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Qe (F)ee-\ff peps 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL 



Devoted to the Interests of Honey Producers. 

 $L00 A YEAR. 



W. Z. HUTCHINSON, Editor and Publisher. 



VOL. XX. FLINT, MICHIGAN, APRIL. 15, 1907. NO. 4 



Spring- Protection and Securing- 

 Workers for the Harvest. 



W. Z. HUTCHINSON. 



]T IS possible to have a good flow of 

 1 honey, and yet secure no surplus. 

 If the bees are weak in the spring, and 

 the white clover harvest is early and 

 short, it simply puts the colonies in good 

 trim; then, if basswood furnishes no honey, 

 the season is practically a failure, when 

 it need not have been had the bees been 

 strong early in the season. How to have 

 colonies strong in numbers at the open- 

 ing of the harvest is well worthy of con- 

 sideration. 



Aside from food in abundance, warmth 

 is the one great thing needed to promote 

 safe, early breeding. An ordinary colony 

 will generate sufficient heat to enable the 

 bees to rear as much brood as they can 

 tend: the trouble is that so much of this 

 heat is lost by radiation. 



Early in June, the late Dr. Whiting, of 

 East Saginaw, Michigan, once showed 

 me a colony the frames of which had had 

 no other covering than a piece of wire 



cloth, for a period of two weeks. The 

 colony had been sold, and prepared for 

 moving, and then the purchaser had fail- 

 ed to come after it. There had been a 

 loss of at least two combs of brood, as 

 compared with colonies well-protected 

 above the frames. 



One spring, at my request, '"Cyula 

 Linswik" and her sister left one colony 

 packed until I arrived to buy a part of 

 their bees. The next night was so cool 

 that the bees in the unprotected hives 

 packed themselves away snugly upon 

 their brood, while, in the chaff-packed 

 hive great masses of bees crawled out 

 and hung upon the outside of the division 

 boards upon both sides of the brood-nest. 

 This colony was no stronger than many 

 of the others. 



1 remember going out one morning — 

 May 21st" and finding the mercury down 

 to 52 degrees, and the snow flying; and 

 this was after three weeks of fine weath- 



