OVERSTOCKING. 329 



Another case of overstocking occurred during the 

 months of July and August, at a place seven miles 

 from my residence, where we had located an apiary 

 of one hundred hives, most of which had the main 

 apartments of their hives full, and had commenced 

 to fill their surplus honey boxes, at the time another 

 stock of one hundred and twenty-five hives was 

 brought from a distance and placed a little over one 

 mile from ours, but in the immediate vicinity of the 

 same pasturage where they fed. There were then 

 not less than four hundred hives of bees within a 

 range of three miles long by one broad. The result 

 was, that our bees immediately ceased to store surplus 

 honey in the boxes, and were barely able to procure 

 enough to fill out the empty combs in the main breed- 

 ing apartments. 



Thus, a large amount of honey that would have 

 been obtained from the stock previously existing in 

 that neighborhood, was cut off by the large additional 

 stock placed in the same vicinity ; while the latter 

 were benefited, to some extent, by their new location, 

 (they having been removed from a place where all 

 the bees were in a. starving condition, except where 

 fed) yet their gain would have been vastly greater 

 had they been taken to an unoccupied pasture. 



Perhaps the most remarkable case of overstocking 

 on record, occurred in the city of Sacramento, in the 

 year 1860. At the commencement of the season, 

 there were between eight and ten hundred hives of 

 bees within a space of two miles square. The result 



