OVERSTOCKING. 47 



Buckwheat continues blossoming for from three to five weeks, 

 keeping the bees busily employed, beside enough honey wasting 

 by evaporation to perfume the air for a considerable distance 

 around. A farther supply is furnished by golden-rod, fireweei, 

 English smartweed, asters, and various other fall flowers. "We 

 have omitted to mention many trees and plants that are quite as 

 valuable for their honey bearing properties as some of those 

 enumerated. 



OVERSTOCKING. 



To a person unacquainted with the immense honey resources 

 of our country, a question will naturally arise as to how many 

 stocks of bees may be safely kept at one point, and whether there 

 is not danger of collecting so great a number as to exhaust the 

 natural supplies of honey. In reply, we would say that we be- 

 lieve it possible to overstock a given locality, and yet we have 

 never been able, in our own experience or otherwise, to get suf 

 ficient evidence to confirm us in this belief. Mr. H. B. Gilford, 

 in the Prairie Farmer, says : " I knew of one neighborhood, 

 east, a thickly settled place, where nearly every family kept from 

 one to fifty swarms. It is said they get as much honey per 

 swarm as they used to when there were but few kept, and a 

 double price for their honey." 



At times the supply of honey seems almost inexhaustible 

 During these harvests the flowers secrete honey through the 

 night, which must be gathered in the fore part of the day, or it 

 is lost by evaporation with the noonday sun. Upon this point, 

 Mr. E. T. Sturtevant, an extensive bee-keeper of Northern Ohio, 



