136 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



the almost miraculous change that takes 

 place as soon as Nature places an abun- 

 dance of pollen on her bill of fare ? 



KEEP THINGS UP SHIP-SHAPE. 

 Hence I would say, see that the bees 

 have an abundance of sealed stores, shut 

 off upward ventilation, and bide your 

 time until Nature comes to the rescue, 

 which is usually about April 25th in this 

 locality. Don't even now get too anxious 

 to start stimulative feeding; but, in go- 

 ing oven your bees now, first clean the 

 top bars and rabbets from burr combs 

 and propolis; then your colonies that are 

 years old will manipulate as easily as your 

 new ones. Learn to do things, and do 

 them right; don't slouch; don't get into 

 that happy-go-lucky stj'le of manage- 

 ment that soon gets an apiary (that is 

 run for comb honey) as hard to manipu- 

 late as an apiary of box hives. 



Now that settled warm weather and an 

 abundance of pollen has come, uncap 

 one or two combs, as indicated, behind 

 the brood, by scratching with a sharp 

 table fork or tapping with a wire toothed 

 hair brush, but don't take some blunt 

 instrument and mash down the cells to 

 their middle, of a comb or two (and thus 

 make the bees a lot of extra work) in a 

 colony that has brood in only two combs, 

 and expect a rousing big colony in 

 three weeks on account of your craft 

 as a bee keeper. It takes bees to raise 

 bees. 



Do no spreading of brood as yet; but, 

 if you have an abundance of hatching 

 bees, now is a time that some of the col- 

 onies that are long on honey and short on 

 bees would like to exchange. This can 

 be done in many cases, but, as a rule, it's 

 a very poor recommendation to a queen 

 to have her colony alwa3's lagging be- 

 hind; and this, too, many times after fre- 

 quent helps from colonies with more for- 

 tunate mothers. 



ATTEND WELI, TO THE NEEDS OF VOUR 

 BEES. 



It is now well into the month of May. 

 and I am with my bees every day, at- 



tending to their every need, and some of 

 my own wants for the time will soon be 

 here, when (with six hundred or more 

 colonies) they must meet my require- 

 ments instead of me meeting their needs. 



GET THE COMBS FUI<Iv OF BROOD. 



If wild parsley, dandelions, fruit bloom, 

 and the floriferous trees have done as 

 they usually do, it has not, in my opin- 

 ion, been necessary, nor would it have 

 been profitable, to have fed for stimula- 

 tive purposes, up to this time. My single 

 and one purpose now is to have my hives 

 full of brood at the beginning of the hon- 

 ey flow. We will say, for the sake of 

 illustration, that we are within ten to 

 fourteen daj-s of the honey flow, and that 

 Nature has pinched off (as it frequently 

 does here) so that bees, from their prov- 

 ident nature, have slacked up in brood 

 rearing. If this be the case, we are, as 

 Grover Cleveland once said, "confronted 

 by a condition and not a theory," and 

 that condition must be overcome. 



Vi^HEN AND HOW TO FEED IN THE OPEN 

 AIR. 



In such a case I would feed each apiary 

 of 100 colonies three times a week, in the 

 open air, about 150 pounds of honey and 

 sugar, at each feeding, reduced to the 

 consistency of raw nectar. I feed in V- 

 shaped troughs filled with alfalfa or 

 sweet clover stems, and the feed then 

 poured amongst it. If the food is mixed 

 to the proper consistency, fed in proper 

 quantity, at about noon, there is no more 

 danger in so feeding a hundred colonies 

 of bees than in feeding one hundred pigs. 

 There is no time in the season when it is 

 as harmful for bees to quit or slack in 

 breeding as just prior to the commence- 

 ment of the honey flow. Here in Colo- 

 rado, where our honey season is long, I 

 am not as particular about a large force 

 of field bees at the opening of the flow, 

 as I am to have the hxve filled with brood, 

 which forces the honey into the supers, 

 and keeps the colony on the ascending 

 scale. Still further, if this condition is 

 attained, swarming is reduced to a mini- 

 mum. 



