82 Beekeeping 



cult, no more honey can be obtained than bees need for 

 their own use and usually they must draw on their old 

 stores during this season. In almost every locality, there 

 are later periods when no nectar is available or at least 

 when there is less than enough to maintain the colony. 

 That commercial beekeeping may be possible, there must 

 be other periods when the amount of honey produced is 

 in excess of the requirements of the bees until the next 

 honey-flow. This surplus may become the beekeeper's. 1 



Periods of surplus depend solely on the plants of the region 

 and consequently they vary with different localities, as do 

 the plants. The problem confronting the beekeeper, there- 

 fore, is so to manipulate his bees that, when nectar is avail- 

 able near his apiary, the bees may be in condition to secure 

 the maximum quantity. Varying conditions call for dif- 

 ferent systems of management. This fact is well known 

 to practical beekeepers but, nevertheless, these differences 

 lead to confusion. For example, a beekeeper in the white 

 clover region works out a method by which he is able to 

 control swarming and thereby to secure maximum returns. 

 The system is published, whereupon it is perhaps tried 

 by beekeepers in buckwheat, Spanish needle or alfalfa 

 regions. The bee journals are probably then filled with 

 articles by these men who perhaps report failure. There 

 would be great good from this interchange of results did 

 it not tend too often to create a belief that, for example, 

 bees in Colorado behave peculiarly because they are in 



1 It may not be amiss to call attention to the incorrectness of the concep- 

 tion that bees and, in fact, all plants and animals were created or evolved 

 for the use of man. It would scarcely be necessary to refer to this were 

 it not that frequently such statements appear in the bee journals. Not 

 until one realizes that every species of plant and animal is in a struggle 

 for its own existence, without regard for the welfare of any other species, 

 can one get a correct conception of the facts of Nature. The honeybee 

 was evolved from less specialized insects because the changes fitted it better 

 to its environment ; they store honey because the instinct to do so fits 

 them better to their environment. The fact that man can take some of 

 this honey should not cause him to think that all this course of evolution 

 was for his benefit. 



