166 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



■care a good crop of stravvbenies, 

 replied: First, give them plenty 

 of water; secondly, give them 

 more water ; thirdly, give them still 

 more water. A bonntiful sn[)ply 

 of proper stores in the spring has 

 dne eiffct on a colony of bees cor- 

 responding to that of an abundance 

 of water on strawberries. Give 

 such a supply of stores and a vig- 

 orous queen to a good colony well 

 wintered and there need be no fur- 

 ther concern about its getting 

 ready to take advantage of the 

 Avhite clover as soon as it appears. 

 Now have the surplus receptacles 

 in place on the hives as soon as 

 the bees begin to work on the 

 flowers which furnish the surplus, 

 and your reward is sure unless the 

 flowers fail to yield nectar. 



The next point that claims atten- 

 tion is the best management dur- 

 ing the surplus season. I would 

 advise every one to use the sur- 

 plus case that pleases him best, for 

 then my advice will 1^ i)retty gen- 

 erally followed. I ufe both those 

 with and those without separators 

 and like both kinds. At present 

 1 am inclined to favor the case 

 holding single tier wide frames 

 with separators. A case should 

 never hold but a single tier of sec- 

 tions, and should set square upon 

 the top of the hive with no outside 

 shell or hive to interfere with the 

 rapid handling of the cases. Give 

 the bees additional room as fast as 

 required by tiering up. To a very 

 strong colony give a second case 

 as soon as it gets well started in 

 the first one ; let a colony of mod- 

 erate strength have a second when 

 the first is about half full and al- 

 low a weak colony nearly to finish 

 the first before giving another. 

 Always raise the first case and put 

 the second under it (except it may 

 be near the end of the season), 

 and in like manner give a third 

 and fourth case as needed ; but, 

 toward the close of the season for 



surplus, be cautious that 3'ou do 

 not give so much room as to have 

 too large a proportion of unfin- 

 ished sections. Do not be in great 

 haste to remove the honey, though 

 the sections are finished. Never 

 tr}^ to take sections one by one 

 from the case on the hive ; alwa^'s 

 wait till you can remove the entire 

 case at once. It will improve the 

 qualitj' of the honey more than it 

 will injure its color to leave it on 

 the hive as long as convenient. I 

 would aim, however, to remove most 

 of the honey just before the close 

 of the season so as to avoid 

 trouble from robber bees. The color 

 of the hone}^ will be but very little 

 affected if the tiering-up plan be 

 pursued. 



I clip m}' queens, and when 

 swarming begins I hive the swarm, 

 (after Heddon,) on the old stand, 

 remove the cases from the old hive 

 to the new and from the old hives 

 whence swarms issue earliest, I 

 would select those containing bees 

 having the most desirable qualities 

 and divide them into nuclei to util- 

 ize their cells for the production 

 and fertilization of queens to be 

 used in replacing old and undesir- 

 able queens that issue later. 



I advocate and practise con- 

 tracting the brood-chamber to the 

 capacity of about five L frames, 

 and either fill the fi-ames with 

 foundation or use frames with only 

 starters of foundation. For con- 

 traction I esteem a hive divided 

 horizontally very much preferable. 

 Such a hive is much handier in 

 ever}' way and is especially desir- 

 able because the bees, occupying 

 the wholfe of the space beneath the 

 section case, work in all parts of 

 it more equally and satisfactorily. 

 I use foundation of full size in 

 the sections. I fasten the founda- 

 tion, into the sections with a ma- 

 chine invented by my assistant, 

 Mr. Millen. In working it, one 

 foot gives the proper amount of 



