400 PASTURAGE AND OVERSTOCKING. 
Overstocking. 
OUR COUNTRY NOT IN DANGER OF BEING OVERKSTOCKED 
WITH BEES. 
707. If the opinions, entertained by some, as to the 
danger of overstocking were correct, bee-keeping in this 
country, would always have been an insignificant pursuit. 
It is difficult to repress a smile when the owner of a few 
hives, in a district where hundreds might be made to pros- 
per, gravely imputes his ill-success to the fact, that too 
many bees are kept in his vicinity. If, in the Spring, a 
colony of bees is prosperous and healthy, it will gather 
abundant stores, in a favorable scason, even if many equally 
strong are in its immediate vicinity ; while, if it is feeble, it 
will be of little or no value, even if it is in ‘‘a land flowing 
with milk and honey,’’ and there is not another colony 
within a dozen miles of it. 
As the great Napoleon gained many of his victories by 
having an overwhelming force at the right place, in the 
right time, so the bee-keeper must have strong colonies, 
when numbers can be turned to the best account. If 
they become strong only when they can do nothing but 
consume what little honey has been previously gathered, he 
is like a farmer, who suffers his crops to rot on the ground, 
and then hires a set of idlers to eat him out of house and 
home. 
708. Although bees can fly, in search of food, over three 
miles, still, if it is not within a circle of about two miles in 
every direction from the Apiary, they will be able to store but 
little surplus honey.* If pasturage abounds within a quar- 
*‘« Jadging from the sweep that bees take from the side of a railroad train in 
motion, we should estimate their pace at about thirty miles an hour. This 
would give them four minutes to reach the extremity of their common range.’’ 
-London Quarterly Review. 
