OVERSTOOKINa. 401 



until then, the mass will follow the beaten track, and attribute 

 their ill success, not to their own ignorance, carelessness or 

 stupidity, but to their want of " luck," or to the overstocking 

 of the country with bees. I hope, before many years, to 

 see the price of good honey so reduced that the poor man 

 can feast upon it, as one of the cheapest luxuries within his 

 reach. 



" It is by no means easy to devise a rule for estimating 

 the profits of bee-culture, whether we regard the number of 

 colonies, or the number of square miles. He is not the best 

 Apiarian who obtains the largest yield from a single hive, 

 but keeps only one or two. By very judicious and careful 

 management, a hundred colonies might yield a large profit, 

 yet fall far short of what three hundred would have yielded 

 in the same location and same season, with much less super- 

 vision and attention. He is not the most s-Mccessful farmer 

 who produces the most extraordinary yield from a single rod 

 of ground ; but he who secures the amplest crops from an 

 extensive area well cultivated. The swarming system may 

 be very advantageous in certain localities, in spite of its 

 manifest wastefulness, though in other localities, it would, 

 because of that unavoidable wastefulness, render bee-keeping 

 a decidedly losing business, since the system involves a vast 

 expenditure of honey for the production and maintenance of 

 brood, which scarcely matures before it is doomed to the 

 brimstone pit, leaving to its owner often a smaller quantity 

 of honey than the swarm would have produced if taken up 

 three weeks after it was hived.* 



" Confine the queen of an artifi^cial swarm, so as to prevent 



» Not only does the old fashioned bee-teeper, by delaying to take up 



his bees until Faill, lose often a large amount of honey, but even if he 



loses nothing in quantity, he often permits the bees to consume for 



themselves, the larger part of the best honey, gathered early in the 



34* 



