596 
MIGRATORY BEEKEEPING 
Valley. If necessary the roots will go 
down to a great depth for water. Owing 
to its irregular habit of branching, the tree 
does not present an attractive appearance. 
The spikes of sweet-scented, densely 
crowded small flowers are five or more 
inches long and produce an abundance of 
pollen. The yellow pods are sis to nine 
inches long, and are eagerly eaten by cat¬ 
tle. The annual crop of pods in the island 
of Oahu is estimated at 25,000 tons. 
METAMORPHOSIS OF BEES. — See 
Development of Bees. 
MIGRATORY BEEKEEPING.— Expe¬ 
rience has shown that the secretion of nec¬ 
tar in a given locality varies sometimes, 
even within a distance of only a few miles. 
It will occur sometimes that the home- 
yard bees will be gathering no honey when 
an outyard eight or ten miles away will be 
securing a good crop. This is due to the 
fact that the character of and moisture in 
the soil make possible the growth of some 
plants that will not take root in other lo¬ 
cations only a few miles away. For exam¬ 
ple, a beeyard may be situated in a val¬ 
ley close to a stream, along which there will 
be a heavy growth of honey-yielding plants. 
Within a few miles from there, perhaps on 
higher ground, and soil less productive, 
there will be nothing. 
Sometimes one finds conditions like this 
—in one locality a large amount of buck¬ 
wheat will be grown; ten miles away from 
there, there will be none whatever. The _ 
same is true of red clover, alsike, and a 
number of other artificial-pasturage crops. 
Again, it' will happen that in one year 
when there is an'excess of rainfall the loca¬ 
tion in the valley will be too wet for the 
proper growth of plants yielding nectar, 
while on the higher ground, a few miles 
away, conditions will be just right for a 
fine flow of honey. 
The knowledge of these varying condi¬ 
tions in localities only a few miles apart 
has led some beekeepers to practice what is 
known as migratory beekeeping. Eor ex¬ 
ample, in one yard it is evident that bees 
are not getting any honey, and there is no 
flora of any sort that gives any promise of 
any. On the other hand, there is another 
yard that is doing well, and there are still 
other locations without bees where there 
are immense quantities of alsike or red 
clover, or of buckwheat. Evidently it is a 
part of wisdom and business sense to move 
the yard that is yielding no returns to the 
location in which the honey can be secured. 
In California, for example, it is quite 
customary for the beekeeper to move from 
the orange district into one with an abun¬ 
dance of sage,/then from the sage into the 
bean fields, or into localities where alfalfa 
is being grown. Similarly, bees in the East 
are moved from the clover into the buck¬ 
wheat fields. For particulars on moving- 
bees, see Moving Bees. 
Migratory Beekeeping is being prac¬ 
ticed on a large scale in the extreme west¬ 
ern part of the United States. Bees are 
being moved in carlots from Texas, Idaho, 
Montana, and Nevada into California and 
back again. In many cases the large pro¬ 
ducers find that they can move the bees 
from Idaho, Montana, or Wyoming in one 
and two carlots in the fall to the citrus 
groves of California, build them up on 
eucalyptus during the winter, catch a crop 
of orange honey in the spring, then moun¬ 
tain sage, after which the bees are loaded 
on the cars and moved to the State whence 
they came where they catch a crop of al¬ 
falfa. In one case in particular one large 
producer says he cleaned up in this way 
$50,000 in one season; but this was during 
war-time prices when honey was up to 22c 
a pound in carlots. Some good beekeepers 
even during normal prices are making mi¬ 
gratory beekeeping pay handsome returns. 
Bees are also moved in package form 
without combs in lots of a thousand pounds 
at a time by express. (See Moving Bees.) 
One large producer in Nevada had 1,200 
two-pound packages of bees sent him by 
express from California after the orange 
and sage bloom. 
MILKWEED (Asclepias syriaca ).— 
There belong to the milkweed family, or 
Asclepiadaceae, some 1900 species, widely 
distributed in the temperate and tropical 
regions of both hemispheres. About 22 
species occur in eastern North America, 
and 25 more in the southern and western 
States. The common milkweed, or silkweed 
{A. syriaca ) is the most common species in 
the northern States. It is a stout plant, 
four or five feet tall, with oblong leaves 
