The Cycle of the Year 
83 
Colorado. In other words, the difference in “locality” is 
too often considered as a matter of geography. Obviously, 
political boundaries are nothing to bees and they behave 
similarly everywhere under similar conditions. The differ¬ 
ences lie in a failure to observe and to record the peculiar 
conditions of the “locality,” to appreciate the underlying 
causes of the behavior of the bees and to explain why the 
manipulation is a success or a failure, as the case may be, 
in the light of local conditions. If these distinctions were 
better understood, it would save much loss of effort and 
many failures. Obviously, a beekeeper should know not 
only what to do and when to do it, but why. It frequently 
happens that a beekeeper going from one place to another 
attempts to follow his former practices in the new place 
and usually this leads to failure. 
The flows of nectar which are of value for surplus are 
those which come after the colonies are strong, but earlier 
honey-flows are of great value in providing stores and in 
furnishing a stimulus to breeding. For each situation, 
it is therefore most desirable that the plants which furnish 
nectar be known and that the usual time of blossoming be 
learned. With this information, the beekeeper can so 
manipulate his colonies as to obtain maximum results. 
The study of the periods of blossoming is especially neces¬ 
sary in the more northern regions where the honey-flows 
are sharply circumscribed. In the South, the honey-flows 
more usually run together and there is less difficulty in 
having colonies strong for the surplus honey-flows. Honey 
plants do not bloom in the same relative times in different 
localities. For example, in some places white clover has 
usually ceased to secrete nectar before the basswood honey- 
flow begins while in others they are mixed. Following the 
clover honey-flow there is often a dearth until the fall flowers 
begin to secrete, but in some northern localities white clover 
may be delayed and the fall flow advanced until they leave 
practically no interval. 
A current fallacy should perhaps be denied. Bees do 
