J 908 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



29 



7. To gather a collection of home and for- 

 eign honey. 



8. To study every thing bearing on the 

 improvement of the industry. 



The first item ought to interest the Ger- 

 mans just over the border, for they have 

 severely condemned our American bees. 

 Was it prejudice? 



LATE FALL FEEDING. 



Its Advantages; How 200 Colonies were 

 Fed a Sufficient Amount of Warm Syrup 

 to Last them Through the Winter; Why 

 Sugar Syrup Should be Substituted for 

 Honey. 



BY E. W. ALEXANDER. 



It is only a few years since the necessity 

 of feeding bees in the fall was looked upon 

 as the result of inexcusable negligrnce in 

 the management. But time and experience 

 are changing many methods, and we are 

 fast learning that bee-keeping to-day is a 

 very different business from that of years 

 ago. 



Last winter, while visiting one of the most 

 extensive honey-producers of New York, he 

 told me that he and his father had for sever- 

 al years fed every one of the 150U or 2000 

 colonies they had, just before putting them 

 away for winter. They gave each one about 

 20 lbs. of sugar syrup without regard to the 

 amount of honey the hives contained. This 

 syrup was made from granulated sugar in 

 the proportion of 2 lbs. of sugar to 1 of wa- 

 ter. This was boiled until well dissolved, 

 when about J lb. of tartaric acid was added 

 to every 100 lbs. of sugar. From their ex- 

 tensive experience in feeding tons of sugar 

 to thousands of colonies they told me it was 

 a much safer and a better winter food than 

 any honey their bees had ever gathered. 



The principal fault with all honey that I 

 am acquainted with, except basswood, is 

 that it contains some pollen that is carried 

 into the honey-cups of the flowers by the 

 wind or by insects, and then it is taken out 

 with the nectar and becomes mixed with the 

 honey, where it has a very injurious effect 

 on the bees during the winter. This pollen 

 is very noticeable in our large honey-tanks 

 when they are nearly full of extracted hon- 

 ey, as it rises to the top, forming a scum 

 sometimes two inches thick. This, when 

 mixed with the winter stores, is quite likely 

 to cause dysentery before the bees are taken 

 from their winter quarters in the spring. 



Now, with sugar syrup, since there is no 



foreign substance it is practically all di- 

 gested, and the bees come from their winter 

 quarters dry and clean, leaving no marks on 

 the snow or their hives after their long con- 

 finement. This one advantage derived from 

 sugar syrup, of itself alone, would far more 

 than pay for the trouble of late fall feeding. 



But there is another advantage gained by 

 substituting sugar syrup in the place of hon- 

 ey. If it requires about 20 lbs. of honey to 

 winter a colony, this additional surplus 

 would be worth at wholesale about $L50. 

 Now, in its place, if we use 14 lbs. of sugar 

 to make about 21 lbs. of very thick syi'up, 

 costing about 75 cents, or half the amount 

 the honey will bring, there is a saving of 

 over $400 in an apiary of 600 colonies. 

 Besides the bees are given a much safer and 

 better winter food. 



We have been so well pleased with our 

 experience along this line, and the experi- 

 ence of these noted bee-keepers, that we are 

 now wintering some 200 colonies almost 

 wholly on sugar syi'up. 



As many readers of Gleanings would like 

 to know how we feed such a large amount 

 of syrup in cool weather I will briefly state 

 how it was done. 



The first important part is a convenient 

 feeder, one that will hold at one time all the 

 feed necessary for one colony. This we 

 made by taking 50 of our outside telescope 

 caps, having a rim 2 inches deep all around. 

 The inside of these we gave a good coating 

 of hot paraftine wax, which prevents the 

 syrup from penetrating into the wood, and 

 also stops leaking. These caps are i inch 

 larger each way inside than the hive is out- 

 side. 



We put in a suitable float to prevent the 

 bees from drowning in the warm syrup, and 

 also put two cleats across inside the feeder 

 for the hive to rest on; then about sundown 

 we took these 50 cap feeders and set one 

 properly leveled up near each hive we want- 

 ed to feed. With the syrup as hot as the 

 bees could stand we poured into the feeder 

 the amount we thought the colony required, 

 then, carefully lifting the hive from its bot- 

 tom-board, we set it inside the feeder direct- 

 ly over the warm syrup, and the job was 

 done. The bees at once went down into the 

 feeder and removed all the syrup long before 

 morning; so the next day all we had to do 

 was to set the hives back on their bottom- 

 boards and place the 50 feeders ready to feed 

 50 more colonies the following night. After 

 we had the syrup ready it required only 

 about half an hour for my son and myself to 

 feed 50 colonies. In four evenings, between 

 sundown and dark, we had the 200 colonies 

 all fed, and not a spoonful of syrup was 

 wasted nor a handful of bees lost. 



This feeding was done on quite cold frosty 

 nights about Oct. 25. 



Now, if we were feeding in early fall for the 

 purpose of brood-rearing it would be neces- 

 sary to feed much thinner syrup, and only 

 two or three pounds a day, about the same as 

 we would feed in the spring in order to stim- 

 ulate brood-rearing. 



