1877. 



GLEA^^LNGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



237 



rSXSDIITG AITD FEEDISRS. As 



a generiil rule, I would not advise beginners 

 to take away and sell their honey, with the 

 idea of feedinj? their stocks up in the fall 

 with some substitute for honey ; and if a 

 person is inclined to be careless and neglect- 

 ful they had better never think of feeding 

 at all. Leave the 10 combs in the lower 

 story mitouched by the extractor, and you 

 will very seldom have reason to feed. If 

 you use section boxes in the lower story, 

 you had better take them all out in time to 

 let the bees till combs for winter stores, in 

 their place, unless you have very heavy sur- 

 plus combs laid away, that will contain on 

 an average 5 lbs. of sealed honey each ; in 

 this case, give them 6 of these combs and a 

 chalf cushion division board on each side of 

 them in place of the sections, and you have 

 them then in the safest shape for winter, 

 you can possibly, providing they are in 

 a chaff hive, (according to my ideas of 

 wintering). Xow if we were only sure of 

 having the well filled surplus combs, we 

 might skip "feeding" entirely, but alas, 

 there will come seasons and circumstances 

 when Ave must feed. I have never known a 

 season when a colony of Italians with a 

 good queen would not get an ample supply 

 for winter, and furnish some surplus ; but I 

 am told there are such occasionally, and the 

 l)resent one — 1877 — is said to have left many 

 in a starving condition in California, right 

 in mid-summer. 



Again, where one raises bees and queens 

 for sale, they may divide and sub-di- 

 vide to such an extent as to have many 

 colonies with bees enough, but with too lit- 

 tle food. The only remedy in these cases is 

 to feed. 



WHAT TO FEED. 



If I had sealed honey in the combs, I 

 should use it for giving the requisite stores 

 in preference to sugar, unless I could sell it 

 for more, pound for pound, than the sugar 

 could be purchased for. If the honey is late 

 fall honey, such as buckwheat, golden rod, 

 autumn wild flowers, etc., I should consider 

 it just as safe as any other, if Avell seasoned 

 and ripened, unless I had by actual experi- 

 ment good reason to think otherwise; 

 in such a case I would feed sugar. Quite a 

 number of reports have been given that 

 seemed to show bees wintered safely on the 

 spring honey, or that gathered in the early 

 part of tlie season, when others in the same 

 apiary were diseased badly, if all this 

 spring honey were extracted, and they were 

 I'onfined to the autumn stores for winter. 



Whether a chaff packing around them would 

 enable them to use stich honey with safety 

 or not, remains to be shown, but I have 

 much faith that it would, for all the bad 

 honey I have ever experimented with, could 

 be used with perfect safety in warm wea- 

 ther. 



Well, supposing we have not the honey in 

 frames, what then ? if we have extracted 

 honey two questions come up ; which is bet- 

 ter, sugar syrup, or honey? and which will 

 cost the most V I would unhesitiitingly take 

 syrup made from A sugar, in place of the 

 best clove'r or any other kind of honey, if 

 offered at the same price. I say this after 

 having fed many barrels of sugar, and after 

 having carefully noted the results of feeding 

 both sugar and honey. 



In regard to expense : a gallon of water to 

 20 lbs. of sugar will make 2S lbs. of nice 

 thick syrup, and as the sugar is now worth 

 about 11 cents by the barrel, our syrup will 

 cost us about 8 cents per lb. I think if my 

 extracted honey were all ready to ship, and 

 I could get 10 cents cash for it, I would sell 

 it and buy the sugar. Perhaps a safe rule 

 will be to say that whenever we can trade a 

 pound of honey for a pound of sugar, we 

 had better do so, for the difference in favor 

 of sugar will certainly pay for all the trouble 

 of making it into syrup. 



In regard to the cheaper grades of sugar 

 than the standard A, I will say that I have 

 used the C sugar, without being able to de- 

 tect any difference in the results; but as the 

 price is but very little different, I rather de- 

 cided in my own mind, without any definite 

 proof, that the A contained about the same 

 amount of pure sugar, for the money, as did 

 any of the cheaper grades. I also fed a few 

 colonies for winter on the cheapest brown 

 sugar, and somewhat contrary to my expec- 

 tations, they wintered equally well. I have 

 not used brown sugar extensively, because 

 in my experiments with candy for feeding^ 

 I discovered that burnt candy or sugar — car- 

 amel — was certain poison to bees when con- 

 fined to such stores in cold weather. See 

 CANDY. As brown sugar frequently owes 

 its color and taste to this same caramel, I 

 have been a little afraid of it for winter 

 stores, although it may transpire by actual 

 test, that the amount is too small to be of 

 any injury. I have never given grape sugar 

 a trial, but as it is said to be offered as low 

 as 3i cents, I shall take steps to do so at 

 once, and will report. 



HOW TO FEED. 



Although the number of feeders described, 



