THE APIARY. 
359 
deep soil yields, with heavier leafage, fewer blossoms, 
but more honey, than a thin one, but the honey is less 
aromatic. A valley is to be preferred to a high land, 
because the bees are not only screened from damaging 
winds, but the empty ones easily rise along the hill- 
sides, while those laden glide downwards to their 
homes. The seaboard, or the bank of a wide river, is 
not desirable, for there the hunting-ground is on one 
side of us only, and, in windy weather, many a weary 
burden-bearer, carried from her track, will drop, never 
to rise again. The seed farmer is a most desirable 
neighbour, while the careless husbandman is an unin- 
tentional helper, for some weeds, although the farmer’s 
bane, are the bee-keeper’s opportunity, the wild 
mustard or charlock {Sinapis arvensis), e.g., in some 
localities yielding more to the little nectar-seeker than 
all the other plants to which she has access put to- 
gether. Extensive sheep-runs on fine grazing land 
unfit a district for bees, since sheep crop so closely 
that scarcely a blossom escapes : but on semi-waste 
tracks the stock the land is capable of supporting 
will not be thick enough to keep down a multitude 
of wild flowers, which may bring a harvest to the 
bee-farmer, while some of these, rich in honey, are 
actually shunned, and, with unwitting kindness, left 
to spread by the grazing animals. Districts already 
well supplied with bees should, if possible, be avoided, 
because less honey {cceteris paribus) will be gathered, 
unwelcome drones may too often set their mark upon 
our stocks, and disease contracted in the colonies of the 
unskilful is likely to be perpetuated and communicated, 
now and again, through robbers, to our own apiary. 
