S8 THE GARDENER. [Feb. 



crowded out, and they cluster in heaps about the mouth of the hive, 

 idle and listless, while the bee-keeper stands by in blissful (?) ignorance, 

 waiting for his bees to swarm. Waiting for bees to swarm is weary 

 work. We do not wait for ripened fruit to fall from the trees before 

 we garner it. We exercise our judgment, and gather it at a time when 

 experience tells us it is likely to be most useful to us ; and the exer- 

 cise of the same judgment with regard to bees would teach us, that if 

 ever a swarm is worth having, it must be at a time when flowers are 

 plentiful and honey abundant ; and if at that time working bees are 

 not plentiful too, it must be to a great extent the fault of the bee- 

 keeper. It is in his power to insure that his stocks shall be strong 

 at the times when honey is likely to be abundant. But to insure this 

 he must first be sure that each stock is healthy, and has a fairly prolific 

 queen ; and then he must treat them as he would his chickens — feed 

 them when they cannot get food for themselves, regularly and suffi- 

 ciently, until the recurrence of the honey season renders such aid 

 unnecessary. 



Wealth in bees does not consist in the number of stocks so much as 

 in their individual strength, and the consequent abundance of working 

 bees, and their power to collect and store honey, a surplus of which is 

 the legitimate profit in bee-keeping. Swarms may be profitable to a 

 bee-dealer, but they are of no profit to a bee-keeper, it being rather his 

 province to prevent them, so that the supernumerary bees may collect 

 honey in the parent hives, instead of consuming it in the manufacture 

 of comb for their new habitation ; for it must be remembered that 

 in the manufacture of 1 lb. weight of comb 25 lb. of honey are con- 

 sumed, and all the bees so converting it are clustering and compara- 

 tively idle. The mere keeping of a number of stocks from which 

 nothing is obtained but swarms is simply absurd. Yet the same 

 quantity of bees gathered into one-third the number of hives would 

 yield a large surplus of honey under ordinary conditions. The reason 

 for this is, that in three weak stocks there would of course be three 

 queens, each instinctively anxious for the welfare of her colony ; but 

 being short of provisions, in early spring she cannot commence laying 

 her eggs, except to a very small extent, until honey and pollen are 

 plentiful, when her propensity is stimulated to such a degree that the 

 honey and pollen are consumed nearly as fast as it is in the power of 

 the working bees to collect them. The reason of this is, that as the 

 eggs and young brood increase, more nursing bees are necessary, and 

 fewer working bees comparatively can be spared from the hive. 



The propensity of the queen to lay eggs is governed by the quantity 

 of honey collected daily ; that, in its turn, is regulated by the yield of 

 honey, as well as by the number of working bees that are available to 



