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Beekeeping 
MIGRATORY BEEKEEPING 
By this expression beekeepers designate the moving of 
apiaries from place to place during a single summer to take 
advantage of two or more honey-flows which do not occur 
in a single locality. This has been practiced since ancient 
times, and most extensive beekeepers cherish the hope that 
some day the subject may be sufficiently understood so 
that they may move their bees several times a season and 
thereby keep them working almost all the year. Some 
elaborate plans have been made for moving bees from south 
to north as the seasons advance, but most of the trials have 
been failures. Since success in beekeeping depends on an 
intimate knowledge of the honey sources of the locality and 
of the best manipulations to obtain maximum crops, such 
migratory beekeeping would necessitate detailed knowledge 
of many sections, so that the beekeeper may know when 
and where to move his colonies to advantage. 
The Mississippi River has long been considered an ideal 
avenue for transporting colonies in migratory beekeeping, 
especially since there is no better way to ship colonies than 
by boat. It has been proposed that the beekeeper place 
his apiary on a flatboat in the South in early spring and 
move northward by night, allowing his bees to gather nectar 
by day, and following the season as it extends northward. 
This plan so well illustrates the limitations of migratory 
beekeeping that it may be critically examined. One of the 
chief difficulties is the fact that the beekeeper must know 
just where to anchor after each move so that his bees will 
be in range of the best forage and this would involve too 
careful a study of the valley to make the plan practical. 
This objection might be overcome but there is a more funda¬ 
mental difficulty which has not been sufficiently considered 
by those who have cherished this dream. If one species 
of plant furnished the main nectar-flow throughout the 
Mississippi valley, the beekeeper could move northward 
to prolong the gathering period, but this is not the case. 
