84 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



June 



semi-wild swarms and to encourage 

 their tamer neighbors in their domes- 

 ticity. 

 (N. F.) 



Stimulative Feeding, 



BY H. E. HILL. 



A noteworthy feature of current 

 apicultural literature is the disfavor 

 with which stimulative feeding is re- 

 garded even by practical and exten- 

 sive producers of honey. The idea 

 of its declining popularity had but 

 little weight with me until the pens 

 of some of our most eminent special- 

 ists denounced the practice as useless 

 and "an abandoned hobby" which 

 naturally arouses the spirit of inquiry 

 in one who has for fourteen succes- 

 sive years practiced stimulative feed- 

 ing, with results highly satisfactory. 

 Mr. Heddon in the Quarterly says: "If 

 a queen does not lay fast enough, the 

 reason may be found in her lack of 

 fertility, strength of the colony or 

 lack of stores in the hive." The as- 

 sertion that the cause may be justly 

 attributed to any one or all of the 

 above named conditions, no apiarist 

 will dispute, neither, 1 believe, will 

 any dispute that a decided increase of 

 brood is occasioned by a flow of honey, 

 the increase being governed largely 

 by the activity of the working force 

 and the duration of the flow, and is in 

 proportion thereto. That brood-rear- 

 ing is checked or totally suspended as 

 a result of a cessation of a flow must 

 also be admitted, regardless of the 

 queen's prolificacy. 



An effect must have a cause. If it is 

 not occasioned by the activity in the 

 hive, in the former case, which is pro- 

 duced alike from access to a feeder of 



thin honey or syrup, or a flow from 

 natural sources, why the increase ? If 

 in the latter, the inactivity of the 

 workers has no retardative influence 

 upon brood rearing, why does the 

 cessation of honey, and brood rearing 

 occur almost simultaneously ? 



If " stimulative feeding" is ineffect- 

 ual in promoting the rearing of brood, 

 why are bees in proxmity to extensive 

 fruit orchards and those adjacent to 

 forests of soft maple and other early 

 bloom, more populous generally, at 

 at the advent of the white clover 

 season? 



To cite a single example of what 

 commends itself to me as corroborative 

 evidence of the efficacy of stimulative 

 feeding : I have known a hive of bees 

 with brood in but one frame on April 

 11, being at that date so depopulated 

 that the entire force was required to 

 protect that one " patch." The colo- 

 ny was devoted to experiment, in 

 order to test the merits of the prac- 

 tice of stimulative feeding, the brood- 

 chamber was contracted to two frames 

 and by feeding about one pound of thin 

 honey each evening from a flat feeder 

 over the frames, warmly covered by a 

 sawdust cushion during the earlier 

 days of Spring, and later, placing 

 cards of honey, one at a time, behind 

 a division board, below which a pass- 

 age was left, occasionally changing 

 ends with alternate combs, which had 

 been added to the brood nest as re- 

 quired, scraping the cappings of honey 

 in the brood chamber causing it to 

 run down and thus affording activity 

 for the workers, at a time when na- 

 ture failed to do so, this colony was 

 increased until the equivalent of seven 

 Quinby frames were filled with brood 



