34
working-range of the bee may be taken at a mile and a half from the apiary on all sides, which gives an area of about 4,500 acres for the supply of the apiary; and if the latter consists of a hundred hives, producing an average of 100 1b. of honey, there would be a little more than 2 1b. of honey collected off each acre in the year; or, if we suppose so many as two hundred hives to be kept at one place, and to produce so much as 10 tons of honey in the season, the quantity collected from each acre would be 4 lb. to 5 lb.
PROPORTION POSSIBLY CONSUMED BY STOCK.
Let us next consider what proportion of those few pounds of honey could have found its way into the stomachs of the grazing stock if it had not been for the bees. It is known that during the whole time the clover or other plants remain in blossom, if the weather be favourable, there is a daily secretion of fresh honey, which, if not taken at the proper time by bees or other insects, is evaporated during the midday heat of the sun. It has been calculated that a head of clover consists of fifty or sixty separate flowers, each of which contains a quantity not exceeding one five-hundredth part of a grain in weight, so that the whole head may be taken to contain one-tenth of a grain of honey at any one time. If this head of clover is allowed to stand until the seeds are ripened it may be visited on ten or even twenty different days by bees, and they may gather, on the whole, one, or even two, grains of honey from the same head, whereas it is plain that the grazing animal can only eat the head once, and consequently can only eat one-tenth of a grain of honey with it. Whether he gets that one-tenth grain or not depends simply on the fact whether or not the bees have exhausted that particular head on the same day just before it was eaten. Now, cattle and sheep graze during the night and early morning, long before the bees make their appearance some time after sunrise; all the flowering plants they happen to eat during that time will contain the honey secreted in the evening and night-time; during some hours of the afternoon the flowers will contain no honey, whether they have been visited by bees or not; and even during the forenoon, when the bees are not busy, it is by no means certain that they will forestall the stock in visiting any particular flower. If a field were so overstocked that every head of clover should be devoured as soon as it blossomed, then, of course, there would be nothing left for the bees; but if, on the other hand, as is generally the case, there are always blossoms left standing in the pasture, some of them even till they wither and shed their seeds, then it must often happen that after bees shall have visited such blossoms ten or even twenty times, and thus collected one or even two grains of honey from one head, the grazing animal may, after all, eat that particular plant and enjoy his one-tenth of a grain of honey just as well as if there had never been any bees in the field.
