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Working-rauge of the bee may be taken at a mile and a half from the 

 apiary on all sides, which gives 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 21b. 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 6 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 

 aot been for the bees. It is known that during the whole time the clover 

 ar 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 midday 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-hundredth part of a grain in weight, so that the whole 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 anihial can only eat the head once, 

 and consequently can only eat one-tenth of a grain of honey 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, whether they have been visited by bees or not ; and even during 

 the forenoon, when the bees are not busy, it is by no means certain that 

 they will forestall the stock in visiting any particular flower. If a field 

 were so overstocked that every head of clover should be devoured as soon 

 as it blossomed, then, of course, there would be nothing left for the bees; 

 but if, on the other hand, as is generally the case, there are always 

 blossoms left standing in the pasture, some of them even till they wither 

 and shed their seeds, then it must often happen that after bees shall 

 have visited such blossoms ten or even twenty times, and thus collected one 

 or even two grains of honey from one head, the grazing animal may, 

 after all, eat that particular plant and enjoy his one-tenth of a grain 

 of honey just as well as if there had never been any bees in the field. 



