374 AMERICAN BEE JOURNAi-. 



supply distributed between those times. The more honey they have, or are able to 

 get from the flowers, the faster they rear brood. If there was 60 to 100 

 pounds of honey in the hive, they would use it all up in three or four months, unless 

 there was a constant and heavy supply from the outside. This season the outside 

 supply has been constant but light. This made brood-rearing of a still more exten- 

 sive.kind. To carry a large stock of brood through several days of unfavorable 

 weather, would require several pounds of honey. In this way a few days may 

 starve the brood, but not the bees. I presume the queen's work goes steadily on, 

 and the bees eat the eggs laid. When the queen is starved so as to stop depositing 

 eggs, it takes considerable time to recover, but in the starving of the brood only, as 

 soon as the clouds pass away, the brood-rearing bounces forward again with in- 

 creased activity. For a batch of brood to be starved and destroyed it divests the 

 colony of the requisite number of nurse-bees there should be a little later on. 



Eucalyptus, willows, mustard, oranges, and alfalfa represent so many honey- 

 flows, each of which in common seasons might yield from 20 to 75 pounds to the 

 colony of surplus, but this year there was scarcely one-fourth of a crop of bloom. 

 The very best colonies got ahead not over three to five pounds of honey, and then 

 came a slight dearth between. During the dearth the bees could live, but they 

 could not maintain the large stock of brood. Last week a colony might have eight 

 combs of brood, and this week little or none. We could see no future honey harvest 

 to warrant feeding such large amounts of brood, and if they were fed, it simply 

 resulted in more worthless brood. It would have been advantageous to restrict 

 brood-rearing, but this would involve a great deal of labor and expense in a system 

 of contraction. 



As the colonies since early in January have been overflowing with bees, where 

 swarms issued and were hived they nearly always had to be fed while the stock of 

 brood in th.e old hive was so dependent upon the daily gather of the bees which went 

 with the swarm that that required feeding also. The natural result of about half 

 of the swarms was to build a little comb, and after a few days abscond, and then go 

 traveling about the country, roosting on a bush or fence at night. I have had such 

 migratory swarms stay around the apiary for a whole week, taking wing every day 

 and alighting in a different place. Sometimes they would disappear from the apiary 

 for a day and then come back again. The bees seemed to leave the cluster and go 

 for loads of honey, about the same as if they were located in a hive. If honey be- 

 came very scarce, some of the bees starved, and dropped from the cluster. If honey 

 was abundant, they constructed a few combs, and were it not for the sun melting 

 such combs, there would be hundreds of colonies dwelling in the branches of trees 

 in open air. 



Of the localities here, there are the mountains where there is one main honey- 

 flow during the year ; the valley proper, where honey-yielding flowers abound all 

 the year round, and the medium or hill country. In the mountains this year it is 

 positive starvation except by constant feeding ; but in the valley the bees may be 

 able to obtain a living. In the hill country, this year, bees are as liable to starve as 

 n the mountains. In good years the hill country has not the abundant supply of 

 flora, of either valley or mountains, so that those bees would be on the verge of 

 starvation then. 



All last fall and up to about Jan. 15th I had about 40 colonies which had 40 to 

 60 pounds of honey as winter stores. Then there were some 40 others which had 

 their honey all extracted last November except 5 to 10 pounds. Neither of these 

 two lots have been helped, or had any more honey taken away, and to-day they are 

 in about equal condition as to bees, honey, brood and swarming, and only one has 

 died of starvation. Brood-rearing in the light ones was gauged by the outside 



