40 



Gleanings in Bee Culture 



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At Borodino, New York 



BEES IN THE MIDST OF BLOSSOMS. 



" I must move in the spring from where I 

 am now located, and wish to do the best pos- 

 sible with my bees. I should like to locate 

 from one to two miles from where the great- 

 est profusion of honey-producing flora 

 abounds. It will be quite an inconvenience 

 to me to be located in the midst of this 

 bloom; but if the income from the bees 

 would be enough greater to pay for that in- 

 convenience, then I might persuade myself 

 to locate there. Will you please tell us just 

 what you would do under these circum- 

 stances ? " 



"This is quite a reasonable question for 

 any one to ask who intends to locate an api- 

 ary, but who himself desires to be in a small 

 town or other place not right in the midst 

 of a good nectar-producing locality. A loca- 

 tion in a valley full of honey-producing 

 flora, together with rising hills on either 

 side, covered with all manner of nectar- 

 yielding flowers clear to their summit, two 

 to five miles away, would be an ideal loca- 

 tion for one who keeps bees for a living. 

 But as it is impossible for all to enjoy such 

 a location, and as other environments are 

 likely to have a bearing on the decision, 

 such as a convenient school for our children, 

 or a business for some of the family, it is 

 often best to accept the situation as it comes 

 to us. And I do not think that a distance 

 of one mile from any profusion of nectar- 

 producing flora would make difference 

 enough to be noticeable. I once heard the 

 claim at a bee-convention, that a colony of 

 bees which has to travel one or two miles 

 from home for their stores will soon become 

 so depopulated that the result in honey is 

 not half that stored by colonies set right 

 down in the midst of bloom. Another claim- 

 ed that the loss of time from the young field 

 bees in hunting for nectar one or two miles 

 from home is almost sufficient to turn suc- 

 cess into failure. Another, that it stands to 

 reason that less time is lost in getting the 

 whole force at work on the honey-producing 

 flowers where the latter are plentiful all 

 about the hives than if the pasture is one 

 or two miles away. 



"Probably no one can tell definitely about 

 these matters without testing a number of 

 colonies right in the midst of the blossoms, 

 and an equal number one or more miles 

 away, and repeating the test for a term of 

 years; and as I have never done this, I can 

 not be considered as an authority in this 

 matter. I can only give my experience, 

 which can be taken for what it is worth. All 

 of my experience goes to show that those 

 who argue that bees must be set right down 

 in the very center of the honey-producing 

 flora do this more from theory than from 

 actual knowledge. 1 am led to believe that 

 there would not be dilTerence enough in the 

 results, at the distance named, to pay for 

 moving the apiary up to tlie bloom during 



the time of the blooming of the flowers and 

 back again for the rest of the year. 



"The flight of bees must of necessity cov- 

 er a vast area. No one, two, or three acres 

 would give an apiary of 50 colonies even a 

 living. I am often reminded of what a man 

 once said to me about my bees in connec- 

 tion with my mother's flower-garden of 

 about one-eighth of an acre. We were look- 

 ing at a crop of about six thousand pounds 

 of section honey I had piled in the honey- 

 room. ' Oh, what a pile!' he said. ' Xo won- 

 der your bees do well when your mother has 

 such a pretty flower garden as I always see 

 in bloom when I pass.' Of course, these 

 flowers were ' right under the noses ' of my 

 bees; but not one out of ten varieties even 

 attracted the bees; and when basswood was 

 in bloom five miles away, not a bee was to 

 be seen on any of these flowers; yet the sec- 

 tions were being filled as if by magic. 



"If the llight of bees were as slow as the 

 walk of a man, then the reasoning of our 

 ' right in the midst of flowers ' men would 

 be more logical. I have watched our great 

 ' Empire State ' express train on the New 

 York Central R. R., running at the rate of 

 a mile a minute, and it passed my vision at 

 no more rapid rate than the bees do over 

 the hill on a still day when working on bass- 

 wood from two to five miles away. 



"If my questioner could see how the 

 combs grow in the sections, the whiteness 

 of the honey, and the beautiful cappings, 

 as I have done when there was no open 

 bloom of the basswood within three miles of 

 the apiary, I think he would incline, and 

 all the readers of Gleanings as well, to the 

 same opinion I do ; namely, that the so- 

 called necei-sity of a short distance to the 

 flowers, in order that success may be ob- 

 tained, is little short of a myth. From 

 many observations during apple and clover 

 bloom I am convinced that bees go from 

 one to three miles from home for nectar, 

 from choice, during the summer months, 

 during which months the larger part of the 

 storing of honey is done, as I have seen 

 thousands of Italian bees working on these 

 different blooms three miles from where any 

 Italian bees were kept, with a profusion of 

 these blossoms all about the Italian apiary 

 and the intervening space between. 



"I have seen good crops of buckwheat 

 hone^ stored when there was not a field of 

 buckwheat in sight of the apiary, and only 

 one field of about 12 acres within less than 

 two miles, while hundreds of acres were 

 white from three to five miles away. These 

 experiences, together with having tons of 

 basswood honey stored from the tops of the 

 high hills from four to seven miles from my 

 apiary during the i)ast 40 years, lead me to 

 feel safe in advising you to locate at the 

 place you say will be the most desirable, 

 rather than to inconvenience yourself by 

 setting your apiary down in the midst of 

 the bloom." 



