OVERSTOCKING. 325 



u What number of stocks " (hives of bees) " can 

 there be kept in one place ? is a question often asked. 

 That is like Mr. A. asking farmer B. how many cat- 

 tle could be pastured on a lot of ten acres. Farmer 

 B. would wish to know how much pasture said lot 

 would produce, before he could begin to answer: 

 since one lot of that size might produce ten times as 

 much as another. So with bees ; one apiary of two 

 hundred stocks might find honey in abundance for 

 all, and another of forty might almost starve, like the 

 cattle it depends on pasture." 



He (Quinby) further says : " I have had for 

 several years three apiaries, about two miles apart, 

 averaging in spring a little more than fifty in each. 

 When a good season for clover occurs, twice the 

 number would probably do equally well, but in some 

 other seasons I have had too many, so that my aver- 

 age is nearly right. I will further say, that within a 

 circle of three or four miles there are kept about 



three hundred stocks." 







The following quotation from Bevan will more fully 

 explain the matter : 



" In the British Isles, in France, Switzerland and 

 many other countries, there are not only great vicis- 

 situdes, attended on the one hand by parching 

 droughts, and on the other by a long continuance of 

 wet weather, but there are also very marked differ- 

 ences in honey sources, not only throughout extensive 

 districts, but even in the same vicinity ; and each of 

 these causes, wherever it operates, must evidently 



