FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 37 



A BAD YEAR. 



Ill the year 18ST my crop of honey was a little more 

 than half a pound per colony, and in the fall I fed 2802 

 pounds of granulated sugar to keep the bees from starv- 

 ing in winter. But I could not then tell, neither can I 

 now tell whether it was because the season was so bad or 

 because the field was over-stocked, for I had 363 colonies 

 in four apiaries. Possibly if I had had only half as 

 many bees, the balance might have been on the other 

 side of the ledger. But I don't know. 



Somewdiere there surely is a limit beyond which one 

 cannot profitably increase the number of colonies in an 

 apiary, but just wdiere that limit is can perhaps never 

 be learned. If I were obliged to make a guess, I should 

 say about 100 colonies in one apiary is the limit in my 

 locality. 



If I were to live my life over again, and knew in 

 advance that I should be a bee-keeper, I never would 

 locate in a place with only one source of surplus. When 

 white clover fails here the bottom drops out. Unfortu- 

 nately the years in which the bottom drops out have been 

 unpleasantly frequent. 



In the fall of 1881 I married Miss Sidney Jane Wil- 

 son, who was born on the \\'ilson farm w^here one of my 

 out-apiaries was for years located. There was some 

 economy in the arrangement, for she could go out to the 

 out-apiary for a day's work, and visit her old home at the 

 same time. 



A GOOD YEAR. 



Of the ITT colonies with which the year 1881 closed, 

 two died in wintering, and I sold one in the spring. 

 That left 1T4 for the season of 1882, and these gave me 

 16,549 pounds of honey, nearly all in sections. That 

 was 95 pounds per colony, and the increase was only 

 16 per cent. Quite a falling ofif from the amount per 

 colony of the previous year. But the additional nine 

 thousand pounds in the total crop reconciled me to the 



