Sept. 1. 1911 



515 



su?rar and water fed in the open air during August 

 and the fore part of September will place the bees 

 in excellent condition for winter. 



Since adopting this system of open-air feeding we 

 get better queen-cells: the bees are stimulated to 

 greater activity, and the queens mate two or three 

 days earlier. Hreeding is going on at a rapid rate, 

 and our hives will be filled with young bees to go 

 into winter, which, in connection with well-ripened 

 stores of sugar syrup, is about the best kind of life 

 insurance for bee.s. In order to practice open-air 

 feeding profitably, one should be isolated a reason- 

 able distance from neighboring bees. Every queen- 

 breeder is supposed to be so situated. 



An Ideal open-air feeder would be a pan 6 feet 

 long by 3 feet wide, and 4 in. deep, provided with a 

 frame-work of slats standing on edge -)i inch apart, 

 with a thirty-gallon tank to supply the feed through 

 a half-Inch pipe having a faucet to regulate the 

 flow. If located convenient to the water supply, 

 the tank could be filled in a few minutes each day, 

 and would not require further attention. I do not 

 advocate the feeding of thin sweetened water for 

 sr>ring stimulative feeding, as it exhausts the vital- 

 ity of the old bees that have come through the win- 

 ter, and causes them to drop off rapidly. I have 

 about come to the conclusion that in the fall is the 

 right time to practice stimulative feeding. 



.1. E. Hand. 



A few days after this we drove down to 

 Mr. Hand's place, some 35 miles away. Af- 

 ter talking with him about his switch-lever 

 bottom-board we went out to the bee-yard, 

 where we found this new scheme of feeding 

 in operation. 



"There," said Mr. Hand, pointing with 

 some pride to a lot of outdoor feeders, "I 

 believe I have solved one of the problems 

 that confront every queen-breeder during a 

 dearth of honey. I have here M'hat corre- 

 sponds to a natural light honey-flow. All 

 my hives are in splendid condition. Bees 

 are rearing brood, and the cell-building col- 

 onies are at work constructing cells." 



"But," we said, "haven't you found that 

 this outdoor feeding w^ears out your bees un- 

 necessarily?" 



"Xot if the feed is made thin enough. 

 Notice that there is no excitement, no 

 crowding, and no bees with the fuzz w^orn 

 off their bodies when the feed is richer. See 

 here. ' ' 



So saying he picked up a common gal- 

 vanized pail, poured in about ten quarts of 

 water, then a quart of sugar. With a com- 

 mon dipper he stirred the mixture until it 

 was all dissolved. He next poured this over 

 the feeders and on the bees. Some of the 

 bees, during the pouring, were pushed into 

 the syrup, or what was in reality nothing 

 more than sap or sweetened water. They 

 would climb up the sides of the feeder, and 

 take wing as if nothing had happened. We 

 then tasted the sweetened water, and re- 

 marked, "Mr. Hand, we can scarcely taste 

 any sugar at all." 



"That is true," he said; "but it is strong 

 enough to keep every thing booming here." 



" But," we interposed, " think of the quan- 

 tity of water that the bees have to evaporate 

 out of that kind of sap." 



"Say, Mr. Root, just follow me." 



We walked back some fifty feet, and, turn- 

 ed about, faced the feeders. We were then 

 looking toward the sun and the dark back- 

 ground of the trees. 



"Xow," said Mr. Hand, pointing, "you 

 watch those bees as they fly out, and you 



will find them shooting tiny squirts of water 

 when they are ten or twenty feet away from 

 the feeders in the air." 



Sure enough, tiny streams of water were 

 being shot out from each individual bee. 

 Some squirts seemed to be eighteen inches 

 long. Then we recalled what A. I. Root had 

 written in the old ABC book, under the 

 head of " Water." You will remember how 

 he told about bees on the wing ejecting wa- 

 ter on large dinner-plates he had set out to 

 catch the spray. 



We raised the question whether the bees 

 did not discharge a large portion of the wa- 

 ter in the nectar on the wing before entering 

 the hives.* 



Our host thought that bees do not have 

 to evaporate all the excess of water from the 

 nectar that they bring into the hives. While 

 admitting thatsoweof the water is removed 

 by the fanners at the entrance, he contend- 

 ed that this sugar-and-water mixture was 

 not so wasteful of bee-life as we might sup- 

 pose, because the bees will discharge water 

 from thin syrup in precisely the same way 

 that they discharge water from their nectar. 

 "Then why not." he argued, "follow nature 

 in this matter of feeding?" 



A short time ago we received a letter from 

 Dr. Miller, who, while indorsing our slow 

 method of feeding in the hive through one 

 or two small holes in a pepper-box feeder, 

 suggested we would find it much to our ad- 

 vantage to make a one-to-three syrup in- 

 stread of a one-to-one syrup. 



While outdoor feeding is an old idea, the 

 scheme of using sweetened water (ten of wa- 

 ter to one of syrup) is a rather new one. It 

 is going back to a weak nectar. If the bees 

 have a delicate apparatus in their bodies by 

 which they can separate the excess of water 

 from the sugar while on the wing, and be- 

 fore they get to the hive, is it not possible 

 that, when they are fed in the hive with a 

 thin syrup, they rush out of the hive to dis- 

 charge the excess of water rather than to 

 find where the syrup comes from. We are 

 asking for information, for we don't know. 

 Of course, other bees in the air are attracted 

 by these wild commotions, and they im- 

 mediately start on the hunt, pryiqg around 

 the entrances. 



This is a very interesting field to exploit 

 — the more '■o since one of our queen-breed- 

 ers, Mr. Mell Pritchard, who has just passed 

 his 10,000-queen mark, says he thinks this 

 scheme of outdoor feeding of sweetened wa- 

 ter is one of the biggest things that have 

 been presented to the queen-breeder, and 

 possibly honey-producer who has a lot of 

 weak colonies that need stimulating and 

 feeding in order to get them in proper con- 

 dition for winter. Later we will answer Mr. 

 Hand's question on what he meant by "sci- 

 entific queen-rearing." 



* In later years A. I. Root, with the members of 

 his family, while watching bees take copious drinks 

 of nectar from the spider-plant, repeatedly saw 

 them load up with nectar, and, as they left the blos- 

 soms, discharge the excess of water in the form of a 

 tiny squirt of ptire water. The writer distinctly re- 

 members this as though it were yesterday. 



