1883 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



263 



|«f %cnm. 



If ye then, bping evil, know how to give erood gifts 

 unto your children, how much more shall your Fa- 

 ther which is in heaven g-ive g'ood things to them 

 that ask him?— Matt. 7: 11. 



^^r'UST at this season of the year it is often 

 qJ desirable to build up a colony of bees 

 by feeding. I wonder how many of the 

 friends know how to do this, so that your 

 pains and feed may not prove a mistaken 

 kindness. The novice, in his attempt to 

 feed, will often only get stung for his pains, 

 and then not succeed in getting the bees to 

 take the feed at all. After he gets them to 

 understand that it is food he wishes to give 

 them, if he gives them too much, or gives it 

 in a careless way, they may let it run out of 

 the hive, and start robbing, and thus prove 

 the riain of the colony, instead of a help, as 

 he intended it. Even if he does not do this, 

 he may give them so much at one dose that 

 they get demoralized, and forget to keep sen- 

 tinels posted, as usual, and robbers push 

 their way in, and the result is as before. In- 

 stead of making the colony thrive and pros- 

 per, it is only led Into war and discord, may 

 be the loss of the queen, and ruin. If he 

 feeds heavily when ihe weather is to cool for 

 them to fly, they are often incited to fly out 

 when they ought not, and so the bees that 

 are lost amount to more than the extra brootl 

 raised. Well, suppose he does not feed too 

 much or too fast, or during unsuitable 

 weather, but keeps a regular rate of feeding, 

 but from a feeder so small that {hey get it 

 only about as fast as it is broughtin from 

 the fields in the natural way, will he succeed 

 then V He may not get very good results, 

 even then ; for the bees often get a habit 

 of hanging around the feeders all day long, 

 without going out into the fields, as would 

 other colonies not fed, and so a sort of lazi- 

 ness and idleness is sometimes fostered that 

 defeats the very object of the feeding ; and 

 this has been the case so many times that 

 some of our prominent bee-men have declar- 

 ed feeding to be, in the long run, more of a 

 damage than a benefit. 



Although I have given the above as an il- 

 lustration, and to bring out a truth, it is 

 none the less true in regard to bees and feed- 

 ing. Before dropping the bees, and going 

 on with my Home Talks to-day, it may be 

 well to add that, to avoid these difficulties in 

 feeding bees, I would, as a rule, feed them 

 only during weather that permits them to fly 

 daily (and, in fact, I would not feed at any 

 other time, if I could avoid it) ; and I would 

 feed them just at du.«k, and give them only so 

 much as they could take up without fail, be- 

 fore morning. They will then go to work next 

 day, nearly the same as a colony not fed at 

 all, and in some cases much better; and if 

 the work is done judiciously, by watching 

 the state of affairs in the liive closely, the 

 colony may be built up so as to have an 

 enormous force of bees ready for work, by 

 the time honey is to be found in the fields. 

 Some of the largest results ever attained 

 with a single colony have been brought 

 about by this kind of intelligent manage- 



ment. You see, the very heart and soul of 

 the bee-keeper must be in the work, and 

 then he can make the bees do almost any 

 thing he wishes them to do. Shall we now 

 drop the bees for a little while ? 



Is it really true that we take many of the 

 gifts God gives us, about as the bees some- 

 times take their feed V How many of you 

 have been stung when trying to feed the 

 bees, and at a time they need it sadly too V 

 Come to think of it, I don't believe I am vet 

 quite ready to drop the bees in the way" of 

 illustration, after all. Last fall a good bee- 

 friend came to see us, who lives in New 

 Philadelphia, O. He brought along with 

 him a small bee-feeder that his little boy 

 was very anxious Mr. Root should see. You 

 see, the father was a stone-mason, and had 

 to l)e much away from home, and the work 

 of feeding devolved on the boy. The way 

 he fed was to have a little wooden box set 

 in the upper story of the hive ; and when it 

 got empty, the boy was to go around, raise 

 the covers of the hives, and fill up the feed- 

 ers. I presume many of you know how it 

 was. All the gratitude thie bees showed him 

 for his kindness in giving them the food 

 that was to save them from death by starva- 

 tion was to sting him most unmercifully 

 every time he carne near them. It was real- 

 ly too bad. wasn't it, "Bub"? No jvonder 

 he cried. I believe I should have cried too 

 wlien I was his age. Come to think of it, 

 it was too bad. I wonder if any of the rest 

 of my little friends have ever had any such 

 like troubles. If they have, I can not won- 

 der so much that so many of them say in 

 their little letters, they "'like honey, but 

 don't like to get stung.'' Well, you know 

 necessity it the mother of invention, and so 

 our poor little friend whose pa was gone, 

 feeling the responsibility of the apiary rest- 

 ing on his little shoulders, wiped his eyes 

 and went and invented a bee-feeder. I will 

 give you a cut of it below. 



THb BO\ b BEE FLELEil. 



It is, as you see, only a large box, without 

 top or bottom, except a top of wire cloth ; 

 and when this was placed over the little 

 wooden box, our young friend could pour 

 the feed right through the wire cloth, close 

 up the hive, and not a bee come out to worry 

 or trouble him. Of course, a hole had to be 

 cut in the quilt or honey-board, to set these 

 boxes over-, or into, and then it was complete, 

 and my little friend was so delighted with 

 the result he wished his father to be very 

 particular to carry one to me, and explain it 

 fully. 



Well, is it not true that God often sends 

 us blessings which we in our want of faith 

 and trust in him receive much as the bees 

 received their feed y Is it not likely, too, 

 that he would be many times glad to send us 

 greater blessings, if he could do it without 

 doing us harm instead of good V We all have 



