20 



GLEANINGS IN BEOBJ CULTURE. 



Jan. 1 



sugar, tea, or tobacco for honey ? And even 

 without the straitened circumstances, after 

 once having honey, and knowing of its good- 

 ness, many f amihes which I know of tell me 

 that they can make a good sugar syrup for 

 their buckwheat cakes, a syrup that answers 

 all purposes, and that at a cost of less than 

 one-half of what they have to pay me for 

 my honey. And other families which I 

 know of will buy honey of me if I go per- 

 sonally and press it on them each year, but 

 will never come to me or any other bee- 

 keeper after it. But they would go miles 

 and miles after their tea, tobacco, sugar, 

 and butter, with honey right at their next 

 door, before they would use the honey as a 

 substitute for either. ' ' ^^— - •^- 



"Well, you are advancing some new 

 thoughts— thoughts that are, perhaps, well 

 worth thinking over. But in your ground 

 there is very little hope. Is there no rem- 

 edy?" 



"I see only one." 



"What is that?" 



"Let the bee-keeper stop putting the rosy 

 side of apiculture before the public all the 

 time, thus putting more bee-keepers into 

 our already overstocked honey-field. Give 

 the truth of the thing as it is, and make the 

 question of more or better bee-keepers the 

 prominent one for a while. Then with few- 

 er and better bee-keepers as a basis, and a 

 goodly lot of energy spent in a house-to- 

 house canvass each year with our honey, per- 

 haps we who are in it may be able to hold 

 on and make a living out of our bees. What 

 do you think of the proposition ? ' ' 



"This is a little new to me, and I wish a 

 little time to think over the matter. Mean- 

 while I will give your ideas to the readers 

 of Gleanings, and let them do some think- 

 ing with us, for ' in the multitude of coun- 

 selors there is wisdom. ' ' ' 



POSSIBILITIES. 



How Many Colonies can be Kept in One Yard? 



BY C. A. HATCH. 



Richland Co., Wis., has long been noted 

 for its honey production. Even 50 years 

 ago, before there was any settlement by 

 the white man, and the native Indian roam- 

 ed its hills and valleys, white hunters used 

 to invade its borders with oxen and wagon 

 to get a load of wild honey and venison for 

 winter use. The larger part of the county 

 being heavy timber, of which basswood 

 formed a considerable part, the reason for 



the honey-production is not far to find. 

 Now these noble trees that waved their 

 branches in welcome to morning sunshine 

 and breeze are no more. They have fallen 

 to the needs of the farmer for tillable land or 

 pasture, and to the greed sf the lumber-man 

 and excelsior mills. A few specimens in 

 some wood lot, or on some inaccessible hill- 

 side pasture, are about all that is left. 



While the bee population is as large as or 

 larger than ever, it must look to other 

 sources for nectar. 



The white-clover pastures and alsike 

 meadows are common, and rich in nectar; 

 but weather conditions are so necessary to 

 these plants for best nectar secretion that 

 we are always handicapped thereby. If we 

 could have the warmth and sunshine of Cal- 

 ifornia during clover bloom, not even the 

 famous sages would excel it for quantity or 

 quality. The result would be startling. 



This year there was not to exceed one day 

 in six that was favorable, and yet the aver- 

 age from clover at my home yard was about 

 20 lbs. of surplus. What would it have been 

 with six times as many working days? It 

 would have been more than six times as 

 much, for most of the idle days were when 

 bloom was at its best. 



To show up some of the possibilities of a- 

 given territory, and shed some light on how 

 much honey can be produced on a given 

 area, I have made what might be called a 

 bee and honey census of a piece of land 14 

 miles in diameter, and having Richland Cen- 

 ter for its center. If there is any place 

 stocked up to the limit, it would seem as if 

 this is the one. With a sectional map of 

 the county before me, and locating each 

 bee-man, and assuming 3 miles as the liniit 

 of a bee's flight, and drawing a six-mile cir- 

 cle around each apiary, the map looked like 

 some geometrical figure based on a combi- 

 nation of circles. No one man could claim 

 undivided territory. 



Above is the map. The heavy-lined circles 

 represent distances, as three miles, five 

 miles, etc. The light lines are for each 

 man's territory. The straight lines are to 



