THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW, 



the summer stands vary so greatly that It is 

 ridiculous to presume to lay down any spe- 

 cific rules for bringing the bees to spring in 

 a prosperous condition. 



However, as I mentally review what I have 

 written, the fancy comes to me to describe, 

 before closing, as nearly as possible, the 

 conditions and methods 1 would employ to 

 secure perfect hibernation. First, I must 

 see that each colony has thirty pounds or 

 more of good, healthy honey or sugar syrup 

 stored in the combs and well sealed. Then 

 I desire a prolific young (jueen whose colony 

 has reared a fair amount of young bees dur- 

 ing September, which bees should be clus- 

 tered compactly in a well formed brood 

 nest. Now, if wintered in the cellar they 

 should be placed therein about Nov. 10th to 

 20th. The cellar should be quite dry and by 

 meftns of large ventilators or the porosity of 

 the walls the air should be kept pure and 

 sweet and uniformly at a temperature of 

 about 4r>°. 



If wintered on their summer stands they 

 should be in chaff packed hfves with good 

 roofs that will exclude the rain and snow 

 and admit air to keep the packing dry. 

 Then I must hope for not too severe a winter 

 but one admitting of several opportunities 

 for flights. 



But with all these conditions apparently 

 complied with we may fail because of our 

 imperfect knowledge or the errors of our 

 judgment. 



Ageio. College, Mich., May 11, 1892. 



Feeding Bees Candy. — Making a Success of 

 Out Door Feeding. 



.T. A. GREEN. 



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: F there is one 

 i thing more than 

 another about bee 

 keeping in which 

 I feel that I have 

 not made a=i profit- 

 able a use as I 

 might have of the 

 knowledge I pos- 

 sessed, it is in the 

 matter of feeding. 

 I have always been 

 a full believer, theoretically, in the advan- 

 tages to be derived from feeding, but some- 

 how I have often neglected to put this belief 



into practice as fully as I should have. 

 When I had only forty or fifty colonies of 

 bees I fed them whenever they needed it, 

 and I found it profitable. But I got honey 

 in those days. When the number of my 

 colonies got up into the hundreds, and my 

 time was more fully occupied, while the 

 increased expenditures and poor seasons 

 kept my pocket-book light, feeding was 

 more neglected, and done only when it was 

 necessary. Some of my best customers, too, 

 were so particular about the purity of the 

 honey they bought and so searching in their 

 inquiries as to whether I fed my bees any- 

 thing, that I considered it worth something 

 to be able to say honestly, and prove it if 

 necessary, that I never fed my bees anything 

 but honey and very little of that. 



Some of the most satisfactory feeding I 

 ever did was by the use of a candy made of 

 equal parts of grape sugar and cane sugar 

 with about ten per cent, of flour stirred in, 

 this kind of candy not requiring any cook- 

 ing. This was moulded into thin cakes and 

 a cake kept constantly over the frames of 

 each colony, tucked up warm. These bees 

 built up finely and were in unusually good 

 condition when the honey flow came. My 

 hives are not adapted to such feeding now, 

 and a fault which I have to find with the 

 modern style of hive with its board cover 

 fitting down close to the tops of the frames, 

 is that it is not as well adapted to feeding in 

 small quantities within the hive as the old 

 style with cloth covering and a space above. 



The large Heddon feeder as used on the 

 new hive is by far the best for feeding large 

 quantities of feed, as is needed in feeding 

 for winter, but I have not found it so well 

 adapted to feeding small colonies in the 

 spring. 



My favorite way of feeding in the spring 

 has always been to feed out of doors. This 

 has some very serious disadvantages, it is 

 true, but it is so much less labor than other 

 methods that this alone is almost enough to 

 make me prefer it. It has always seemed to 

 me, too, that feed fed in this way did the 

 bees more good than when it was fed in the 

 hives. Any kind of refuse honey is easily 

 fed in this way. We have often been told 

 that it was unsafe to feed honey at a time 

 when bees are inclined to rob. You can do 

 it with perfect safety at any time provided 

 you take the precaution to thin it down 

 sufficiently. If the bees work on it more 

 vigorously than you like, just add a little 



