Honey Flows 



Alice Lee Sherwood 



,AST summer I was the excited owner of three 

 colonies of bees and the same number of ter- 

 rifyingly scientific bee books and a monthly 

 magazine devoted to bees alone. Strangely 

 enough, the word in these books and articles 

 which most puzzled me was not at all a Greek 

 or Latin name. It was the simple, expres- 

 sive term "honey flow" repeated again and 

 again, appearing in almost every discussion. 

 So important a part did it seem to play that all of the bees' ways 

 were influenced by it — the tendency to swarm, to raise or to 

 cease raising brood, to banish the drones from their only home 

 on earth, to rob one anothers' larders. According to the wise 

 men who were guiding m.e my own dealings with the bees, also, 

 seemed to depend on a thorough knowledge of the honey flows 

 of my locality. Without such knowledge, said my books, I 

 should never know when it was time to build up my colonies to 

 the greatest possible strength. At the opening of a large honey 

 flow my bees must be ready to send the largest possible army of 

 workers into the field to gather nectar, they must have all the 

 room they can use as the flow continues or they will swarm, and if 

 the flow should suddenly stop I must be on the lookout for 

 robber bees. 



It sounded simple enough as I read until I would wonder, all 

 of a sudden, what a honey flow might really be. The flowers 

 bloom from the vanishing of the spring frosts until the frosts of 

 autimm nights, and the bees work day in and day out as long as a 

 flower anywhere holds up its beseeching head and beckons mutely 

 to the passing bees, offering them with a smile the most fragrant 

 wine if they will but carry a love message to some beckoning 

 flower beyond. 



It was a cold, rainy summer and both flowers and bees had to 

 struggle hard to live. Problem upon problem presented itself to 

 me as I watched my bees and studied my books, and before winter 

 I had to supply the three colonies with many pounds of sugar 

 which were almost impossible to procure. When the season 



