428 STATEMENT OF HUBER. 



should be examined, and he should regulate the number of 

 the hives to the quantity of food which the district can pro- 

 duce, and not place a hundred hives in a place which can 

 only maintain fifty. 



Respecting the number of hives which may be kept in a 

 middling district, we conceive that one hundred are perfectly 

 sufficient ; two hundred in a good one, and four or five 

 hundred in an excellent one. In regard to those provinces 

 that we have mentioned, in which, from their high state 

 of cultivation, the harvest of honey ceases in August, they 

 may still be proper for the culture of the bee, although not 

 to that extent as in the positions previously quoted. 



Huber, speaking of the advantages of particular positions 

 for an apiary, says, that at the epoch of the Revolution he 

 lived at Cour, near Lausanne ; on one side was the lake, and 

 on the other vineyards. He soon perceived the disadvan- 

 tages of his situation. When the orchards of Cour were 

 out of blossom, and the few neighbouring meadows mowed, 

 he perceived that the provisions of the mother hive dimi- 

 nished daily ; the labours of his swarms ceased to that 

 degree, that his bees would have died from hunger in 

 the summer, if he had not supported them ; and his 

 apiary, which had taken him years to collect, was entirely 

 ruined. 



Whilst his hives were thus going to destruction at Cour, 

 the bees of Renan, of Chabliere, of the woods of Vaux, 

 Cery, &c, places situated about eight miles from* Cour, 

 without any lakes, woods, or mountains intervening, lived 

 in the greatest abundance, threw numerous swarms, and 

 filled their hives with wax and honey. If my bees, says Mr. 

 Huber, could have cleared the interval which separated them 

 from the places where they could have found provisions, 

 they would certainly have done it, rather than die 

 from hunger. They did not succeed better at Vevay, 



