The inquiry is often made, "What kind of season is best for bees, wet or dry?" This point I have watched very closely, and have found that a medium between the two extremes produces most honey. When farmers begin to express fears of a drought, then is the time (if in the season of flowers) that most honey is obtained; but if dry weather passes these limits, the quantity is greatly diminished. Of the two extremes, perhaps very wet is the worst.
HOW MANY STOCKS SHOULD BE KEPT.
"What number of stocks can there be kept in one place?" is another question often asked. This is like Mr. A. asking farmer B. how many cattle could be pastured in a lot of ten acres. Farmer B. would first wish to know how much pasture said lot would produce, before he could begin to answer; since one lot of that size might produce ten times as much as the other. So with bees, one apiary of two hundred stocks might find honey in abundance for all, and another of forty might almost starve. Like the cattle, it depends on pasture.
THREE PRINCIPAL SOURCES OF HONEY.
There are three principal sources of honey, viz.:—clover, basswood, and buckwheat. But clover is the only universal dependance; as that is almost everywhere, to some extent, in the country. Buckwheat in some places is the main source; in others, basswood, which is of brief duration. Where all three are abundant, there is the true El Dorado of the apiarian! With plenty of clover and buckwheat, it is nearly as well. Even with clover alone, enormous quantities of honey are obtained. I have said what was our dependence in this section. I will further say that within a circle of three or four miles, there are kept about three hundred stocks. I have had for several years, three apiaries about two miles apart, averaging in spring a little more than fifty in each. When a good season for clover occurs, as many more would probably do equally well, but in some other seasons I have had too many; on an average nearly right. When clover furnishes too little honey for the number, buckwheat usually supplies more than is collected. Of surplus honey, the proportion is about fifteen pounds of buckwheat to one of clover. I have now been speaking of large apiaries. There can hardly be a section of country found, that man can procure his living, but what a few stocks would thrive, even if there were no dependence on the sources just mentioned. There will be some honey-yielding flowers in nearly all places. The evil of over-stocking is of short duration, and will work its own cure speedily. Some judgment is required here as well as in other matters.
Another question of some interest, is the distance that a bee will travel in search of honey in flowers—it is evident that it will be farther than they will go to plunder a stock. I have heard of their being found seven miles from home. It was said they ascertained, by sprinkling flour on them as they left the hive in the morning, and then saw the same bees that distance away. When we consider the chances of finding a bee even one mile from the hive thus marked, it appears like a "poor look;" and then pollen the color of flour might deceive us. It is difficult to prove that bees go even two miles. Let us say we guess at it, for the present.
CHAPTER V.
WAX.
The careless, unreflecting observer, when seeing the bees enter the hive with a pellet of pollen on each of their posterior legs, is very apt to conclude that it must be material for comb, as it appears unlike honey. So little regard is paid to the matter by many people, that they are unable to imagine any other use for it. Others suppose that it will change from that to honey, after being stored a time in the hive, and wonder at the curious phenomenon; but when asked how long a time must elapse before it takes place, they cannot tell exactly, but they "have found cells where it began to change, as a portion near the outer end of the cell had become honey, and no doubt the remainder would in time." It has been remarked that cells were only filled about two-thirds full of this, and finished with honey; now when any one finds a cell filled to the brim with pollen, and no honey, such reasoning will apply better. If this was the case, by examining at different periods through the summer, we certainly should find some cells before the change had commenced, instead of their always being in just this stage of transition.