THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW" 



79 



best bee-keepers. There is nothing 

 connected with'_bee-keeping"that I have 

 studied on as^mucli. or tested so ^ex- 

 tensivel)', as I have out-apiaries. It 

 was drilled into me from my childhood 

 that I must establish an out-apiary as 

 fast as I got 100 colonies, and for the 

 first twenty-five or thirty years of m3' 

 bee-keeping life, the most of my bees 

 were kept in out-apiaries. After a 

 while I began to notice that the home- 

 yard, although having more colonies 

 than any other yard, gave me more 

 honey per colony than those awa.y 

 from home, and I was soon convinced 

 that the reason of this was that the 

 home-yard ^(5/f tlie best care. Still, I 

 continued to keep a large part of my 

 bees in out-yards. I would not give 

 up. Older bee-keepers told me that 

 bees were like stock in this respect; 

 they soon got all there was in a cer- 

 tain field, and, if I wanted to make a 

 success of the business, I must be very 

 careful not to overstock my locality. 

 So I persistently stuck to this theory, 

 even when, in my home-yard, of over 

 300 colonies, during basswood and 

 buckwheat bloom, colonies sitting on 

 the scales would show a gain of from 

 ten to eighteen pounds in twenty-four 

 hovirs. Still, I was afraid of over- 

 stocking. I don't see now how I could 

 have been so foolish. After a while I 

 began to let reason and common sense 

 have their wa}'. I would notice in the 

 spring, when the fruit trees were in 

 bloom, that the bees worked on them 

 all day, visiting the same flowers thou- 

 sands and thousands of times before 

 night. In the fall I also noticed the 

 same thing on catnip, motherwort, 

 and other honey-producing flowers. 

 When I set out a lot of waste honey, 

 as soon as the bees had licked it up, 

 they would leave the place where it 

 was. This taught me that the}' will 

 not spend their time where they can not 

 o;et anything. Then, such writers as 

 Doolittle told us they were sure bees 

 would go three or four miles to work 



on teasels and basswood; and, in the 

 meantime, I had found out that they 

 frequently do go three miles and over 

 to work on buckwheat, so I reasoned 

 to myself that if the flowers secreted 

 nectar all day, and perhaps during 

 warm nights, and the bees could visit 

 hone3'-producing flowers within a 

 circle seven or eight miles or more in 

 diameter, the likelihood of overstocking, 

 even in an ordinary locality, was 

 rather slim. So, for the last few 

 years, I have been gradually enlarg- 

 ing the home apiary. Last summer 

 we kept about 700 colonies in the home- 

 yard and we intend to have many 

 more the coming summer; and the best 

 of it all is we get as inuch honey per 

 colony from this large apiary as from 

 small apiaries five miles away, so I 

 am thoroughly convinced that over- 

 stocking in an ordinarily good locality 

 is only imaginary; and that out-apia 

 ries, as they are generally run by those 

 that have less than 700 or 800 colonies, 

 are a big lot of trouble, a good deal of 

 expense, and not half as profitable as 

 they would be if all were kept in one 

 yard. My advice is, consolidate vour 

 business; have it so that you can at- 

 tend to anything. 



Keep bees that have been bred from 

 the best honey gathering strains of 

 Italians that we have' in this' country. 

 Then see to it that your hives are 

 crowded with a large working force 

 just before your harvest for surplus 

 honey commences, and you will not 

 have to worry yourself about over- 

 stocking. 



This is something that requires long 

 experience, for our seasons are so 

 changeable that it cannot be proven 

 with a few bees in two or three sum- 

 mers. I might have 200 or 300 colonies 

 in a yard this summer, and they give 

 me a fine surplus; next summer I 

 might have only fifty colonies in the 

 same yard, and get no surplus what- 

 ever. All that would be proven would 

 be that one season was much better 



