Where to Locate, 1 7 1 



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 bees, and seven dollars for pure 

 Italians. If you purchase in the fall, require 33 J^ 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 professipn. 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 fee 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 Mphawk 

 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 nc5t 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 



