154 



THE A MICHIGAN BEE-KEEPER. 



there should only He a .small portion 

 of drone comb left in each hi.vr, and 

 therein - prevent an overproduction of 

 drones. 



The workers live from thirr.y to one 

 hundred and twenty days. Upon 

 them devolves the duty of building 

 combs, supplying the hives with pro- 

 visions, and protecting the stores. The 

 comb grows in rings on the abdomen 

 of the workers. Each worker is an 

 undeveloped female, and would have 

 been a queen had the cell in which 

 they were reared been large enough. 

 The habits and instincts at' the work- 

 ers are Loo well known to be further 

 discussed. From the time the egg is 

 laid until the hatching of the bee is, 

 for the worker, about twenty-one days; 

 the drone, twenty-four days; and the 

 queen, sixteen days. In this climate 

 they breed the entire year, bnt in 

 colder countries but little brood is 

 found in the winter. 



When the honey season sets in, you 

 may naturally expect swarming to fol- 

 low, and after the first swarm issues 

 others should be prevented from issu- 

 ing for the time being, by watching, 

 and when the first queen-cell is about 

 to hatch, destroy the others; otherwise 

 they may swarm too much and become 

 weak and, without great care, fall a 

 prey to the moth. But the system of 

 dividing colonies is considered better 

 than natural .-warming, for by this 

 system the loss of bees by absconding 

 is obviated. The best method of di- 

 viding is to take from one to three 

 frames of brood from different hives. 

 according to strength and liability to 

 swarm, putting empty frames in their 

 places in the old hives, then place the 

 brood so taken in an empty hive, and, 

 near the middle of a nice warm day, 



remove some strong colony from its- 

 stand and place the new one where 

 the old one stood, so as to catch what, 

 bees are in the fie'ds on their return. 

 They can now be left to rear a queen 

 themselves, or be given a queen or 

 queen-cell from a queen-rearing 

 h i ve . — Bee-Keeper* Magazine , ( b'la.J 



FEEDING BKES CANDY. -MAKING A SUCCESS 

 OF OUT Door. FEEDING 



If there is one thing more than an- 

 other about beedceeping in which I 

 feel that I have not made as profitable 

 a use as I might have of the knowledge 

 I possessed, it is in the matter of 

 feeding I have always been a full 

 believer, theoretically, in the advan- 

 tages to be derived from feeding, but 

 somehow I have often neglected to put 

 this belief into practice as fully as I 

 should have. When 1 had only 

 forty or fifty colonies of bees I fed 

 them whenever they needed it, and I 

 found it profitable. But I got honey 

 in those days. When the number of 

 my colonies got up into the hundreds, 

 and my time was more fully occupied, 

 and while the increased expenses and 

 poor seasons kept my pocket-book 

 light, feeding was more neglected, and 

 done only when it was necessary. 

 Some of my best customers, too, were 

 so particular about the purity of the 

 honey they bought and so searching; 

 in their enquiries as to whether 1 fed 

 my bees anything, that I considered 

 it worth something to be able to say 

 honestly, and prove it if necsssary, 

 that I never fed my bees anything 

 but honey and very little of that. 



Some of the most satisfactory feed- 

 ing I ever did was by the use of a 

 candy made of equal parts of grape 

 sugar and cane sugar with about ten 



