108 
A TEAR AMONG THE BEES. 
I must decide, whether I will or Dot, how many colonies will 
overstock the home field, unless I make the idiotic determi- 
nation to keep all at home with the almost certain result of 
obtaining no surplus. With what little light I have on the 
matter, I do not care to have more than about 100 in one 
apiary, although I do not know for certain that 125 or 150 in 
a good year would fare much worse. 
ARTIFICIAL PASTURAGE. 
I have made some effort to increase the pasturage for my 
bees. Of spider-plant I raised only a few plants. It seemed 
too difficult to raise to make me care to experiment with it 
on a larger scale. Possibly if I knew better how to manage 
it, the difficulty might disappear. Or, on other soil it might 
be less difficult to manage. The same might be said of the 
other things I have tried. My soil is clay loam, and hilly, 
although I live in a prairie State. I am at least a mile 
distant from prairie soil. I have tried Alsike many times, 
and never had a good stand but once ; perhaps an acre then. 
I had an acre of as fine figwort as one would care to see. It 
died root and branch the second winter ; even the young 
plants that had come from seed the previous summer. It was 
on the lowest ground I had, very rich, and much like prairie. 
One year I raised half an acre of sun-flowers. Golden 
honey-plant I never succeeded in getting to blossom. I 
sowed perhaps 20 acres with melilot, and for the result I have 
an acre or so of it growing. I doubt if I shall make any 
further attempt to grow either of the plants I have mentioned, 
except it be melilot. Wherever I have had a patch of it 
started, it seems to hold its own from year to year. Possibly 
also, I may try buckwheat, as some seasons I have had a 
fair yield from that sown by others. Possibly, also, I may 
set out some more basswood trees ; some twenty that were 
set a few years ago produce a few blossoms now. 
