EYE, COMPOUND. 



19H 



FEEDING AND FEEDERS. 



which is also located just behind the nerve- 

 endings, and answers the same piirpose. 

 There are two kinds of these pigment-cells. 

 The ones at the l)ase of the cone, o. p. c, are 

 two in number, and do not extend below the 

 base of the cone. The other pigment cells, 

 c. p. c, extend from the lens to the base 

 of the omniatidium,andare generally twelve 

 ill number. The pigment in these cells is 



located principally at the outer portion of 

 the eye; and the retina cells also contain 

 a pigment, thus making a complete sheath 

 of pigment around the nerve and nerve- 

 endings in the middle. 



The nerve lines in the eye extend down 

 along the eight retinacells, and at the bot- 

 tom come together, and the united nerve 

 extends toward the brain. 



I 



FEEDING AND FEEDERS. Feeding is 

 practiced for one of two purposes— to stimu- 

 late brood-rearing at times of the year when 

 no honey is coming in from natural sources, 

 or to supply with food colonies that are 

 short at the approach of winter. Whenever 

 possible, feeding should be avoided ; for at 

 best it is a messy job, expensive, and, in the 

 case of the beginner, liable to cause rob- 

 bing. In a good locality it may be possible 

 to avoid feeding altogether. Especially 

 would this be true in those places where 

 there is plenty of buckwheat or fall flowers. 

 To buy sugar by the barrel every fall is very 

 expensive, and the bee-keeper should lay his 

 plans to avoid it as far as possible. In many 

 cases fall feeding is made necessary by ex- 

 tracting too close, in some cases even from 

 the brood-nest. This is bad practice and 

 decidedly poor economy. But there are 

 times when it is absolutely necessary to give 

 the bees food either to keep up and stimulate 

 brood-rearing or to prevent actual starva- 

 tion. 



When the honey already in the hives at 

 autumn is of good quality and nicely sealed, 

 it would be penny wise and pound fool- 

 ish to extract it, put it on the market, buy 

 sugar, make syrup, and feed it to the bees. 

 There would be very little gained by it, even 

 if the honey sold at a higher price, and 

 the sugar syrup were cheaper. Where 

 the natural stores are dark, of poor qual- 

 ity, or bad honey-dew, it might be advisable 

 to extract and put in their place the syrup. 

 Yet of late years it has been our practice to 

 let the bees have every thing of their own 

 gathering, provided it is nicely ripened and 

 sealed in the comb, no matter what the 

 source ; and it is very seldom we lose bees 

 in outdoor wintering by reason of poor food. 



Of course, sugar syrup is better than some 

 honey that the bees gather; and, pound for 

 pound, it will go further in the hive as 

 food. Some experiments were made a few 

 years ago which went to show that of those 

 colonies fed on honey, the average consump- 

 tion in winter was from 14 to 18 lbs., Avhile 

 those fed on sugar syrup consumed from 1 

 to 7 lbs. The inference drawn was that, 

 while the pound of honey had less strength 

 than the pound of sugar, it was more stimu- 

 lating, causing the bees to consume more of 

 it. But in all imjliability this experiment 

 showed too great a difference in favor of the 

 sugar syrup. Under ordinary conditions, 

 when the honey is of first quality, as, for 

 instance, clover or basswood, there would 

 not be anything like this difference. 



The difference in cost between a first qual- 

 ity of extracted honey and sugar syrup when 

 sealed in the comb is so little that, if we had 

 combs of good natural stores, rather than 

 extract them we w^ould set them aside, and 

 then in the fall give these combs to such 

 colonies as had an insuflicient supply. But 

 in any case we would not use all such combs, 

 because, during midwinter, it is sometimes 

 very handy to have them ready, as they can 

 be placed right down in the center of a 

 brood-nest of a colony, for the simple reason 

 that it is impracticable to give liquid food I 

 to bees during midwinter. If combs of [ 

 sealed stores are not to be had, we would 

 give cakes of candy, as described under 

 Candy elsewhere. 



AVHAT TO FEED. 



It is bad policy to feed any form of sweet ^ 



that is cheaper than any of the very best gran- j 



ulated-supar syrups. There are certain grades J 

 of molasses and sorgluim that may 1)6 used ; 



