According to Mr. J.T.  Gordon, President of the Los Angeles County Bee-keepers’ Association, the first bees introduced into the county were a single hive, which cost $150 in San Francisco, and arrived in September, 1854.[1] In April, of the following year, this hive sent out two swarms, which were sold for $100 each.  From this small beginning the bees gradually multiplied to about 3000 swarms in the year 1873.  In 1876 it was estimated that there were between 15,000 and 20,000 hives in the county, producing an annual yield of about 100 pounds to the hive—­in some exceptional cases, a much greater yield.

In San Diego County, at the beginning of the season of 1878, there were about 24,000 hives, and the shipments from the one port of San Diego for the same year, from July 17 to November 10, were 1071 barrels, 15,544 cases, and nearly 90 tons.  The largest bee-ranches have about a thousand hives, and are carefully and skilfully managed, every scientific appliance of merit being brought into use.  There are few bee-keepers, however, who own half as many as this, or who give their undivided attention to the business.  Orange culture, at present, is heavily overshadowing every other business.

A good many of the so-called bee-ranches of Los Angeles and San Diego counties are still of the rudest pioneer kind imaginable.  A man unsuccessful in everything else hears the interesting story of the profits and comforts of bee-keeping, and concludes to try it; he buys a few colonies, or gets them, from some overstocked ranch on shares, takes them back to the foot of some canon, where the pasturage is fresh, squats on the land, with, or without, the permission of the owner, sets up his hives, makes a box-cabin for himself, scarcely bigger than a bee-hive, and awaits his fortune.

Bees suffer sadly from famine during the dry years which occasionally occur in the southern and middle portions of the State.  If the rainfall amounts only to three or four inches, instead of from twelve to twenty, as in ordinary seasons, then sheep and cattle die in thousands, and so do these small, winged cattle, unless they are carefully fed, or removed to other pastures.  The year 1877 will long be remembered as exceptionally rainless and distressing.  Scarcely a flower bloomed on the dry valleys away from the stream-sides, and not a single grain-field depending upon rain was reaped.  The seed only sprouted, came up a little way, and withered.  Horses, cattle, and sheep grew thinner day by day, nibbling at bushes and weeds, along the shallowing edges of streams, many of which were dried up altogether, for the first time since the settlement of the country.

[Illustration:  A BEE-RANCH ON A SPUR OF THE SAN GABRIEL RANGE.  CARDINAL FLOWER.]