ALEXANDER’S WRITINGS ON PRACTICAL BEE CULTURE 11 
within two or three miles of them. Still, we have had about an average 
season. The largest yield we have ever had was 149% lbs. per colony, 
spring count. That was an exceptionally good year. This year, since 
weighing up our honey, we find we have 141% lbs. per colony, spring 
count, or a total yield of a little over 70,700 lbs, extracted honey from this 
one yard, including 80 sections of comb honey. In addition we have had 
3,600 sheets of foundation drawn out into nice extracting-combs. 
To me the: success of this large apiary this ordinary season goes a 
long way to shdw that I am not so much in the wrong in regard to over- 
stocking as som} people think, and I am sure I should have to have more 
than 1,000 colonies before I would go to the trouble of putting any in 
outyards away from home. 
November, 1904. 
BUCKWHEAT AS A HONEY-PRODUCER. 
During the time that buckwheat is in bloom, many other honey- 
producing flowers are also secreting nectar, principally goldenrod, which 
yields a dark honey resembling buckwheat very much, and with us is a 
better honey-producer than buckwheat. 
Several years ago I kept nearly 200 colonies in a location where 
there was barely 100 acres of buckwheat within reach of my bees—that 
is, within four miles, or in a circle eight miles in diameter. Still, with 
this small acreage per colony it was no uncommon thing to harvest a 
surplus of 15 to 20 lbs. of nice buckwheat section honey per colony. 
This caused me to feel very anxious to keep bees in a buckwheat loca- 
tion where thousands of acres was raised annually, so I moved to this 
place. But I soon found out, to my sorrow, that the amount of bloom 
had but little bearing on the amount of surplus I obtained, and in this 
respect buckwheat is no exception to other flowers, aside from the fact 
that it does its best when we have quite cool nights followed by a clear 
sky and a bright hot sun with little or no wind; then from about 9 
o’clock in the morning until 2 in the afternoon it secretes nectar very 
fast. We seldom find a bee at work on it much earlier or later in the 
day. But on goldenrod they will work from seven in the morning until 
after 5 in the afternoon. It also requires quite cool nights and a very 
bright sun during the day. Neither it nor buckwheat amounts to much 
in cloudy weather, even if the day is warm. With a temperature below 
70 degrees on a cloudy day, bees will waste away fast on either golden- 
rod or buckwheat. They simply crawl around, unable to fly; and unless 
they get a bright sun the next day they soon die. 
This question has a close bearing on the subject of overstocking, 
and it is hard to answer it without touching somewhat on that question. 
From the reports given in our bee journals the past season, during the 
commencement of the clover bloom in several of our Western States, 
I noticed that it was all that could be desired; but as to the yield of 
honey, it has been in many places almost a failure, and we have re- 
ceived many letters of inquiry for clover extracted honey from some of 
the best clover sections of the United States. The writers of these in- 
