34 



THE AMERIOAN BEE-KEEPER. 



ten pounds of section honey from a 

 colony per day. If the hive is full of 

 brood and bees, and honey is plenty in 

 the flowers. Now I will suppose that 

 instead of working as given above, we 

 let our bees take care of themselves, 

 leaving weak colonies unprotected, 

 and if any bees have died during the 

 winter, we leave their stores for the 

 other bees to carry away. After car- 

 rying off this, they will be apt to rob 

 our weak colonies, and thus those 

 which survive will have their combs 

 full of honey instead of brood. Soon 

 the willows blossom, then the apple 

 trees, and thus the hive is kept full of 

 honey. Too much stores in May and 

 June, will just as surely spoil a colony 

 for section honey, as it will to keep 

 them so short of stores that they keep 

 their brood in check all the spring. 

 There is no such thing as having the 

 combs full of honey during the fore- 

 part of the season and then having 

 sections filled with clover honey, for 

 where would the bees come from to 

 gather said honey ? Gallup once said : 

 " We must never allow the bees to get 

 in advance of the queen, for if we do, 

 the prosperity of the colony is check- 

 ed at once ; that is, if the bees are al- 

 lowed to fill the combs with honey in 

 the spring, before the queen has filled 

 them with brood, the colony will be 

 an unprofitable one." Honey cannot 

 be obtained without bees. The nine 

 Gallup frames which I use in a hive 

 during June gives about 45,000 work- 

 er bees every twenty-one days, and a 

 queen that is good for anything, work- 

 ed on the plan given in this article, 

 will keep the frames filled with brood 

 after they are once full, till the honey 

 season begins to draw to a close, pro- 

 viding that the sections are put on at 



the proper time ; but give the same 

 queen only 5,000 bees, and these old 

 ones, or field workers, and they will 

 keep the combs so filled with honey 

 that no surplus will be obtained. If 

 our hives contain 5,000 bees on the 

 middle of April, with ten pounds of 

 honey, they are what I call good col- 

 onies. Now, if we should give them 

 what honey or syrup they could carry 

 during the last part of April and the 

 month of May, instead of using up the 

 ten pounds in brood rearing, they 

 would store the food in brood cells in 

 addition to the ten pounds already 

 there, so we would have about 5,000 

 bees in our hives all summer. Thus 

 it will be seen, it is the bees we want 

 in our hives the forepart of the season 

 instead of honey. If, by the process 

 given, our bees run short of stores, of 

 course we must feed them, and money 

 thus spent in feeding will return a 

 large interest, if the season is anything 

 like favorable. There is no time in 

 the whole year that it pays as well to 

 put a little money in feed for bees, 

 where they need it, as it does at this 

 time, yet how few seem to realize it. 

 I often hear it said if the bees cannot 

 get a living after the first flowers come , 

 they can be left to die. No greater 

 mistake could possibly exist. As soon 

 as any of the sections are filled take 

 them off before they are soiled, and 

 before the bees become crowded for 

 room, putting in sections, nicely filled 

 with thin foundation to take their 

 places, and thus avoid the difficulty so 

 often experienced, of getting bees to 

 work in a second set of sections after 

 a full set has been taken off. As the 

 season draws to a close, place the un- 

 finished sections together, and as near 

 the brood as possible, contracting the 



