302 FEEDING. 



a healthy condition on honey alone, but cannot on 

 pollen. Pollen, being stored in combs with honey, 

 needs no preparation for the use of the bees ; hence 

 the directions given for feeding honey in the comb 

 apply also to pollen. 



SUGAR. 



Sugar* of the best quality is the cheapest for this 

 purpose. Refined yellow is to be preferred to any 

 other, as it costs less, and is equally as good for the 

 bees as the white crushed. Sugar containing a large 

 amount of gum is unfit to feed to bees. 



For feeding in the hive, dissolve one pound of sugar 

 in one pound of water, but for promiscuous feeding, 

 use one and one-eighth pounds of water to one of 

 sugar. Where a large quantity is to be used, it may 

 be dissolved to the consistency of syrup and then re- 

 duced with water as above. 



* " Experiments have proved the excellence of sugar as a sub- 

 stitute for honey, and in some instances its superiority for the 

 formation of wax. It might otherwise have heen supposed that 

 bees might form comb from some particles of wax accidentally 

 present in the honey, and that these afforded the pabulum for this 

 secretion. To prove, therefore, that the saccharine principle alone 

 enabled the bees to produce wax, being still confined, they were 

 supplied with a syrup made with Canary sugar and water, and at 

 the same time comparative experiments were made in another 

 hive where the bees were fed on honey and water. The syrup-fed 

 bees produced wax sooner and more abundantly than the honey- 

 fed bees. Another fact was also incontrovertibly elicited, namely : 

 that in the old hives the honey is warehoused, and that in the new 

 ones it is consumed, then transmuted into wax." Bevan. 



