FEEDING BEES: RECIPES. 181 



syrup through a feeder, empty combs may be carried into the 

 house, and the warm syrup may be poured direct into the 

 cells, until both sides of the combs are filled. The combs may 

 then be carried out in a comb Ijox (173), and inserted in the 

 hives requiring them. But this method, also, must be adopted, 

 if at all, sufficiently early to admit of the capping of the cells 

 before the arrival of cold weather. It is an excellent plan to 

 use one or more stocks to store and seal the syrup for all the 

 other stocks, as previously advised. (154). 



316. Winter Feeding — When stocks are short of food in the 

 winter, only sealed honey, or candy can be given with safety. 



" Experience shows that stocks, no matter l;ow well supplied with 

 food below, winter better when they have a cake of candy on top 

 of the frames. The bees use the candy first; and, when they have 

 consumed a little of it, they have a safe winter passage across the 

 frames. Every bee-keeper who is not quite certain that his stocks 

 are sufficiently supplied, should give them ' the benefit of the doubt,' 

 in the shape of a cake of candy — candy not hard enough to require a 

 pickaxe to break it, hut candy that is properly made, soft, and 

 palatable, and good. (It may be made according to Recipe 323), 

 Let it cool for halt-an-hour. Then, gently slip a cake under the 

 sheet of each hive, so that the candy shall be directly over the 

 clustering bees. Renew the supply of candy as required. Pressure 

 of the fingers on the sheet will show when the candy has been used. 

 A neater plan for supplying the candy, and one that will repay the 

 little extra trouble, where only a few hives have to be dealt with, 

 may be adopted as follows. Procure for each hive a small, shallow box 

 of wood, or cardboard; remove the lid and cut, in the bottom, a hole 

 to correspond with the hole in the sheet that is on the frames. Put 

 a piece of newspaper over the hole in the bottoim of the box, and 

 fill up with candy. Now, set an empty section crate on the sheet 

 that covers the frames; pull the paper off the candy; and set the 

 box on the sheet, so that the bees shall have access to the randy 

 right over the cluster. Place a piece of glass on the box. Fill up 

 the crate with warm stuff, such as tailors' cuttings, cork dust, or 

 chaff; pack all round it with cloth or newspaper; and set the usual 

 quilts on top. Thus, there will be no escape of heat; the candy will 

 be in the w^armest part of the hive ; and the glass will enable you 

 to see when a further supply of food becomes necessary." — J. G. D. in 

 the Irisli Bee Journal. 



317. Feeding for Comb Buiiding.— It has already been 

 pointed out that careful bee-keepers make it a rule to have 

 empty combs always at hand when required (193). There are 

 certain weeks, in every year, when bees arc comparatively idle, 

 during a cessation of nectar-secretion in the flowers : the op- 

 portunity may then be taken advantage of to procure new 

 combs for future use. If frames of foundation be inserted 

 alternately with the brood combs, and if thin syrup (Recipe 



