AUSTRALASIAN BEE MANUAL 163 



an area of about 4,500 acres for the supply of the apiary ; 

 and if the latter consists of a hundred hives, producing 

 an average of 100 lb. of honey, there would be a little 

 more than 2 lb. of honey collected off each acre in the 

 year; or, if we suppose so many as two hundred hives 

 to be kept at one place, and to produce so much as 10 

 tons of honey in the season, the quantity collected from 

 each acre would be 4 lb. to 5 lb. 



PROPORTION POSSIBLY CONSUMED BY STOCK. 



Let us next consider what proportion of those few 

 pounds of honey could have found its way into the 

 stomachs of the grazing stock if it had not been for the 

 bees. It is known that during the whole time the clover 

 or other plants remain in blossom, if the weather be 

 favourable, there is a daily secretion of fresh honey, 

 which, if not taken at the proper time by bees or other 

 insects, is evaporated during the mid-day heat of the sun. 

 It has been calculated that a head of clover consists 

 of fifty or sixty separate flowers, each of which contains 

 a quantity not exceeding one five-^hundreth part of a 

 grain in weight, so that the w^hole head may be taken to 

 contain one-tenth of a grain of honey at any one time. 

 If this head of clover is allowed to stand until the seeds 

 are ripened it may be visited on ten or even twenty 

 different days by bees, and they may gather on the 

 whole, one, or even two, grains of honey from the same 

 head, whereas it is plain that the grazing animal can 

 only eat the head once, and consequently can only eat 

 one-tenth of a grain of honev with it. Whether he gets 

 that one-tenth grain or not depends simply on the fact 

 whether or not the bees have exhausted that particular 

 head on the same day just before it was eaten. Now, 

 cattle and sheep graze during the night and early 

 morning, long before the bees make their appearance 

 some time after sunrise ; all the flowering plants they 

 happen to eat during that time will contain the honey 

 secreted in the evening and night-time ; during some 

 hours of the afternoon the flowers will contain no honey, 



