THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



197 



bees up into as small a spact" aa neces- 

 sary by means of division-boavils. If 

 the colony is weak, two or three of 

 the best frames are siitiicient to leave 

 with it ; and sometimes even one 

 frame is enongh at tirst for very weak 

 ones. I liave very little faith in smit- 

 ing wenk colonies in the spring, es- 

 pecially at this early season. I never 

 unite in the spring except, perhaps, 

 to get rid of a poor queen. My ex- 

 perience is decidedly against the prac- 

 tice, that is, when the weak colonies 

 are properly handled. Having crowd- 

 ed the weak colonies up into small, 

 warm quarters upon one, two or three 

 frames, the stronger ones and strong 

 ones may, of course, be given more 

 room and frames, from three to a 

 dozen, depending upon their strength 

 and condition. 



During this overhaul of the hives, 

 note should be made of two or three 

 important matters, and careful record 

 made of them, so that the hives need 

 not be opened any oftener during the 

 cold, spring weather than is abso- 

 lutely necessary ; for I regard fre- 

 quent spring openings of the hives as 

 a very bad practice. Besides the 

 danger of chilling the young brood, 

 there is another serious objection to 

 to this practice. At such a season, 

 especially in bad weather, it not in- 

 frequently happens that the disturb- 

 ance caused by overhauling a hive, 

 causes the bees to "ball" and kill 

 their queen. I have known such in- 

 stances. In the honey season, when 

 the bees are gathering freely, you can 

 knock them about almost with im- 

 punity with no bad results ; but at all 

 other times they ought to be handled 

 with the utmost care. The one nec- 

 essary spring overhaul should, there- 

 fore, be done with great care, but 

 with dispatch, so as not to expose 

 them too long; though the first open- 

 ing in the spring seems never to dis- 

 turb the bees as much as subsequent 

 openings. 



The two or three matters to be 

 noted and recorded at this time are ; 

 First, is the queen all right V Second, 

 how many bees V Third, how much 

 honey is left in the hive V Fourth, is 

 there any old pollen ? And finally is 

 there any young brood, or has the 

 queen commenced to lay V These 

 points can be all noted in your apiai'- 

 ian register, or simply upon a piece 

 of paper left under the cover of each 

 hive. You can then tell at any time, 

 without opening the hive, what its 

 condition was at the time of exami- 

 nation. 



To illustrate the importance of this 

 matter : Suppose just after the nat- 

 ural pollen season has commenced, 

 and the bees, some of them, are freely 

 breeding, a cold, rainy spell of weath- 

 er comes on, lasting for a week or 

 longer, as sometimes occurs, and the 

 bees cannot get out with safety. The 

 colonies that are breeding and short 

 of pollen will undoubtedly suffer more 

 or less ; and part of the brood will 

 perish unless the bees are fed the arti- 

 ficial pollen within the hives. This 

 very thing happened last spring. At 

 a time when the bees were breeding 

 more or less, and natural pollen had 

 appeared, there came a week or ten 



days of very bad weather in which 

 bees could not go out to forage with- 

 out being, many of them, lost. In 

 such a dilemma the breeding colonies 

 short of pollen must be supplied with 

 it or a portion of the brood will perish; 

 and the bees in their desperation will 

 go out in search of it and also perish. 

 Now, the hives cannot be opened 

 with safety in such weather to see 

 which need assistance ; but the afore- 

 said memorandum can be (consulted, 

 and all that are supposed to be short 

 of pollen can be supplied. I simply 

 take a cake made of barley or rye 

 meal, or linseed cake meal, and place 

 it over the bees on the frames under 

 the quilts. This can be done in a mo- 

 ment or two without chilling the brood . 



During the fine days of spring, just 

 after the bees are set out, and before 

 there is much natural pollen, nitro- 

 genous food may be fed in the open 

 air near the hives. Of such food the 

 very best is cotton-seed meal, which 

 is richer in nitrogen than the other 

 kinds of meal. Next comes linseed 

 cake meal, and next bean meal. In 

 the absence of any of these, wheat, 

 rye, pea, or corn meal may be used. 

 Spread the flour or meal out on flat 

 dishes or grain bags, and expose it in 

 the warm sun near the bees, and you 

 will see the busy little fellows fairly 

 revel in it ! If you put out different 

 kinds, as I have often done, you will 

 notice that they will literally swarm 

 upon the kinds richest in nitrogen. 



One prominent American bee- 

 keeper has, I am aware, " gone back " 

 on the spring feeding, declaring it 

 useless, and that he will feed no more; 

 but it would take a much stronger 

 argument than that to induce me to 

 abandon the practice. Let us look 

 into the merits of the matter for a 

 moment. Take, for instance, a 

 strong colony of bees wintered out- 

 side, and with little or no old pollen. 

 As soon as the warm days of April 

 come, and before the natural pollen 

 appears, the bees begin to fly out and 

 forage about in quest of nitrogenous 

 food ; for, bear in mind the queen, in 

 order to lay, must have albumen, and 

 the young brood must have pollen. 

 Now, unless the nitrogenous food be 

 supplied them, either inside the hive 

 or outside, the queen cannot lay 

 freely, the brood cannot be reared, 

 and the colony cS.n do little or nothing 

 until the natural pollen appears. 

 Meanwhile the old bees are dying off ; 

 and this is " spring dwindling." 



Before the young bees, so lately 

 started, are fit to carry on the opera- 

 tions of the hive, the old bees are 

 perhaps all gone, or nearly gone ; for 

 it is well-known that as soon as an 

 old bee begins to exercise freely on 

 the wing, in the spring, his " pilgrim- 

 age in this world " becomes very 

 short. And the worry of looking in 

 vain for pollen is not calculated to 

 delay the " shuffling off." In such a 

 case, especially if the colony is not 

 strong, the old bees disappear before 

 there are young ones to take their 

 places. This, in my opinion, is one 

 of the principal causes of the much 

 dreaded spring dwindling. 



There are, it is true, under ordinary 

 circumstances, few colonies but have 



some old pollen, more or less, in tlie 

 spring to go on with until the new 

 supply comes in. But if Mr. Ileddon's 

 theory that pollen in winter is the 

 prime ('ause of dy.sentery, has any 

 truth in it, and is practically acted 

 upon to any great extent, there will 

 be many colonies from which the 

 pollen has been removed in the fall, 

 and hence minus pollen in the spring. 

 All such, unless supplied with nitro- 

 genous food in the early spring, could 

 do nothing but dwindle. 



I, therefore, maintain from these 

 premises that spring feeding both of 

 sweets to stimulate the queen, and of 

 nitrogenous food to supply the albu- 

 men for the eggs and the pollen for 

 the brood, is beneficial, and, withal 

 strictly scientific rather than empiri- 

 cal. At the same time I freely admit 

 that spring feeding and stimulation 

 are sometimes attended by at least 

 one evil ; and must, therefore, be done 

 with judgment and careful attention. 



The evil is this : The daily feeding 

 of sweets and pollen in the early 

 spring sometimes has the effect of 

 misleading the bees in regard to the 

 season and weather. From this regu- 

 lar supply of the good things they 

 conclude for certain that the honey 

 season has commenced. Consequently 

 they are apt to sally forth to work in 

 bad, unseasonable weather, and many 

 may get lost in this way. It is well, 

 therefore, to shut them in on cold, 

 windy days, and give them a nibble of 

 cake and honey to keep them busy, 

 and to keep the queen at her post of 

 duty. The regular feeding should be 

 done in the evening. As the spring 

 advances and the weather gets warm, 

 with increase of young bees, each 

 colony must get more room and more 

 comb. Keep the queen busy by sup- 

 plying her with a frame of comb 

 from time to time. Take a frame 

 with some honey at the top and empty 

 comb below (I speak here of the deep 

 frames), scrape the caps off, and place 

 it in the centre. But in enlarging the 

 space of each colony, and supplying 

 additional frames of comb and honey, 

 we must be careful to " make haste 

 slowly." Do not go too fast. It is 

 very easy to make a mistake here, 

 especially if the weather is cool. Use 

 your best judgment. And in taking 

 out frames of brood from the strong 

 colonies to reinforce the weak, never 

 give much brood at once to a weak 

 colony. If you do you will feel the 

 pain and mortification of finding your 

 nice frame of brood lost. The hand- 

 ful of bees, not being able to protect 

 the brood, it perishes. 



Years ago I made that mistake, but 

 have got over that as well as other 

 errors. Experience is the best scliool, 

 but the tuition is high, the expenses 

 sometimes heavy. ]5ut this plan of 

 building up the weak colonies in the 

 spring at the expense of the strong is 

 not, by any means, an unmixed good. 

 There is this one evil about it which, 

 no doubt, some of you have experi- 

 enced. It sometimes happens that in 

 i-obbing the best colonies to build up 

 the others so as to get them all strong 

 by the time the honey flow comes, 

 yon find when it does arrive that in- 

 stead of having all of them fit for 



