144 MONEY IN BEES IN AUSTRALASIA 



There is a point about feeding bees that must not be 

 overlooked. If there is no natural pollen about during 

 summer feeding, the apiarist must make good this 

 deficiency. Honey, it must be recognised, is purely the 

 heat-producing portion of the bees' diet, and if the 

 farinaceous element is lacking the bees surely suffer. For 

 winter feeding, this shortage of nitrogenous food is not 

 so detrimental, because brood-rearing has almost 

 finished. In this case, it would do no good to add pea- 

 flour to the candy blocks. While the demand for pollen is 

 not so keen during winter months, the author has always 

 found that those hives that went into winter with 

 abundance of pollen in the combs usually came out in the 

 best condition, to breed up quickly in the spring. 



WATER FOR BEES. 



During the hot days of the Australasian summer, bees 

 require a supply of good clean water. In most of the 

 indigenous forests there is usually a gully, spring, soak, 

 or waterhole to furnish drink, but these are sometimes so 

 far away that it is advisable to make a drinking place 

 nearer the apiary. The prime thing to consider — when 

 making a drinking fountain or watering place for bees — 

 is safety from drowning. Bees, unlike flies, are not 

 adapted for drinking at a body of liquid. Flies are 

 accustomed — and adapted — to alight at the edge of a 

 liquid to drink, and they rarely drown. Bees, on the con- 

 trary, alight on limited quantities, and should the supply 

 be very large, there is danger of their losing their lives. 

 Therefore, bees prefer to take a drink from some porous 

 material, such as sand, or the trunk of a tree-fern that 

 has fallen into a waterhole. 



A simple plan is to have a tight wooden box, filled 

 with sand, standing under the tap of the tank. The wet 

 sand forms a safe water scheme. If no tank is available 

 — at an out-yard for instance — cart two or three tins of 

 water and allow a constant drip on to the sand. It pays 



