FEEDING. Ill 



their mother hives, have not all filled their bags so well 

 as those of natural swarms. If rainy weather overtake 

 these young swarms, and continue some days, they will 

 starve if not fed. Thousands of young swarms are ruined 

 for want of feeding after being put into empty hives. If 

 they do not die right out, they never recover from the 

 blight and blast of hunger then undergone. 



We have known swarms starved out of their hives. 

 Having made a few pieces of comb, and being without 

 brood, no eggs having been set in them, the bees, from 

 sheer want, cast themselves on the wide world. These 

 are called " hunger-swarms," and their name has a very 

 painful significance. 



But if swarms are well and liberally fed in rainy 

 weather, after being hived, they rapidly build combs, 

 and these combs are as rapidly filled with eggs from 

 pregnant queens. A few pounds of sugar given to a 

 swarm will enable it to build combs to its own circum- 

 ference and size ; and these combs, as we have seen, will 

 soon be filled with brood, which will quioldy come to per- 

 fection, and thus greatly add to the strength of the com- 

 munity. During the cotton panic, and at other times 

 when no work was going on, some of the wealthy mill- 

 owners of Lancashire kept their machinery in order, and 

 even enlarged their premises ; so that when the dark day 

 had passed away, and the sun of a brighter sky fell upon 

 them, they found themselves in possession of greater 

 powers for active and successful work. So the skilful 

 bee-master is not inattentive to the machinery and mUl- 

 hands of his factories when they are not working " full 

 time." Idleness in a bee-hive is often the mother of 

 mischief. When weather forbids bees leaving their hives, 

 it is a stroke of good policy to give them something to do 

 indoors. A few pounds of sugar (made into syrup), wisely 

 administered, keeps up the hum of health and prosperity, 



