THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



35 



must that be which can teach au insect to direct 

 its flight to the distance of four miles, over an 

 expanse of water in search of its food, of the 

 existence of which even it cannot be supposed 

 to possess any knowledge! L'Abbc della Rocca 

 indeed says, that it is the sense of smell Avhich 

 guides the bee to its distant fields of pasture, 

 and in many respects we coincide in the opinion 

 of the worthy Abbe, for certainly nothing can 

 be more acute and powerful than the sense of 

 smell in the bee. In other respects, however, 

 it exceeds our belief, that the sense of smell can 

 possibly be so acute as to direct the bee to an 

 uninhabited island, situate nearly five miles 

 from the main land, to collect its honey from 

 the flowers of a shrub which at no time emit 

 any exquisite odor, and which must necessarily 

 be neutralized, if not wholly destroyed, by the 

 saline exhalations of the ocean. 



It was the opinion of Dr. Chambers that the 

 bee cannot extend its flight much beyond a 

 mile, and Dr. Hunter was of the same opinion; 

 we are, however, inclined to believe that both 

 Chambers and Hunter adopted their opinion on 

 the authority of Schirach, who afliirms that the 

 bees cannot extend their flight beyond one mile; 

 but then it should be taken into consideration 

 that the German mile of Schirach is equal to 

 about three and a half miles English, and from 

 that very circumstance may be traced all the 

 errors which the numerous commentators, both 

 French and English, on the works of the Ger- 

 man apiarians have fallen into in calculating 

 the extent of the flight of a bee. The traveling 

 apiaries of Germany, particularly those of Han- 

 over, arc regulated by the prevailing opinion 

 that the bee can and does extend its flight to 

 four and even five miles; and acting upon that 

 supposition when the bee-masters move their 

 apiaries, they always travel about two stunden^ 

 that is about eight miles, as they then calculate 

 that the bees are beyond the former range of their 

 pasture by four miles. A traveling apiary of 

 eighty or one hundred hives will exhaust the 

 food within the area of a circle of four miles in 

 about a fortnight or three weeks; it is, however, 

 a remarkable circumstance, that the honey col- 

 lected solely from heath, without the admixture 

 of the produce of any other flowers, is of an un- 

 pleasant flavor, and of a dark, muddy color; in 

 fact, in commerce the worst kind of honey is 

 known by the name of heath boney, and the 

 most adulterated that is brought to market, for 

 which reason the honey of Germany bears in 

 our markets the most inferior price. 



It was the opinion of Huber, that the radii of 

 the circle of the flight of the bee extend beyond 

 one mile, but the translator of Huber has in the 

 promulgation of that opinion fallen into tlie 

 same error as the adherents of Schirach. It 

 certainly stands in the original of Huber as cine 

 Mcile; but then a mile of Huber is equal to 

 nearly four English, and thus is Huber made to 

 disseminate an error from the culpable igno- 

 rance of the translator, which is a gross impeach- 

 ment of his own judgment. 



It cannot for a moment admit of a doubt, that 

 all positions are not equally favorable to tlie 

 culture of the bee, and we wish to impress it 



strongly on the mind of every keeper of bees, 

 that it is a hopeless task to attempt to support 

 an apiary by artificial means; that is, by the 

 sowing and planting of a few flowers and shrubs 

 in the immediate vicinity of the bees, from 

 which thc}^ are known to collect their honey and 

 farina. The bee in general despises all culti- 

 vated flowers, and will pass by them with dis- 

 dain to luxuriate on the common furze, the 

 broom, the willow, the hawthorn, or the black- 

 berry of our common hedges. We do not here- 

 by mean to dissuade the bee-master from culti- 

 vating in his garden and grounds those shrubs 

 and floAvers from which the bees derive their 

 nourishnient; but a hedge of furze and broom, 

 or a field of wild mustard or white clover, com- 

 monly called cow-grass, is higher appreciated 

 by the bees than all the flowers which bloom in 

 a garden; in fact, the most commonly cultiva- 

 ted flowers of our gardens, such as the rose, the 

 pink, the carnation, the dahlia, the chrysan- 

 themum, the hyacinth, the auricula, the polyan- 

 thus, &c., are all despised by the bee, and pas- 

 sed by as utterly unworthy of its notice. 



The knowledge of the particular produce of a 

 country, its localities, and the greater or less 

 extent of its cultivation ought to form a part 

 of the study of every keeper of bees. A highly 

 cultivated country is by no means beneficial to 

 the bee, for as soon as the harvests are got in 

 the fields are a complete desert to the bee. A 

 coimtry that is not intersected with hedges is 

 eciually unfavorable, for it is from them that 

 the bees collect the greater part of their provi- 

 sions. The hedges in general abound with the 

 blackberry, the furze, the broom, the wild-rose, 

 the marsh-mallows, &c., &c., independently of 

 the rows of elm, oak, horse-chestnut, lime, &c., 

 from all of which the bees collect a considerable 

 quantity of honey and farina. The fields stud- 

 ded with the useless daisy are a desert to the 

 bee; but it is the fields which are whitened 

 with the buckwheat, the plains which are gild- 

 ed with the flower of the wild mustard, the tur- 

 nip, and the whole of the brassica tribe that 

 furnish the bees with a continual supply of 

 food, and in which they love to disport, leaving 

 the gaudy flowers of the garden "to waste their 

 sweetness on the desert air." 



In regard to the number of hives which any 

 particular tract of country can maintain, vari- 

 ous and conflicting opinions have been hazard- 

 ed; for whilst some consider that a country 

 cannot be overstocked on account of the sup- 

 posed inexliaustable supply of food which the 

 vegetable kingdom is continually producing and 

 reproducing, others maintain, and with a great- 

 er show of reason, that analogically considered, 

 a country may be overstocked with bees on the 

 same principle that a field may be overstocked 

 with cattle, and therefore that in every species 

 of stock the number ought to be restricted to 

 the means of subsistence. We certainly have 

 no reason to fear that any part of this country 

 will be overstocked with bees, for we scruple 

 not to affirm that where one hive is now kept, 

 fifty might be kept without running any risk of 

 overstocking the country. Tlie average num- 

 ber of hives in the apiaries of this country does 



