1921 



to express all the brood areas in 

 terms of shallow frames, so as to get 

 a comparison. On finishing my tabu- 

 lations I got the following average 

 figures : 



Sept. April April 

 Honey Honey Brood 

 lbs. lbs. frames 

 Jumbo frames.- 47 8 bVz 



Shallow frames- 41 11 4% 



Whole yard 43 10 5 



When e.\amining the brood I was 

 particularly struck with one feature 

 of the brood nest in the Jumbo 

 frames, the tendency of the queen to 

 confine her laying to a few frames, 

 rather than to try to attain the globu- 

 lar form of a broodnest, which is the- 

 oretically correct. As the season ad- 

 vanced I watched this condition 

 closely, and found that she added one 

 frame at a time, laying right from 

 top bar to bottom bar, and from end 

 bar to end bar. My visitors enthused 

 over these magnificent frames of 

 brood, and I secretly felt very proud 

 of them. 



It will be noticed that the bees in 

 the Jumbo frames had the advantage 

 in brood area by 16 per cent; as a 

 matter of fact the gain is even more, 

 as I considered a patch as big as a 

 dollar, a frame of brood when taking 

 stock of the shallow frames, while in 

 the case of the Jumbo frames I would 

 call a solid frame of brood the equal 

 of two shallows. As I have already 

 pointed out, the plan of laying in the 

 two styles of frames was quite differ- 

 ent. But on the large frames the 

 bees had consumed on an average 39 

 pounds of honey as compared with 30 

 pounds consumed by the bees on shal- 

 low combs. This is quite interesting 

 to me, because for several years, ever 

 since I read Henri Fabre's famous 

 insect books, I have been wondering 

 how much honey is needed for the 

 making of a bee. I have made no at- 

 tempt to find out by experiment; such 

 a thing is impossible for a wanderer, 

 but such facts as have come under 

 my notice suggest that a larva con- 

 sumes about four times her finished 

 weight in honey, and probably much 

 more than that in pollen. I notice 

 a recent writer says a frame of honey 

 will make a frame of bees, so he ap- 

 parently agrees with my estimate ; 

 hence, if we are neai'ly correct, this 

 conclusion follows: there must be 

 provided in the hive one pound of 

 honey for every thousand eggs the 

 queen lays. 



Let me argue this matter out. I 

 learned years ago that my bees in 

 Victoria consumed an average of 18 

 pounds between the middle of Sep- 

 tember and the middle of March. Last 

 year my hives were all prepared for 

 winter by the first of September, 

 while my first examination was made 

 at the end of April, a period of seven 

 months intervening. The sustenance 

 consumption would be about 21 

 pounds for that period; therefore, in 

 the hives with Jumbo frames about 

 18 pounds were consumed in April to 

 feed the equivalent of five and a half 

 shallow frames of brood, while in the 

 shallow brood-chambers seven pounds 

 were needed to feed four and three- 

 quarter frames of brood. The utmost 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



limit of brood in shallow frames is 

 4,000 larvae, so the figures indicate 

 that the mininuim consumption is half 

 a pound, the maximum, one pound, 

 for every thousand eggs laid by the 

 queen. 



I know I am theorizing fi-om very 

 inexact data, but I am simply making 

 a start on this very important phase 

 of practical beekeeping, and will in 

 the future be more careful in my ob- 

 servations. But my guess, call it such 

 if you like, is confirmed by one bee- 

 keeper, who found 42 pounds of 

 sealed honey in the supers at the end 

 of the maple flow, which all vanished 

 in fourteen days of dearth that fol- 

 lowed. It was a powerful colony, and 

 we may assume the queen to be lay- 

 ing at least 3,000 eggs a day. Three 

 pounds a day consumed, three thou- 

 sand eggs laid, consequently one 

 pound of honey for each thousand 

 eggs, provided, of course, the bees 

 could gather enough nectar to sustain 

 their own life. 



If my memory serves me correctiy 

 Arthur C. Miller is responsible for the 

 statement that our conception of the 

 bees dancing attendance upon the 

 queen for sheer love of her personal- 

 ity is a mistake, that the workers feed 

 her only when they are handling- 

 honey. In all bee literature no state- 

 ment referring to practical beekeep- 

 ing ever impressed me so strongly as 

 did this one, for it opens up a tremen-. 

 dous vista, and puts out of court a' 

 vast amount of matter that has beengi 

 written about spring feeding andSlj 

 stimulation. With insufficient stores 

 in the hive in April I would have to 

 feed one pound of honey per day to 

 each hive for several weeks to get the 

 queen to lay a thousand eggs, for we 

 have no nectar coming in for quite a 

 long time after the bees are flying 



.115 



freely. I am perfectly awai^ .n 



the east the gap is much shorter, that 

 the season rushes from winter to 

 spring. 



To feed a pound of honey a day 

 means wearing out the old bees at 

 a time when we want to conserve 

 them until their successors are in the 

 hive, while stimulative feeding — -that 

 is a small quantity — simply starts the 

 ball a-roUing, and is worthless unless 

 there is honey in the hive to back it 

 up. Handling honey, the bees feed 

 the queen, she consequently begins to 

 lay, then the bees must feed sealed 

 honey to the larvae, and in doing so 

 they handle more honey, so she is fed 

 nioi-e and lays more eggs. It reminds 

 one of the old nursery story of what 

 happened when the fire began to burn 

 the stick, the stick began to beat the 

 dog, and so on. But the advent of 

 pollen generally starts egg-laying, 

 then with plenty of honey in the hive 

 the seasonal development goes on 

 apace. The bee inspectors of British 

 Columbia have, bit by bit, advanced 

 the minimum amount of honey to be 

 left in the hive at the end of Augu.st, 

 until now it is at least 50 pounds, and 

 they hold that 60 is better, much bet- 

 ter. 



One of these bee inspectors tells a 

 rather good joke on himself. In the 

 fall of 1919, when he was extracting, 

 he got the chance to go on a hunting 

 trip for three weeks, and jumped at 

 the offer. He had in sight fully 900 

 pounds to extract, but he would get 

 it in the spring, so it was all right. 

 In May he started to get the honey, 

 [but found only forty pounds possi- 

 |ble, the rest had been turned into 

 bees, and such colonies he had never 

 seen. For a while he cursed his luck, 

 as he had needed the money, but at 

 the end of the month he had available 



Fig. 1. — Section across a very old worker comb. 



