THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



277 



RESERVE COMBS. 



The Advantages that May Come from 

 Their Use in Spring. 



It often happens that bees are short 

 of stores in the spring-. Particularly is 

 this true with small hives. It does not 

 require so very much honey to carry 

 the beesthroucrh the v^inter, especially 

 if wintered in the cellar. According- 

 to some experiments that I once made 

 in weighing- colonies while in the 

 cellar, only about a pound of honey a 

 month is consumed until breeding be- 

 gins in the spring. Five or six pounds 

 of honey will probably be about the 

 amount of honey that an average col- 

 ono will consume while in the cellar, 

 provided all goes well, and there is no 

 premature breeding or other abnormal 

 conditions, but as soon as brood rear- 

 ing begins, stores disappear as by 

 magic. The bee-keeper may think, 

 when the colonies are first set out of 

 the cellar, that there are abundant 

 stores to carry them through — a month 

 later the bees may be on the verge of 

 starvation. At this time, or a little 

 before this time comes, is when it pays 

 to feed bees in the spring; and, for this 

 purpose, nothing is ahead of solid 

 combs of sealed honey. Sometimes it 

 seems as though the bees "took stock" 

 of the stores on hand, and guided them- 

 selves accordingly. When I visited 

 Mr. J. P. Moore, of Kentucky, last 

 spring, he told me of the bountiful 

 harvests that his bees gather in the 

 fall from asters. This honey is not 

 very good for winter stores, so the 

 brood nests are left undisturbed, with 

 their stores of clover, and the bees en- 

 couraged to store the aster honey in 

 the supers. These solid combs of aster 

 honey are kept until spring, and given 

 to the bees as fast as they can use the 

 lioney, and Mr. Moore said that one 

 would be surprised at the beneficial 

 effect of these combs of honey — colonies 

 boiling over with bees, and combs full 

 of brood at the opening of the honey 



harvest. All these things came to me 

 as I read a short editorial in the Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal of August 31st. It 

 sa3's: — 



Are you planning to have a goodly 

 number of combs of sealed honey readv 

 to give to needy colonies next spring"? 

 Perhaps it would be better not to speak 

 of giving them to needy colonies, but 

 rather to colonies that can take them. 

 A colony may have enough honey to 

 supply its wants up to the time the 

 white honey harvest begins, and the 

 beginner may think, "Well, that is all 

 that is needed. " 



There may be a good profit, however, 

 in giving combs of sealed honey, even 

 if those combs are not needed to pre- 

 vent starvation. The dark fall honey 

 is not worth as tnuch on the market as 

 the earlier light honey, and, indeed, 

 in some cases it is hardly marketable. 

 But before any of the white honey is 

 stored in supers, the bees will fill the 

 vacancy in the brood-chamber. Now, 

 suppose you have sealed combs of dark 

 honey to fill that vacancy. Every 

 pound of dark honey you thus put in 

 the brood-chamber means a pound 

 more of light honey in the super, prac- 

 tically making that dark honey of the 

 same value as the light. See the point ? 

 If you do, make preparations accord- 

 ingly. 



There is also another point that I 

 wish my friends would notice, and 

 that is, see how much of that dark 

 honey goes into the sections. You 

 know we have been told what an aw^f ul 

 sin it is to feed sugar in the spring, as 

 some of it might get into the surplus, 

 the bees carrying it there from the 

 brood nest. Now. if you feed dark 

 honey in the spring, you will be able 

 to note how much danger there is of 

 honey from the brood nest getting into 

 the supers. 



REMOVING BEES FROM THE COMBS. 



How the Work May Be Done Late in 



Autumn Without Brushing or the 



Use of Escapes. 



Getting bees oflF the combs when ex- 

 tracting must be done late in autumn 



