there owned 350 stocks of bees that yielded them 26,000 pounds of honey during the season of 1885. 12,000 pounds of this were furnished in April by the orange groves at Jaffa, and the wild thyme on the hills about Bethlehem gave the remainder, during July. The transportation of the stocks is effected at night on the backs of camels, sixteen in a load. Attendants and camels rest during the day while the bees fly, and when night approaches 'they fold their tents like the Arabs and silently steal away.' What a sight to see more than twenty of these ships of the desert, with their living burdens, filing over the Judean hills! Natives and foreigners in the Holy Land have made big eyes over the new business which has come from over the ocean - even from young America." One should think they might! In Germany bees are taken to the blooming rape fields, and the people of La Beauce, France, take their hives every August in carts to a distance of about ten miles, where they find heath or buckwheat in flower, the sainfoin and vetches of their own district yielding no further supplies. The people call this transporting of the bees "leading them to pasture."

They travel by night at a slow pace over the easiest roads they can find, each cart containing thirty or forty hives. They remain about two months in a place of pasturage in little villages containing sometimes as many as three thousand hives.

Sometimes the hives are moved several times in a season, going from one place to another, where certain flowers bloom abundantly at different seasons.

In Scotland the bees are carried in carts to the Highlands, to gather honey from the heather when the nectar of the Lowlands has been exhausted, According to Burroughs, "Bees will go three or four miles in quest of honey, but it is a great advantage to move the hive near the good pasturage, as has been the custom from the earliest times in the Old World. Some enterprising person, taking a hint perhaps from the ancient Egyptians, who had floating apiaries on the Nile, has tried the experiment of floating several hundred colonies north on the Mississippi, starting from New Orleans and following the opening season up, thus realizing a sort of perpetual May or June, the chief attraction being the blossoms of the river willow, which yield honey of rare excellence. Some of the bees were no doubt left behind, but the amount of virgin honey secured must have been very great. In September they should have begun the return trip, following the retreating summer south." To-day the bee-keepers of California follow the flowers up the mountain sides or over the plains, a bee-keeper sometimes transporting his hives a hundred miles in a season. When sage is in bloom the provident bee-keeper takes his charges to the chaparral, and when the great bean fields are blooming along the coast the bee-man appears with his hives, that the bees may store him a few tons of honey, which will vie in value with the returns the owners of the gardens get from the crops they raise, and for which they in part have to thank the bees, because of their valuable work in fertilization.