OUT-APIARIES. 317 



ent yields both in quality and quantity, from two apiaries 

 only two and a half miles apart. This agrees with our oft 

 repeated experience in apiaries three or four miles apart. 



Locate your bees with some careful man. Do not trust 

 a farmer who lets his fences fall^ who leaves his mower in 

 the yard over Winter, or puts his cows in his orchard. You 

 will never rest easy, if you think that some of your hives 

 may be upset any day by a vagrant cow. 



Do not put your bees on land which is tenanted. Let them 

 be placed at some responsible farmer's own home, for a tenant 

 may leave on short notice, and you cannot remove your bees 

 at all seasons. 



584-. The terms usually made by us for a bee location 

 are as follows : The farmer furnishes us the apiary ground, 

 one spare room during extracting, "and a shed or a corner 

 in some empty room for our hives, combs, and fixtures. He 

 also furnishes board for the Apiarist and his help while at 

 work. In exchange, he gets one-fifth of the honey, and 

 seventy-five cents for every natural swarm he harvests. His 

 sole duties are, hiving swarms, and seeing that no accidents 

 happen to the apiary. When bees are run for extracted 

 honey, the number of natural swarms is very limited. We 

 can always find more bee locations than we want. In fact, 

 we have never yet met a farmer who refused to take bees on 

 such terms. 



We prefer giving the farmer a share of the crop, to giving 

 him a stated sum for ground rent, etc., as some of our lead- 

 ing bee-keepers do, because we thus give him an interest in 

 our success, and he is more hkely to pay attention to our 

 bees, and to produce crops that will yield some honey. Asso- 

 ciation of interests means progress, peace, and harmony. 



585. Six apiaries, containing in all 600 colonies, are 

 probably the greatest number that one man can oversee prop- 

 erly. In good localities, an Apiarist will find more profit 

 from six such apiaries, than an intelligent farmer from half 

 a section of land, and the outlay of money is less. 



