90 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



I remove the hi.ve, place a feeder with 

 10 lbs of warm feed on the stand, then 

 put the colony on the feeder. The 

 feed being warm, and only five-six- 

 teenths of an inch from the bottom of 

 the frames, it warms up the whole 

 cluster at once. Then the bees will 

 rush into the feeders and take up 10 

 lbs on cold nights when they would not 

 look into top feeders. I then pack 

 each colony in a single case with four 

 inches of leaves on each side front and 

 back, and six inches on top. I make 

 the entrance three-eighths high by 

 three inches long. I see that every 

 colony is real strong in bees before I 

 fit them up, and if not I double (hem 

 up until (.hey are. In warm evenings 

 in spring I lake out the division boards 

 and give each colony its full set of 

 combs. The combs that I put in in 

 spring will all have more or less honey 

 in them. I then carefully let every 

 colony alone until the fruit bloom is 

 over unless the weather lias been un- 

 favorable during fruit bloom. By 

 crowding my bees on six solid, sealed 

 combs of the best quality of stores I 

 can bring {'wry colony into spring all 

 right. Hut if I were to let ray colon- 

 ies take their chances with their full 

 set of combs I would meet with more 

 or less losses, because in cold winters 

 the bees would be too much spread out 

 by having their full sets of combs; and 

 if January was' very mild, the strong 

 colonies with young queens and empty 

 combs in the centre would start too 

 much brood, which would completely 

 break up the cluster by causing the 

 bees to care for so much brood at a 

 time when they should have been at 

 rest. When the cluster is broken up 

 by caring for so much brood in Janu- 

 ary, the bees will become very restless, 



consume larger quantities of their 

 stores, and in spring will dwindle. Be- 

 tween fruit bloom and clover I see 

 that there is plenty of unsealed honey 

 in the combs, because brood is never as 

 well led when all the unsealed stores are 

 used up. It doesn't matter how much 

 sealed honey colonies have between 

 fruit bloom and clover, as it is the 

 unsealed stores that do the business at 

 that time of the year. In favorable 

 weather the hees will gather abun- 

 dance from fruit bloom and dande- 

 lions to feed the brood well, and keep 

 a large quantity of unsealed honey 

 on hand. Then right in the middle 

 of it all, we sometimes get a frost, fol- 

 lowed by rainy weather, which cuts 

 off the honey flow so suddenly that 

 the bees have to use up the unsealed 

 stores at once to feed the brood. 

 When the unsealed stores are used up 

 so suddenly by the bees having to feed 

 it to such a large quantity of larva 3 , 

 they will not uncap the sealed stores 

 fast enough to keep pace with the 

 amount of larva 3 that needs feeding. 

 Then if the weather keeps backward 

 after that, so that the bees get little 

 or no honey, they will then begin to 

 drag out some of the larv:e, and a lit- 

 tle later on we find dead brood which 

 which will be starved brood caused 

 by a sudden closing of a honey flow 

 at a time when the bees had a large 

 quantity of brood to feed. And this 

 larva 1 that is lost in many localities at 

 such times is the very life blood of 

 the honey business, because that 

 larvae saved would be the very bees 

 that would gather our honey crops. 

 At such times I put on top storeys, 

 and in the evenings uncap and put 

 the combs in them so as to keep up 

 the honey flow by supplying the bees 



