- 
. 
: 
ne 
APICULTURE. 433 
but it would be just like finding it to a beekeeper who was in the 
habit of using a two pound section. 
I wish to touch briefly upon how tosecure the greatest amount of 
white honey. We hear so many beekeepers say every year that they 
did not get any or very little white honey. The plan generally pur- 
sued by the ordinary beekeeper is to let his bees alone in the spring 
until they begin to swarm, then he hives the new swarm, and after 
about two weeks he puts on his surplus cases. A little knowledge 
of honey-producing plants and their time of blossoming would 
change all this, for be it understood, once for all, that bees do not 
make honey,they simply gather it and store it in the hive. In my local- 
ity, the first surplus honey comes from white clover in May and 
June, followed by a short spell of no honey at all, and then comes 
the basswood the last of June and first of July. Basswood blos- 
som is all over from July 10 to 15, and then comes another famine- 
In order to get white honey in my locality, the beekeeper must 
have his bees in condition to gather honey by the middle of May, 
he must put on his surplus cases as soon as the bees begin to 
build brace combs. It is my practice to tier up as fast as possi- 
ble, and sometimes I have two or three surplus cases nearly filled 
at swarming time. As soon as a new Swarm issues, I remove the 
old hive a little to one side, placing it at right angles to the old 
stand. I place the new hive exactly where the old one stood and 
place the partly filled section cases on the new hive, and in less than 
ten minutes after swarming the cases are again filled with workers, 
Each worker carries a sack full of honey with him when the swarm 
isSsues—and thirty or forty thousand bees can hold a considerable 
amount of honey. 
I have weighed new swarms that weigh eighteen to twenty pounds 
without the hive, in fact before they had been put into the hive at 
all. I have no doubt that two-thirds of this weight was the honey 
in the bees. With me bees swarm during white honey flow, and by 
following the method here described no time is lost—they go right 
on, and more cases may be added. Meantime the old hive is moved 
nearer and nearer the new hive, day by day, until they stand side by 
side and very close On the seventh day after swarming, in the 
middle of the day when the most workers are in the field, quietly 
and carefully pick up the old hive, carry it quietly and set down 
softly at the greatest distance possiblein the same yard from its for- 
mer position. Notice the effect. Almost instantly you will see a 
swarm, as it were, collecting around the place where this hive had 
stood, they are the workers returning from the field, their home is 
gone. They are confused and aimlessly fly about for a few seconds, 
and then alight at the entrance of the new hive where their mother is 
the queen then reigning; the bees have the same scent, they are 
received, deposit their load and go again to the field for more 
honey. Likewise, the workers that were in the old hive which we. 
moved so carefully do not know their home has a new location; 
they go forth but return to the old location; they are received, and 
a rousing swarm is the result. No wonder the honey sections fill 
up quickly, there are so many workers, But what happens at the 
a eT OS OTe PNET ee Oe She tb ey IES eae ae ee, OO eee 
