15 
Such work should be undertaken in experimental apiaries where its continuance 
when a single point has been gained will not be affected by the changes of indi- 
vidual fortunes. 
SPECIAL CROPS FOR HONEY ALONE NOT PROFITABLE. 
With a small apiary planting for honey alone certainly can not be 
made profitable. Small plats of honey-producing plants are valuable 
mainly because they afford an opportunity of observing when and under 
what circumstances the bees work on certain blossoms, and for the pur- 
pose of determining what might be depended upon to fill a gap in the 
honey resources of a given locality whenever the size of the apiary 
might make this a consideration of some importance. Even with a 
large apiary probably no case exists in which, in the present condition 
of the subject, planting for honey alone would prove profitable. But 
when selecting crops for cultivation for other purposes, or shrubs and 
trees for planting, the bee keeper should of course choose such as will 
also furnish honey at a time when pasturage for his bees would other- 
wise be wanting. 
As complete a list as possible should be made of the plants and trees 
visited by honey bees, and notes should be added as to period of blos- 
soming, importance of yield, whether honey or pollen or both of these 
are collected, quality of the product, etc. If gaps occur during which 
no natural forage abounds for the bees, some crop can usually be 
selected which will fill the interval, and, while supplying a continuous 
succession of honey-yielding blossoms for the bees, will give in addition 
a yield of fruit, grain, or forage from the same land. The novice is 
warned, however, not to expect too much from a small area. He must 
remember that as the bees commonly go 24 to 3 miles in all directions 
from the apiary they thus range over an area of 12,000 to 18,000 acres, 
and if but 1 square foot in 100 produces a honey-yielding plant they 
still have 120 to 180 acres of pasturage, and quite likely the equivalent 
of 30 to 40 acres may be in bloom at one time within range of the bees. 
A few acres more or less at such a time will therefore not make a great 
deal of difference. 
But if coming between the principal crops—especially if the bees, 
as is often the case, would otherwise have no pasturage at all—the 
area provided for them may be of greater relative importance than the 
larger area of natural pasturage; for it frequently occurs that the 
smaller part only of the honey produced by the field over which the 
bees of an apiary range can be collected by them before it is washed 
out by rains or the liquid portion is evaporated and the blossoms with- 
ered, while a smaller area may be more assiduously visited, and, the 
nectar being gathered as fast as secreted, a greater yield per acre may 
result. 
It is further of some importance to fill in such a gap with something 
to keep the bees busy, instead of letting them spend their time trying 
