December, 1908. 



>^ American Hae Joarnal 



How Much Honey Does a 



Colony of Bees Consume 



During a Year ? 



BY ADRIAN CETAZ. 



In a preceding contribution I stated 

 tbat a colony of bees consumes 150 

 pounds of honey every year. I sup- 

 pose that all those who read it thought 

 it was an extravagant estimate. I think 

 Etoolittle puts it at 60 pounds, but I 

 don't know on what grounds he bases 

 his opinion. I rather think that 150 

 pounds is an entirely too small esti- 

 mate — I mean for a strong colony. Evi- 

 dently the amount must vary between 

 very wide limits, according to the 

 strength of the colony, the climate, the 

 duration and strength of the flow, and 

 many other conditions. That amount 

 can be considered as made up of several 

 parts: 



1st. To keep the bees alive. 



2d. To furnish the heat necessary to 

 carry on the work inside of the hive, 

 especially the brood-rearing. 



3d. To produce the wax. 



4th. To rear the brood. 



Keeping the Bees Alive. 



How much does it take to keep the 

 bees alive and at work? Just now I 

 can find but two experiments made in 

 that line. The first by Mr. Sylviac 

 (L'Apiculteur, Aug., 1903). A nucleus 

 of about J/2-pound weight was wintered 

 in a bee-house successfully. The winter 

 happened to be very mild. The honey 

 consumed was 0.028 gram per bee every 

 day. (The American pound equals 452 

 grams.) That is enormous. There may 

 be a mistake in the figures. But never- 

 theless the fact might be accounted for 

 by considering that the bees being so 

 few had to consume an exceptionally 

 large amount of honey to keep them- 

 selves warm. 



The other is by Mr. Dumont (L'Api- 

 culteur, November, 1902). He kept bees 

 in a room at the ordinary temperature 

 without rearing" brood or building comb, 

 and found that they consumed only 

 0.0097 gram per day each. The aver- 

 age weight of the bees was 0.0988 

 each. That would give a daily con- 

 sumption of one-tenth of the weight 

 of the bees. Or for a colony of 40,000 

 bees, nearly a pound every day. 



The Heat of the Colony. 



The amount of honey consumed to 

 keep the inside of the hive or the clus- 

 ter sufficiently warm nuist be exceed- 

 ingly variable, from nothing in very 

 warm weather to probably a very 

 large amount in cool weather, but I do 

 not know where to find any informa- 

 tion on the subject. I tried once to 

 calculate it on a mathematical basis, by 

 computing the amount of heat pro- 

 duced by the combustion (for it is 

 really a combustion) of a given quan- 

 tity of honey, taking into account the 

 amount of carlion contained, but the 

 results were too unsatisfactory. 



Wax-Production. 



The wax-production is another va- 

 riable quantify. H a swarm, natural 



or artificial, lias to build its brood-nest, 

 that means something like 3 or 4 pounds 

 of wax at least. In weighing the wax 

 from full sections of honey, I find one 

 ounce of wax to each section. Some 

 one has reported only half an ounce, 

 but I don't know whether the capping 

 was included or not. A surplus of 4 

 pounds per day would require J4-pounci 

 of wax, or at least ^ii. But the wax 

 necessary to cap the brood, repair the 

 combs, etc., in the broodnest, would 

 yet have to be added, so J4-pound is 

 certainly a low estimate. 



How many pounds of honey does it 

 take to produce one pound of wax is 

 the next thing to ascertain. The ex- 

 periments made by feeding confined 

 bees are not reliable. The bees wer? 

 usually too few, hence a large part 

 of the honey was consumed to keep 

 up the temperature of the cluster. The 

 amount consumed necessarily included 

 what was needed to support the life 

 of the bees. The experiments usually 

 lasted only a few days. Now it takes 

 the bees about 3 days to start the 

 wax-secretion, so the first 3 days of 

 feeding should not have been counted. 

 Such experiments are valueless. 



During 1901 and 1902 Messrs. Syl- 

 viac, Maujean, and Devauchelle (L'Api- 

 culteur and La Revue Internationale), 

 and others, tackled the question from 

 another standpoint. The principle is 

 this: During the first 2 or 3 days, after 

 a swarm is hived, quite an amount of 

 comb is built, but very few bees go to 

 the field. Assuming that the few bees 

 which go to the field bring enough to 

 sustain the life of the swarm, assuming 

 that the wax-scales carried by the bees 

 when the swarm was hived are offset by 

 what the bees may have on their bodies 

 at the end of the 3 days, the amount 

 of honey that the bees had in their sacs 

 when hived may fairly represent what 

 is necessary to produce the amount of 

 comb built during that time. Quite a 

 number of experiments were made, and 

 the results were often quite wide apart. 



Considerable discussion took place as 

 to the reliability of the process and the 

 corrections to be introduced. The up- 

 shot was that it takes from 2 to 4 

 pounds of honey to produce one pound 

 of wax under such conditions. 



During the discussion, *Mr. Maupy 

 made the remark that a pound of wax 

 contains 0.82 pound of carbon (chem- 

 ically speaking), while a pound of Iioney 

 contains only 0.28. Hence it takes at 

 least nearly 3 pounds of honey to fur- 

 nish the carbon necessary to a pound 

 of wax. 



So far as the transformation of honey 

 into wax is concerned, I presume that 

 these 3 pounds are all that is needed. 

 But the added warmth necessary is to 

 be considered. Let us consider a colony 

 without super. Then only the brood- 

 nest has to be kept warm. Add a su- 

 per, then this super nuist he kept warm 

 enough to permit wax-secreting and 

 comb-building. This means an addi- 

 tional consumption of honey, which in 

 cool weather may be considerable. 



Prof. Bruner, of the National Agri- 

 cultural School of Cordova, Argentina, 

 made a specialty of wax-production 

 (L'Apiculteur, February, 1904). The 

 wax sells there at 54 cents a pound, 



while dark honey can be bought in any 

 amount at 5 cents. The process con- 

 sists in feeding the bees with the honey, 

 cutting the combs as fast as built (ex- 

 cept of course what is necessary for 

 brood-rearing) and return to the bees 

 what honey may be in the combs. It 

 takes 68 pounds of honey to produce 

 10 pounds of wax. But that 68 pounds 

 includes what the bees consume for liv- 

 ing, brood-rearing, etc. To that should 

 be added what the bees may bring in 

 from the field. 



Brood-Rearing. 



The Hon. R. L. Taylor made some 

 experiments to find out how much honey 

 the bees consume to produce a pound 

 of bees. The plan was to use 2 colo- 

 nies of the same strength (ascertained 

 by weighing the bees), let one rear the 

 brood and take it away when capped, and 

 the other deprived of the eggs as fast 

 as hatched. Other precautions were 

 taken so as to make the comparison 

 fairly good between the surplus ob- 

 tained by the 2 colonies. The result 

 was that over 2 pounds of honey were 

 spent to produce one pound of bees. 

 For different reasons Mr. Taylor thinks 

 that 2 pounds is more nearly right than 

 the actual amount deducted from the 

 experiment. This being the case, a col- 

 ony producing 1,000 bees a day would 

 use half a pound of honey every day to 

 feed them. 



Feeding Back. 



Perhaps feeding back may give us a 

 better insight into the question than 

 any other means at our disposal. Here 

 the results vary widely. Dr. A. B. Ma- 

 son in a convention said that he had 

 once obtained more honey than he had 

 fed. At the opposite end of the row 

 we find Niver who fed 30 pounds of 

 honey and got 3 sections, and then 

 quit, and stayed quit since. 



The only careful experiments we have 

 in that line are those made by the Hon. 

 R. L. Taylor, in the years 1893, 1894, 

 1895, and 1896 (Bee-keepers' Review 

 for those years). The experiments gen- 

 erally lasted 4 weeks and were made in 

 August, some began in July. Account 

 was taken of the honey in the brood- 

 cliamber as well as of that in the sections, 

 and careful investigations made. The 

 honey consumed by the bees varied gen- 

 erally between i 1-3 and 2 pounds daily; 

 in one case it went as high as 2 2-3 

 pounds. 



These figures are rather too low tlian 

 too high. The colonies were small, only 

 one Heddon story, except in 1895 when 

 2 stories were used. No account is tak- 

 en of what honey may have been brought 

 from the field. In a few cases, the in- 

 crease of weight of the brood-nest which 

 was counted as honey may have been 

 to some extent due to an excess of 

 brood. All these considerations, if tak- 

 en into account, would increase the 

 amount of honey consumed by the bees. 

 It may be added that the bees, when 

 well fed, usually neglect the field-work 

 almost entirely. 



Conclusions. 



Taking all into consideration, it seems 

 to me that during the working season 

 a good colony must consume at least 



