California GArden Archives

Growing Grounds from California Garden

© SAN DIEGO FLORAL ASSOCIATION

These stories may not be published in any form or copied onto another media without written permission from San Diego Floral Association.

Reprinted From: September/October 2023 Volume 114 No. 5

John Stewart Harbison: King of the Beekeepers

By John Blocker 

On particularly fortunate days earlier in my career, my professional duties called for me to travel from Interstate 8 below Alpine down Harbison Canyon Road into the Sweetwater River gorge. I enjoyed the ride through the deep, dry canyon with its rustic houses and rural atmosphere. At the time, the now-closed Swallows nudist camp was the most legendary establishment in the gorge. 

I later learned some significant history of that area. In 1869 John Stewart Harbison set up his apiary headquarters in this canyon. His beekeeping enterprises became so celebrated that the canyon was named in his honor. He was the major force in transforming San Diego County into the largest honey-producing county in California. He also reigned as the largest honey producer in the world. 

Harbison was born in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, on September 29, 1826. He had two brothers—William being older and Andrew younger. Their father was a nurseryman and beekeeper. John Harbison followed his father into both trades. An inventor and innovator as well as entrepreneur, Harbison repeatedly found ways to transform his ideas into money-making enterprises. 

Photos: San Diego History Center

In 1854, when a serious drought wreaked havoc on his bees in Pennsylvania, Harbison decided to try his luck in California’s gold fields. After a short stint mining gold, he wrote east for seeds and young fruit trees. In February 1855 he opened a nursery on Jefferson Lake in Sutterville and must have done considerable business as his freight bills for 1855 and 1856 totaled $8,600. Although his nursery was not the first in Sacramento, his trees were some of the earliest planted in the area.

In 1857 Harbison returned to his family farm in Pennsylvania to prepare beehives for shipment to California. At the beginning of summer, he set out 67 small-boxed hives he had designed and built. He let the hives fill with honey over the summer months. He called his new creation the California Hive, but the design became so popular it would later be known as the Harbison Hive. Because the boxes were small, they shipped at half the cost of a standard-sized hive. 

In the fall Harbison sealed the hives, created a screened porch on one side of each box to keep the bees from getting too hot, and set sail with the bees from New York on the steamer “Northern Light.” In Sacramento, he sold the first 16 of these colonies for $100 each. The rest he divided, creating 120 colonies of which he sold all but three. On this venture he grossed $13,000.

The next year he returned to Pennsylvania and brought 23 more boxes full of bees to Sacramento. From his home in Illinois, his brother Andrew shipped him 34 boxes. By the fall, John Harbison had divided these boxes into 422 colonies. He sold 284 of these for $100 each, raising $28,400.

When word got out Harbison had made nearly $30,000 selling bees, other city residents began importing hives. Colonies began arriving in Sacramento in large numbers. The newspapers called it “bee fever.” The bee bubble burst, and hives soon sold for only four dollars each. 

By 1869 Harbison maintained 2,000 colonies in the Sacramento area. Most fulltime beekeepers managed about 200 hives during this period. Harbison also operated an ornamental tree nursery specializing in locust and Lombardy poplars. At the same time, he was trying to produce silk by growing silkworms on mulberry leaves with partner R. G. Clark. The silk venture failed. 

San Diego Honey Bees

Clark then learned that bees on the Pardee Ranch in Lakeside in Southern California were producing a fine white honey. Clark entered a partnership with Harbison that by agreement lasted four years—Harbison supplying Clark with bees and Clark bringing the hives to San Diego County. The two split the honey produced and any additional hives created. Clark spent his first year determining that the main floral sources in San Diego back country for fine white honey were black sage(Salvia mellifera) and white sage (Salvia apiana). Harbison and Clark sold over 300 hives at twenty dollars each to local farmers during this period. Almost every farmer and many homeowners in the county now produced honey. After their partnership ended, Clark stayed in San Diego County. In 1882 he grew the first raisin crop in the El Cajon Valley. Raisins continued to be produced in El Cajon and Escondido until the beginning of World War II.

By 1873 beekeeping had become a major industry in San Diego County. The back country was soon populated by beekeepers seeking sites with abundant black sage and/or white sage to locate their apiaries. Two sawmills kept sawyers busy producing hives, frames, and shipping boxes for the new industry. Beekeepers in San Diego County harvested more than a half million pounds of honey. California, as a state, produced more honey than it could use. To sell the excess honey from San Diego, Harbison loaded a steamship destined for San Francisco with 21,000 pounds of comb honey. On arrival the honey was loaded onto a freight car headed to Chicago. There, the honey sold for 27 cents per pound, grossing $5,670. Harbison was the first person to use the railroad to ship large lots of honey east from California.

Harbison Relocates to San Diego

In 1875 Harbison moved from Sacramento with his wife, Mary. They settled on a homestead 23 miles from downtown San Diego in the canyon now known as Harbison Canyon. He managed over 2,000 hives in San Diego County. The next year, he built a fashionable two-story home at 12th and C Streets in San Diego City proper where he and his wife lived for the rest of their lives. 

In 1876 Harbison sent 25 carloads of comb honey east, with ten carloads destined for New York City. All the honey was shipped under the Harbison label, although he did not produce all of it. The arrival of over 100 tons of fine, white-sage honey to Eastern markets brought favorable publicity to both Harbison and San Diego County. Over the following years he sent more than 100 carloads eastward.

In San Diego, Harbison employed 15 men and had apiaries in 12 locations spread from Fallbrook to the Mexican border. In 1884 San Diego County produced more than two million pounds of honey. The rest of the state produced around seven and one-half million pounds all together. Harbison was the largest producer of honey in the world. At the height of his bee business, he was crowned by the press as well as by members of the bee industry with the fitting title, “King of the Beekeepers.”

Harbison also ventured into other businesses. He bought real estate, planted orchards, and operated a wholesale produce business—but he always maintained bees. When he died on October 12, 1912, at age 86, he was still maintaining 100 hives. 

Harbison House in San Diego.
Photo: Alpine Historical Society

© SAN DIEGO FLORAL ASSOCIATION and © John Blocker.
These stories may not be published in any form or copied onto another media without written permission from San Diego Floral Association.