10 
Another apiary personally inspected was located directly on the 
sand banks forming the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. These bees 
were, of course, unable to forage westward from the apiary, hence had 
but half ‘‘a field.” The soil of the area over which the bees ranged 
was a light sand, unproductive for most crops, and the region was little 
developed agriculturally, most of the honey coming from forest trees 
and from shrubs and wild plants growing in old burnings and windfalls, 
yet 25 to 30 pounds of excellent honey per colony was the usual sur- 
plus obtained. At one time the writer had an apiary in the city of 
Detroit, Mich., where the wide river on one side cut off nearly half of 
the pasturage, yet the bees did will. And again for several years he 
had an apiary containing from 100 to 200 colonies of bees on a very 
sterile coast of the Island of Cyprus, and another nearly as large located 
but a few rods from the seashore on a rocky point of Syria. Both of 
these apiaries were devoted in the main to queen rearing, yet the yield 
of honey was not an unimportant item, especially in the Syrian apiary, 
while in the Cyprus apiary some honey was frequently taken, and it was 
rarely necessary to feed the bees for stores. In the latter case about 
one-fourth of the range was cut off by the sea, the bees being located 
at the head of an open bay and a short distance from the shore, while 
the location of the Syrian apiary prevented the bees from securing half 
of the usual range, hence their greater prosperity was due to the nature 
and quantity of the pasturage of their limited range. 
It is evident, therefore, that no one similarly located need be deterred 
from keeping bees, provided the nectar-yielding trees and plants of the 
half range are of the right sort and abundant. Moreover, regions so 
rough and sterile or so swampy as to give no encouragement to the 
agriculturist, or even to the stock raiser, will often yield a good income 
to the bee keeper, insignificant and apparently worthless herbs and 
shrubs furnishing forage forthe bees. The ability of the bees to range 
over areas inaccessible to other farm stock and to draw their sustenance 
from dense forests when the timber is of the right kind, and the free- 
dom which, because of their nature, must be accorded them to pasture 
on whatever natural sources are within their range of 3 or 4 miles, 
must be taken into account in estimating the possibilities of a locality. 
It will be found that very few localities exist in our country where at 
least a few colonies of bees may not be kept. Whether a large number 
might be profitably kept in a given locality can be decided only by a 
careful examination as to the honey-producing flora within range of 
the apiary (see pp. 12 and 26-29). 
The danger of overstocking a given locality is very frequently exag- 
gerated. Each range, it is self-evident, has a limit. The writer is, 
however, fully convinced, after long experience in numerous localities 
and under the most varied circumstances, that three or four times as 
many colonies as are commonly considered sufficient to stock a given 
59 
