384 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



hurt them to be robbed entirely. If a storm 

 comes up we must feed a little back. Next 

 the Norway maple blooms; if we have none 

 we should make arrangements to have them 

 at once, and there is 2 weeks of the best houey 

 harvest of the year from it. 



From these sources we ought to be able to 

 extract at least 2U fbs. three times from each 

 hive, and much more can be done if all things 

 are favorable. By emptying the honey every 

 few days we will give the queen an advantage 

 and the hive will all the time be growing 

 stronger. 



In this connection we must digress to say 

 that as early in the season as we are able to 

 get the queens, we must re-queen all our 

 stocks. We will find great advantage in this, 

 1st, because when driven under high pressure 

 no queen will be as lertile the second year as 

 necessary, and, it will prevent constantly 

 renewed crops of drones which will stick by 

 us by this system till the last minute of the 

 season, but with young queens will disappear 

 quickly and no more will be produced. 3rd, 

 although some have found that re-queening 

 did hot prevent the swarming fever, yet I be- 

 lieve it has a powerful tendency that way. if 

 we can buy tliese queens and all others that 

 we need through the year at SI or even $1.50 

 apiece, we belter do it. Nobody in a good 

 honey region can attbrd to raise queens at 

 that price by ordinary process. 



Fifteen years ago some one made the dis- 

 covery that the fertilization of the queen 

 could be confined to one of 3 or 4 selected 

 drones, and the method has been _tested and 

 practised unilbrmly with various' modifica- 

 tions by some who have been ambitious of 

 having fine stock. With the fogy method 

 still persisted in by some, we can never ex- 



Eect anything but degeneracy in an.v races of 

 ees we may secure. How long would it take 

 the finest and most valuable breed of fowls to 

 degenerate Into the scrubbiest dunghills if 

 turned loose to mix indiscriminately? No 

 other animals cultivated are allowed to mate 

 with such an entire contempt for conse- 

 quences as are bees, while there is no more 

 necessity for this looseness than with any- 

 other animal. I believe that there are pos- 

 sibilities of improvement to the intelligent 

 queen breeder which we now have but little 

 .conception, and that he who will not through 

 prejudice or cannot through ignorance ob- 

 serve the same principles of selection with 

 his queens as are practised with other stock 

 will soon find his •'occupation gone." 



But to return from this digression. The 

 harvest from the fruit trees and the Norway 

 maple is beginning to fail. We now have our 

 colonies strong and furnished with young 

 queens. We will now let the bees fill up their 

 hives with honey and cap it over to keep. By 

 the time they have done this the first honey 

 drouth will have commenced There will be 

 only scattered llowers of various kinds in the 

 fields, and even if iliey secrete honey the bees 

 will not work on them to any extent, lor it is 

 their nature to require large fields of flowers 

 ot the same kind. This drouth will be but 

 short, probably about the la>l week in May or 

 the first in June in this region. We have 

 very much more honey than we would have 

 secured if we had attempted to have the bees 

 store it as they gathered it, in surplus boxes 

 of any kind. They would have hesltateu till 

 the harvest was nearly past to begin in such 

 boxes, if they had commenced at all, and 

 then worked leisurely in building comb and 

 filling it, but would have been hindering the 

 queen all the time, by filling cells with honey 

 that ought to be filled with brood. Our hives 

 would not have been more than half as strong 

 as they are now, and besides we have kept 

 this great number of bees driven all the time 

 with the greatest anxiety to fill their hive, in 

 which they have not succeeded but at the 

 very last, and consequently ttiey have been 

 excited to the greatest exertion, and have all 

 the time done their "level best." No time has 

 been lost in building comb, and no bee has 



been kept inside the hive for that purpose 

 when it .should have been in the field. 



There can be no question but that a hive of 

 bees will gather from 3 to 5 times as much 

 honey, according to the season and the rapid- 

 ity of the yield, thus, when the extractor is 

 used freely as they would if put into surplus 

 boxes. This honey has been standing open in 

 jars or barrels, protected from dirt and insects 

 of all kind. It is not in very good shape for 

 market. It isn't so nice to take nor will it 

 bring so good a price as comb honey. We 

 have quantities of bees and they are idle; let 

 us set them to work by feeding back thin 

 honey and make them put it inlo surplus 

 boxes or frames. For this purpose let us take 

 out the combs on both sides till we come to 

 the brood nest, and extract the lioney from 

 them and hang them away in a tight box 

 where we will be able to fumigate them oc- 

 casionally with sulphur. Inio the place of 

 these combs removed we will put the surplus 

 arrangement, and some large feeders into 

 which we will pour our honey as fast as they 

 will take it. 



Now they are excited again, and won't 

 hesitate to begin in boxes, but will work as if 

 their lives depended upon it, building comb, 

 packing away the honey and capping it over. 

 We mu&t be on the watch and take it away as 

 fast as they get through with it, and give 

 them more empty room. They'll be too busy 

 to think of swarming, and they will give us 

 no trouble in that way. 



One objects that it will take too much of 

 this honey to feed the brood. It will be suf- 

 ficent answer to this objection, that it is an 

 axiom that it will always pay to feed all the 

 brood you can ever get started— the more the 

 better. 8ome might think that if bees are 

 fed thus rapidly they would store the honey 

 in the cells in the middle of the brood nest as 

 fast as the brood hatched, and thus weaken 

 the colony. This is not my experience. If 

 we give them room enough on the side of the 

 brood nest to build new comb they will store 

 the houey there while the interior of the hive 

 will be left to the queen who will be stimu- 

 lated all the time and hence laj' more eggs 

 than she would it no honey were coming in. 

 By the time our honey is all in boxes, the 

 summer harvest is upon us. 



Let us proceed as before— extract every 3 

 days or oftener— till the harvest .shows signs 

 of failing. Then let the bees fill up again to 

 keep. This will jbring us, in this region, to 

 about the middle of Jul.v. Now there will be 

 a long drouth, during which we can work our 

 bees agiiin to good advantage, putting their 

 extracted honey into combs lor market. They 

 will probably have it all finished before any 

 fall harvest comes on. If they have any time 

 to spare, we can employ them most profitably 

 by giving them comb foundation to chew out, 

 to make as many addition il combs as pos- 

 sible for use next spring. We will soon come 

 to estimate our increase, not so much by the 

 new stocks we make as by the number of new 

 combs we have emptied and ready lor build- 

 ing up our stocks in the spring. While they 

 are chewing out the combs we must feed 

 them a little sweetened water to keep the 

 queen laying, so that she will fill the new 

 combs with brood as fast as made, and that 

 will be very rapidly— one about every 3 days— 

 as sutticient material is furni.>hed them in the 

 loundation to lengthen out the cells. If we 

 want any increase of stocks, now is a good 

 time to make tliem. Let us take out two 

 combs from each of 4 hives, and put empty 

 foundation in their place. Set the 8 frames 

 removed covered with the bees Into a new 

 hive, close it and immediately release at the 

 entrance, a laying queen obtained in time to 

 be ready. While they are all confused they 

 will not fight each other nor disturb the 

 queen. You will never lose a queen this way. 

 If we get more frames than we can use in our 

 hives, we can take out some of the outside 

 ones, which will contain no brood, extract 

 their honey and hang away till next spring. 



