82 
Beekeeping 
cult, no more honey can be obtained than bees need for 
their own use and usually they must draw on their old 
stores during this season. In almost every locality, there 
are later periods when no nectar is available or at least 
when there is less than enough to maintain the colony. 
That commercial beekeeping may be possible, there must 
be other periods when the amount of honey produced is 
in excess of the requirements of the bees until the next 
honey-flow. This surplus may become the beekeeper’s. 1 
Periods of surplus depend solely on the plants of the region 
and consequently they vary with different localities, as do 
the plants. The problem confronting the beekeeper, there¬ 
fore, is so to manipulate his bees that, when nectar is avail¬ 
able near his apiary, the bees may be in condition to secure 
the maximum quantity. Varying conditions call for dif¬ 
ferent systems of management. This fact is well known 
to practical beekeepers but, nevertheless, these differences 
lead to confusion. For example, a beekeeper in the white 
clover region works out a method by which he is able to 
control swarming and thereby to secure maximum returns. 
The system is published, whereupon it is perhaps tried 
by beekeepers in buckwheat, Spanish needle or alfalfa 
regions. The bee journals are probably then filled with 
articles by these men who perhaps report failure. There 
would be great good from this interchange of results did 
it not tend too often to create a belief that, for example, 
bees in Colorado behave peculiarly because they are in 
1 It may not be amiss to call attention to the incorrectness of the concep¬ 
tion that bees and, in fact, all plants and animals were created or evolved 
for the use of man. It would scarcely be necessary to refer to this were 
it not that frequently such statements appear in the bee journals. Not 
until one realizes that every species of plant and animal is in a struggle 
for its own existence, without regard for the welfare of any other species, 
can one get a correct conception of the facts of Nature. The honeybee 
was evolved from less specialized insects because the changes fitted it better 
to its environment; they store honey because the instinct to do so fits 
them better to their environment. The fact that man can take some of 
this honey should not cause him to think that all this course of evolution 
was for his benefit. 
