4 A YEAR'S WORK IN AN OUT- APIARY 



CHAPTER II. 



Ten days later, April 24, the elm and soft maples were in full bloom; 

 and as the day was fine I went to the out-apiary again, arriving there 

 about nine o'clock. I found the bees were almost rolling over each other, 

 carrying in the yellowish-green pollen from the elm and the greenish- 

 pink from the maples. 



During the season of 1904 some 70 combs of honey in Langstroth 

 frames, averaging about 7 pounds each, had been left for spring use, 

 after seeing that all colonies had enough for winter, these being kept, 

 with other combs more or less empty, for a purpose which will be ex- 

 plained further on. Each hive was now opened, beginning at No. 1 on 

 the first row, to see that each had a good queen and honey enough to 

 make them "rich" to a prosperous degree till fruit-trees came into 

 bloom, from three to four weeks later. Any colony that did not have 20 

 pounds of honey was given one, two, or three of the seven-pound combs 

 till it did have that amount; and if any colony had more, none of it was 

 taken away, as there is nothing which gives better results in bees in the 

 spring than to have the colony so rich in stores that it feels no need of 

 retrenching. 



Very many, at the present time, seem to think that brood-rearing 

 can be made to forge ahead much faster by feeding the bees a teacupful 

 of thin sweet every day than by any other method; but from many ex- 

 periments along this line during the past thirty years I can only think 

 this a mistaken idea, based on theory rather than on a practical solution 

 of the matter by taking a certain number of colonies in the same apiary, 

 feeding half of them while the other half are left "rich" in stores, as 

 above, but without feeding, and then comparing "notes" regarding each 

 half, thus determining which is the better to go into the honey harvest. 

 And some go even further than this, claiming that it is a very paying 

 operation to extract the honey from the brood-combs which are in the 

 hive, and then thin this honey and feed it back again to the bees — 

 reasoning that brood-rearing can not go on prosperously with combs of 

 solid honey acting as "great cold barriers in the midst of the brood-nest," 

 and also that "solid combs of capped honey in the middle of the 

 brood-nest are surely in the way of a prosperous increase." I can not 

 understand such reasoning as this when coming from men who stand 

 high in authority — men who have or should have a thorough knowledge 

 of the inside of the brood-chamber, and especially the inside of the 'brood- 

 nest; for never during my nearly forty years of manipulation of brood- 

 chambers did I ever once see even one "solid comb of capped honey" in 

 the "middle of the brood-nest" or "in the midst of the brood-nest," during 

 the spring or early summer, unless the same was inserted there by the 

 hand of man. Bees do not allow such a state of affairs; and when the 

 hand of man thrusts a solid comb of honey in the middle of the brood- 

 nest, the first thing the bees do is to uncap such honey and carry it into 

 the cells outside and surrounding the brood, filling the inserted comb or 

 cells occupied with honey only a day or two before with eggs and larvse 



