34 



THE AMERICAN BEE KEEPER. 



February 



be taken off while snow-white and 

 startered sections put in their places, 

 thereby causing the bees to work with 

 renewed vigor to fill up the vacant 

 space left where the full ones were 

 taken out. In this way keep taking out 

 fall sections and putting empty ones in 

 their places as long as the honey har- 

 vest lasts. Queens are to be kept con- 

 stantly on hand, so that no colony is 

 allowed to go queenless for any length 

 of time from any cause, for the queen 

 is. in fact, the producer of honey, as 

 has been shown above. Store honey 

 in a dry. warm room, in such a shape 

 that it can be penetrated by the fumes 

 of burning sulphur, should the larva 

 of the wax moth be troublesome, and 

 after it has sufficiently evaporated. 

 crate it in nice twenty-pound crates 

 for market. See that your bees have 

 enough honey and are properly pre- 

 pared for winter, and then you can 

 look back over the year with pleasure. 

 In short, do things at the right time 

 and in the right place, leaving no 

 "stone" unturned that win produce one 

 ponnd more of honey. Don't forget to 

 read The American Bee Keeper acd 

 other pape'<; on bees, so as to keep 

 posted on ?M of the improvements of 

 the times and if you can add your 

 mite of kT'owledge to these columns. 

 don't be hpckwa'-d in doing so. And 

 now I have kept till tbp ^?st the most 

 important item of the whole, which is 

 that you «?houM have a tho'-nugh 

 knowledee of the locality in which vou 

 reside a« to when its hnnpv producing 

 flora open*?. Many bee-keepers do not 

 »eem to re?l'ze the imports "cp of th's. 

 as their actions show, for if they did 

 we sbou'd not so often hear of those 

 who delayed putting on the surplus ar- 

 rangemept ti'l the best part of the 

 honey seasrn was over, or of those who 

 added t.hf «urp'u8 ror-m so early in the 

 nfiAtyrm f^at their colonies were greatly 

 Injured b'- allowing the heat wh'ch is 

 «o nfrf.f^.fH'^y for brood rearing in the 

 early part of the season, to escane into 

 the upper story. All work with the 



bees, to be successfully done, should 

 be done with an eye open to the prob- 

 able time of the blossoming of the main 

 honey plants in our locality. For in- 

 stance, if white clover is our main 

 honey crop, we must commence opera- 

 tions with the bees at least six weeks 

 previous to its blossoming in order to 

 insure a good yield from it. for it takes 

 at least six weeks to build up a colony 

 so it will be able to do the best work on 

 a given field of blossoms. Hence, as 

 white clover blossoms in this latitude 

 about June 16th, we must commence to 

 get our bees ready for it as early as 

 May 1st. By so doing we secure the 

 bees in time for the harvest, which 

 means success. But. supposing bass- 

 wood, which opens July 5th to 12th, to 

 be our main honey harvest, we having 

 but little white clover, not more than 

 enough to keep the bees breeding nice- 

 ly, then the commencing to work for 

 the bees for this harvest as early as 

 the first of May would be labor thrown 

 away, as well as a useless expenditu^'e 

 of bcney used in producing bees to loaf 

 around waiting for the harvest. What 

 man is there having a field of wheat to 

 cut. reouir'nc the labor of twenty men 

 to harvest the same, who hires these 

 men two weeks previous to the time 

 the grain is ripe? When shall we learn 

 to use common sense in regard to bees 

 as we do in other things? For a man 

 to talk of getting his bees strong and 

 readv to swarm in .April by means of 

 artificial heat in this latitude, as some 

 have, shows a lack of good common 

 sense en this point. Again, if our 

 bees are weak in the spring and we do 

 not get them ready for the harvest un- 

 til after that harvest is over, they be- 

 come merely consumers, instead of 

 producers, or worse than useless. It 

 would belike the man hiring his twenty 

 men to harvest his wheat after it had 

 become ripe and spoiled on the g''ound. 

 Thus it will be seen that to be the 

 most successful we must have a full 

 force of bees just in the right time to 

 take advantage of the harvest. In or- 



