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Bee-Culture at Present: Shasta
Muir tells us that the honey-bee is now found wild throughout the Sierra, swarms having escaped from their owners in the lowlands and taken possession of hollow trees even higher than eight thousand feet above sea-level. Bee-Culture at Present One cannot wonder that the honey-bees have occupied the Sierra after reading Muir's beautiful tribute to Mount Shasta: - "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."
Bravo! bravo! noble Shasta, Hybla and Hymettus were mere hillocks compared to thee. But they will live on, saved from oblivion by the glory of ancient Greece, a more lasting promise of immortality than thy broad flowery zones, It is in southern California, however, that bee-culture has received most attention.
From one hive taken to Los Angeles County in 1854 the industry grew to between fifteen thousand and twenty thousand hives in 1876. All over the United States bee-culture has received a wonderful impetus which within fifty years has given it a place in the sum of the nation's wealth.