The Sierra region is the largest of the three main divisions of the bee-lands of the State, and the most regularly varied in its subdivisions, owing to their gradual rise from the level of the Central Plain to the alpine summits.  The foot-hill region is about as dry and sunful, from the end of May until the setting in of the winter rains, as the plain.  There are no shady forests, no damp glens, at all like those lying at the same elevations in the Coast Mountains.  The social compositae of the plain, with a few added species, form the bulk of the herbaceous portion of the vegetation up to a height of 1500 feet or more, shaded lightly here and there with oaks and Sabine Pines, and interrupted by patches of ceanothus and buckeye.  Above this, and just below the forest region, there is a dark, heath-like belt of chaparral, composed almost exclusively of Adenostoma fasciculata, a bush belonging to the rose family, from five to eight feet high, with small, round leaves in fascicles, and bearing a multitude of small white flowers in panicles on the ends of the upper branches.  Where it occurs at all, it usually covers all the ground with a close, impenetrable growth, scarcely broken for miles.

Up through the forest region, to a height of about 9000 feet above sea-level, there are ragged patches of manzanita, and five or six species of ceanothus, called deer-brush or California lilac.  These are the most important of all the honey-bearing bushes of the Sierra. Chamaebatia foliolosa, a little shrub about a foot high, with flowers like the strawberry, makes handsome carpets beneath the pines, and seems to be a favorite with the bees; while pines themselves furnish unlimited quantities of pollen and honey-dew.  The product of a single tree, ripening its pollen at the right time of year, would be sufficient for the wants of a whole hive.  Along the streams there is a rich growth of lilies, larkspurs, pedicularis, castilleias, and clover.  The alpine region contains the flowery glacier meadows, and countless small gardens in all sorts of places full of potentilla of several species, spraguea, ivesia, epilobium, and goldenrod, with beds of bryanthus and the charming cassiope covered with sweet bells.  Even the tops of the mountains are blessed with flowers,—­dwarf phlox, polemonium, ribes, hulsea, etc.  I have seen wild bees and butterflies feeding at a height of 13,000 feet above the sea.  Many, however, that go up these dangerous heights never come down again.  Some, undoubtedly, perish in storms, and I have found thousands lying dead or benumbed on the surface of the glaciers, to which they had perhaps been attracted by the white glare, taking them for beds of bloom.

From swarms that escaped their owners in the lowlands, the honey-bee is now generally distributed throughout the whole length of the Sierra, up to an elevation of 8000 feet above sea-level.  At this height they flourish without care, though the snow every winter is deep.  Even higher than this several bee-trees have been cut which contained over 200 pounds of honey.