OVER-STOCKING. 
305 
Although bees will fly, in search of food, over three 
miles,* still, if it is not within a circle of about two miles 
in every direction from the Apiary, they will he able to 
store but little surplus honey.f If pasturage abounds 
within a quarter of a mile from their hives, so much the 
better; there is no great advantage, however, in having 
it close to them, unless there is a great supply, as bees, 
when they leave the hive, seldom alight upon the neigh¬ 
boring flowers. The instinct to fly some distance seems 
to have been given them to prevent them from wasting 
their time in prying into flowers already despoiled of their 
sweets by previous gatherers. 
In all my arrangements, I have aimed to save every 
step for the bees that I possibly can. With the alighting- 
board properly arranged, and covered, in windy situations, 
with cotton cloth (p. 279), bees will be able to store more 
honey, even if they have to go a considerable distance 
for it, than they otherwise could from pasturage nearer at 
hand. Many bee-keepers utterly neglect all suitable pre¬ 
cautions to facilitate the labors of their bees, as though 
they imagined them to bo miniature locomotives, always 
• “ Mr. Kaden, of Mayenco, thinks that the range of the bee’s flight does not usually 
extend more than throo miles in all directions. Several years ago, a vessel, laden 
with sugar, anchored off Mayence, and was soon visited by the bees of the neigh¬ 
borhood,which continued to pass to and from the vessel from dawn to dark. One 
morning, when the bees were in full flight, the vessel sailed up the river. For a 
short time, the bees continued to fly as numerously as before; but gradually the 
number diminished, and, in the course of half an hour, all had ceased to follow the 
vpissel, which had, meanwhile, sailed more than four miles.”— Bienenzeitung y 
1854, p. 83. 
t “Judging from the sweep that bees take from the side of a railroad train in 
motion, we should estimate their pace at about thirty miles an hour. This would 
give them four minutes to reach the extromity of their common range. 
“ Mr. Cotton saw u man in Germany who kept all his uumorous stocks rich by 
changing their places as soon as the honey-season varied. ‘Sometimes he sends 
them to the moors, sometimes to the meadows, sometimes to the forest, and some¬ 
times to the hills. In France—and the same practice has existed in Egypt from 
the most ancient times—they often put hundreds of hives in a boat, which floats 
■town the stream by night and stops by day .’”—London Quarterly Review. 
