PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY THE W T FALCONER MANPG CO 



VOL. VII. 



JULY, 1897. 



NO. 7. 



How Far Will Bees Go For 

 Honey ? 



BY G. M. DOOI.ITTLE. 



A correspondent writes thus: "I 

 see by a late number of The Amer- 

 ican Bee Journal that Dr. E. Gal- 

 lup argues that bees will go from four 

 to six miles in search of hone}', which 

 is contrary to the teachings of A. I. 

 Root, Henry Alley, and others. I 

 had always supposed that the latter 

 were right in claiming that bees sel- 

 dom went more than one to one ard 

 one half miles from home for honey, 

 and when they did go two miles, the 

 distance was so great that no head- 

 way was made at storing honey, and 

 a great waste of bees was the result, 

 through the extra exertion used. I 

 should be pleased to see something 

 from your pen on the subject, either 

 in the American Bee Journal or the 

 American Bee Keeper, as I take 

 both." I know that many seem to 

 think that bees will not go over one 

 and one-half to two miles for honey, 

 some even claiming that bees will 

 perish and die for want of food within 

 three miles of good pasture, and as 

 this is a matter of interest to all, I 

 will acquiesce in the correspondents 



wish, and give some facts which have 

 come under my observation, going to 

 prove that what Dr. Gallup wrote in 

 the American Bee Journal was not 

 out of the way. If bees went only 

 two miles in search of food it would 

 take but a limited conception to see 

 that a very few colonies would over- 

 stock many localities where now large 

 apiaries are kept. This matter of 

 overstocking my location with bees 

 used to worry me quite a little when 

 I had from 20 to 40 colonies, but 

 when I became convinced that bees 

 went from three to five miles from 

 choice for honey, I ceased to worry 

 about the matter. When I had been 

 keeping bees about two years, with 

 fully 150 colonies of black bees in 

 my bee yard and immediate neighbor- 

 hood, I went into the orchard to watch 

 the bees work on the apple blossoms. 

 The spring before this the first Italian 

 bees had been introduced into an ad- 

 joining town and were increased to 

 25 colonies, the increase being made 

 wholly by division, so there could 

 have been no stray swarms of Italian 

 bees in the woods. These bees were 

 about three and one-half miles from 

 me in a straight line, and as I then 

 believed, as do some at the present 



