Behind the San Bernardino Range lies the wild "sage-brush country,"
bounded on the east by the Colorado River, and extending in a general
northerly direction to Nevada and along the eastern base of the Sierra
beyond Mono Lake.
The greater portion of this immense region, including Owen's Valley,
Death Valley, and the Sink of the Mohave, the area of which is nearly
one fifth that of the entire State, is usually regarded as a desert, not
because of any lack in the soil, but for want of rain, and rivers
available for irrigation. Very little of it, however, is desert in the
eyes of a bee.
Looking now over all the available pastures of California, it appears
that the business of beekeeping is still in its infancy. Even in the
more enterprising of the southern counties, where so vigorous a
beginning has been made, less than a tenth of their honey resources have
as yet been developed; while in the Great Plain, the Coast Ranges, the
Sierra Nevada, and the northern region about Mount Shasta, the business
can hardly be said to exist at all. What the limits of its developments
in the future may be, with the advantages of cheaper transportation and
the invention of better methods in general, it is not easy to guess.
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