218 
Beekeeping 
in moving a large number of colonies, it may be cheaper or 
easier for the beekeeper to own two or more lots of bees and 
supplies. The expense of transportation and the danger 
involved are probably the factors wliich determine the feasi¬ 
bility of moving from south to north or from sage in Cali¬ 
fornia to alfalfa in Utah or Colorado. In the South, espe¬ 
cially where bees can be purchased at a low price, it would 
not seem profitable to move apiaries over long distances. 
The shipping of bees in wire-cloth cages may in the future 
remove the present limitations. 
It would certainly seem that a northern beekeeper is 
not embracing all his opportunities if he quits work when his 
bees can no longer get nectar, while there are still hundreds 
of places in the South or even in the tropics where he might 
maintain apiaries with profit in the winter. When it is 
recalled that the professional beekeeper is a relatively new 
factor in beekeeping, it may still be expected that the future 
development of the industry will show an increase in migra¬ 
tory beekeeping, or at least in migratory beekeepers. 
OVERSTOCKING 
1 
The bugbear of the specialist beekeeper is the fear that he 
will overstock his localities, that is, place in each apiary so 
many colonies that there will not be enough nectar available 
to permit the colonies to store approximately the maximum 
profitable surplus. Since there are few places in the United 
States that are now overstocked, this subject worries the 
beekeeper more than the facts warrant. Some beekeepers 
have found it practical to keep several hundred colonies in 
one apiary. E. W. Alexander, Delanson, New York, found 
it more profitable, in an exceptionally good buckwheat 
region, to keep over 700 colonies in one yard than to establish 
out-apiaries. In the South and West large apiaries are not 
infrequent. 
While it is desirable to keep bees in as few places as possi¬ 
ble to avoid duplication of apparatus and time lost in trans- 
