OVERSTOCKING. 
41 
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, fireweed, 
English smartweed, asters, and various other fall flowers. AY e 
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. 15. Gifford, 
in the Prairie Farmer , says: “I knew of one neighborhood, 
east, a thicldy settled place, where nearly every family kept from 
one to filly 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, 
