1872.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOUENAL. 



175 



besides, the date of my application for a patent, Jan. 

 6tb, 1853, four months before the Berlepsch hive was 

 brought to the notice of the public. If he had done 

 this, does any one believe that he would have brought 

 the Declaration over the ocean ? 



The Baron's condemnation of my hives as "decid- 

 edly impracticable" may at first surprise those who 

 have secured tons of honey from them ; but it will not 

 weigh much with them after they have learned from 

 His own accoi;nt, how entirely he failed, until he ac- 

 tially saw it, to get any proper conception of the 

 Izierzon hive.* 



If the Baron and myself could have a personal in- 

 terview, I believe that all misconceptions on both 

 sides might be easily removed. I think that he would 

 be amused to learn that it was the sight, on the table 

 of i friend, tliirty-four years ago, of a large bell-glass 

 suptr, filled with beautiful honey combs, that induced 

 me K) purchase my first stock of bees. If we should 

 disciss "bee litera^-e," he would be surprised to 

 learnthat in 1700, ■tAbb6 Delia Rocca (Vol. 3. Pi. 

 3) g;^'e an illustra^K of movable bars with tuings 

 simila- to his own, for keeping the bars at proper 

 distances. If we should venture upon the still broader 

 field oiHiiimhlished experiments, Mr. King could speed- 

 ily male us much more ashamed of our " stupidity 

 than tlB Galitzean forester," by presenting to us an 

 inveutoi, who before the era of Propokovitsch, and 

 while stU a youth iu his teens, did by one surprising 

 bound ofgenius, attain results which cost us so many 

 toilsome ^ears of observation and experiment. And 

 if we uee(^d anything more to make us humble, there 

 might be"s\immoned from the vasty deep," such 

 a crowd o republican aspirants to Huber's throne, 

 that like th despairing Macbeth, we should be ready 

 to cry out 



"What will the line stretch out until the crack 



of dooi 1 

 Another et ? a seventh ? I'll see no more ! " 



The Baron ^nd my readers will excuse me for 

 attempting byg touch of pleasantry, to relieve this 

 very dry discuajon, 



L. L. Langstroth. 

 Oxford, 0., Jan 12, 1872. 



*It is not unusnafor men of great ability to get very im- 

 perfect conceptions r,in drawings, while otliers quite inferior 

 iu intellect, can learns much from a drawing as from a fuU- 

 slzed model. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Overslcking with Bees. 



And how to seour, a large income from Bee- 



eeping. 



In one of his wrings on bee-culture, the 

 Baron of Ehrenfels vates, that lie owned a 

 thousand hives of he\^ all of which were so 

 located, that he could jsit them in an hour's 

 ride; and that he HK^ed them during the 

 buckwheat bloom to tit rich district of the 

 l- Marchfeld. He seems t have written under 

 m the impression that a good ^cation could not be 

 overstocked with bees. He^tarted his several 

 apiaries with one hundred ^ud fifty colonies, 

 ■each in the spring ; and Ifeepiw for each apiary 

 one overseer or beemasta*. 



Lucas, another proninent beekeeper and 

 writer on bees, in his tratise published in 1820, 

 concedes that a location might become over- 

 stocked, if the bees of i^uy diflijrent apiaries 



should be moved to a single locality, as there 

 might then be more bees than flowers on which 

 they could work. At the same time he is of the 

 opinion, that the honey secreted by a flower 

 could be and ought to be collected as fast as it 

 is secreted. If it was not thus collected, it 

 would evaporate and be lost. Hence it was all 

 the same whether a blossom was visited once or 

 oftener during the day, and it would yield the 

 same amount of honey at every collection ; while 

 none would be left after a change of weather, or 

 if not collected at the time it was secreted. Is 

 this indeed so? I cannot say that I made a close 

 obiJervation on any other than basswood and 

 buckwheat blossoms. Basswood secretes its 

 honey in five little leaflets, that constitute the 

 envelope of the bud before blooming. These 

 little leaflets contain, in good weather and in 

 a good season, a drop of honey as large as and 

 sometimes larger than a large pin's head ; and a 

 ^ee can gather a g.:)od load of honey from a 

 dozen of these flowers. This honey is not 

 washed out by a moderate shower of rain, or 

 by dew during night time. If not gathered it is 

 found there for a number of days, and in warm 

 dry weather becomes as thick as the thickest 

 honey in a hive. In some instances the leaflets 

 containing that honey, wilt, dry up, and remain 

 adherent in the seed bud for quite a while, and 

 bees will visit them sometimes for more than a 

 week after blooming. Last summer dried up 

 honey was found in them for about ten days 

 after they had dropped off, and bees were seen 

 in large numbers every forenoon, collecting 

 from them bass honey, that had become liquified 

 during the previous night. About noon they 

 would cease gathering, and stojiped flying. I 

 hold that this honey is of greater thickness than 

 honey just secreted, and bees will be able to lay 

 up in store for their owner, a lai'ger amount if 

 tliey have a chance to gather it in a locality close 

 at hand. There can be no doubt that the area 

 in which the bees of an apiary collect their 

 honey, must be enlarged in proportion to the 

 number of stocks kept ; and they will be able to 

 collect all the honey secreted every day, if there 

 are enough bees to do so, and the honey will 

 then have no time to evaporate or tliicken, 

 Quinby states somewhere in his "mysteries of 

 beekeeping explained," that the pasturage for 

 bees ought to be within half a mile of the 

 apiary, to be of much value to them. I am wil- 

 ling to extend that distance to a mile ; but the 

 question is not the distance to which bees fly 

 and gather, but how many stocks could and 

 ought to be kept in one location, with the 

 greatest ijrofit to the beekeeper. Since it is 

 evident that honey does thicken and is not lost 

 if not gathered immediately, it must be evident, 

 also, that the smaller the number of stocks kept 

 in the vicinity of the pasturage, the smaller 

 must be the ability of the bees to visit every 

 flower, or to visit them repeatedly during the 

 day, and the thicker must be the honey gathered. 

 Of course the state of the atmosphere has a 

 certain influence, as well on the secretion of 

 honey, as on the thickening of it. Rain washes 

 the honey out of most kinds of flowers ; and we 

 find bees lying idle after a shower, while white 



