If you are to engage as a specialist, then you can select first with reference to society and climate, after which it will be well to secure a succession of natural honey-plants (Chap. XVI.), by virtue of your locality. It will also be well to look for reasonable prospects of a good home market, as good home markets are, and must ever be, the most desirable. It will be desirable, too, that your neighborhood is not overstocked with bees. It is a well-established fact, that apiarists with few colonies receive relatively larger profits than those with large apiaries. While this may be owing in part to better care, much doubtless depends on the fact that there is not an undue proportion of bees to the number of honey-plants, and consequent secretion of nectar. To have the undisputed monopoly of an area reaching at least four miles in every direction from your apiary, is unquestionably a great advantage. If you desire to begin two kinds of business, so that your dangers from possible misfortune may be lessened, then a small farm--especially a fruit farm--in some locality where fruit-raising is successfully practiced, will be very desirable. You thus add others of the luxuries of life to the products of your business, and at the same time may create additional pasturage for your bees by simply attending to your other business. In this case, your location becomes a more complex matter, and will demand still greater thought and attention. Some of Michigan's most successful apiarists are also noted as successful pomologists. For position and arrangement of apiary see Chapter VI. CHAPTER V. HIVES AND BOXES An early choice among the innumerable hives is of course demanded; and here let me state with emphasis, _that none of the standard hives are now covered by patents, so let no one buy rights_. Success by the skillful apiarist with almost any hive is possible. Yet, without question, some hives are far superior to others, and for certain uses, and with certain persons, some hives are far preferable to others, though all may be meritorious. As a change in hives, after one is once engaged in apiculture, involves much time, labor and expense, this becomes an important question, and one worthy earnest consideration by the prospective apiarist. I shall give it a first place, and a thorough consideration, in this discussion of practical apiculture. BOX-HIVES.