Where to Locate, 171 
If the person of whom you purchase will take back the 
movable hives after you transfer the bees, you can afford 
to pay five dollars for black hees, and seven dollars for pure 
Italians. If you purchase in the fall, require 3334 per cent. 
discount on these rates. 
WHERE TO LOCATE. 
If apiculture is an avocation, then your location will be 
fixed by your principal business or profession. And here 
I may state that, if we may judge from reports which come 
from nearly every section of the United States, from Maine 
to Texas, and from Florida to Oregon, you can hardly go 
amiss anywhere in our goodly land. 
If you are to engage as a specialist, then you can select 
first with reference to society and climate, after which it 
will be well to secure a succession of natural honey-plants 
(Chapter XVII), by virtue of your locality. If our location 
is along a river we shall find our honey harvest much pro- 
longed, as the bloom on the upland will be early, while 
along the river flats it will be later. Who knows how 
much the many successful bee-keepers along the Mohawk 
Valley owe to their excellent location? It will also be 
well to look for reasonable prospects of a good home mar- 
ket, as good home markets are, and must ever be, the most 
desirable. It will be important, also, that your neighbor- 
hood is not overstocked with bees. It is a well-established 
fact, that apiarists with few colonies receive relatively 
larger profits, especially in rather poor seasons, than those 
with large apiaries. While this may be owing in part to 
better care, much doubtless depends on the fact that there 
is not an undue proportion of bees to the number of honey- 
plants, and consequent secretion of nectar. To have the 
undisputed monopoly of an area reaching at least two and 
one-half miles in every direction from your apiary, is un- 
questionably a great advantage. 
If you desire to begin two kinds of business, so that 
your dangers from possible misfortune may be lessened, 
then a small farm—especially a fruit farm—in some locality 
where fruit-raising is successfully practiced, will be very 
desirable. You thus add others of the luxuries of life to 
