358 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



June, 1919 



the highest yield of the apiary. This makes 

 it difficult to measure accurately the excel- 

 lent results which have already been at- 

 tained by years of careful selection, since 

 the yield during any given season is not de- 

 termined by the number, age, and strain 

 of the workers alone, but also, to a large 

 extent, by conditions influencing the willing- 

 ness of these workers to do their utmost dur- 

 ing the honey flow. Since there is no estab- 

 lished name for this important factor in 

 honey production, we have been speaking of 

 it in our apiaries as "colony morale." Its 

 importance in honey production is probably 

 not fully appreciated. 



Conditions Depressing Colony Morale. 



Stagnation of work, or loafing, during the 

 honey flow is apparently closely associated 

 with swarming. However, some strains 

 of bees are more inclined to loaf than oth- 

 ers; colonies having old, failing queens 

 lack the energy of colonies having young, 

 vigorous queens; and the queenless colo- 

 nies, especially those hopelessly queenless, 

 are not the most vigorous workers. It is 

 also well known that anything which causes 

 discomfort within the hive, such as too 

 much heat, insufficient ventilation, or too 

 small a hive, may start loafing. Insufficient 

 room for ripening and storing of incoming 

 nectar or conditions suggesting the comple- 

 tion of the season 's work, such as sealing 

 the honey adjacent to the brood-nest before 

 super work is well under way, are highly 

 conductive to loafing. Any condition within 

 the hive which tends to check or in any way 

 interfere with the freest and fullest ex- 

 pansion of the work within the hive appar- 

 ently checks the work of the field force, and 

 when the field workers make fewer trips per 

 day to the field their presence within the 

 hive intensifies the discomfort and stagna- 

 tion of the work there. 



Conditions Increasing Colony Morale. 



Most beekeepers are familiar with the 

 character of the work done by colonies that 

 have not been checked in the free expansion 

 of their work either previous to or during 

 the honey flow. Such colonies reach the be- 

 ginning of the honey flow while still on the 

 up grade in their development and expand 

 the volume of work until well into or toward 

 the close of the honey flow. Other colonies 

 thru some fault of environment are check- 

 ed somewhere in the march of events and 

 fall behind in yield, often even with superior 

 forces at the beginning of the honey flow. 

 With such a marked difference in yield be- 

 tween ordinary work and best work, we are 

 not satisfied merely to prevent visible loaf- 

 ing, but in addition we must provide condi- 

 tions favorable to the maintenance of the 

 highest possible colony morale thruout the 

 honey flow. 



How Field Work May Be Increased, 



We have many times observed the in- 

 creased activity of the field force brought 

 about simply by the addition of an extra 

 set of empty combs to the hive. Thousands 

 of j'ounger bees immediately take possession 



of the added combs and begin to repair and 

 c'ean the cells. Usually within 15 or 20 

 minutes the rate at which workers are leav- 

 ing the hive for the fields is greatly increas- 

 ed. Just how long this impetus may last, 1 

 can not say; but, since the beginning of a 

 new job within the hive apparently stimu- 

 lates the field force to greater effort, it has 

 become a policy in our apiaries to induce the 

 beginning of new work within the hive just 

 as rapidly as can be done during the first 

 half of the honey flow. 



Beekeepers who have tried the experiment 

 of extracting all the unripe honey every few 

 days from both the supers and the brood- 

 chamber have been surprised to note the 

 increased energy with which these colonies 

 worked. In this case the bees are held con- 

 tinuously to the beginning of the season 's 

 job and apparently work with the enthusi- 

 asm which accompanies the beginning of a 

 great undertaking. If the same colonies had 

 been given a single super and no additional 

 room during a rapid honey flow, work would 

 have slowed down long before the comple- 

 tion of work in this single super, since a,fter 

 the first few days there would have been no 

 place for new work and no vacant cells for 

 ripening the incoming nectar. 



Colony morale, therefore, may be increas- 

 ed by enticing the multitude of oncoming 

 younger bees out of the brood-chamber by 

 giving them a job in comfortable and attrac- 

 tive supers. The drawing out of foundation, 

 the building of new comb, the repairing and 

 cleaning of extracting combs, the ripening 

 and moving about of the raw nectar, and 

 probably other activities within the hive 

 ^^'hen carried on under comfortable condi- 

 tions and on an extensive scale, apparently, 

 all tend to stimulate the field force to bring 

 liome more loads of nectar during the day. 

 At the same time the absence of the field 

 force from the hive during the heat of the 

 day must add greatly to the comfort of the 

 hive, thus facilitating the work and increas- 

 ing the morale of the hive workers. These 

 conditions are, of course, more easily main- 

 tained when producing extracted honey than 

 when producing comb honey. In either case 

 some modification of the well-known tiering- 

 up principle in adding supers is applicable. 

 Good Effects of Skillful Supering. 



In comb-honey production we usually give 

 each colony two comb-honey supers at the 

 time the colonies are reduced to a single 

 story just previous to the beginning of the 

 honey flow. These first supers each contain 

 a row of bait combs in the middle of the su- 

 pers to induce the bees to begin work in 

 them promptly, for with strong colonies the 

 morale is easily upset at this time unless 

 thousands of younger bees can be induced 

 to leave the brood-chamber and at once be- 

 gin work of some kind in the supers. Full 

 sheets of fresh foundation are not always 

 sufficiently attractive, under our conditions, 

 to pass safely the crisis of the first comb- 

 honey supers. 



As soon as all the foundation is drawn in 



