MANAGEMENT OF OUT-APIAEIES 



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 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 explained 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 bloopi, 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. 



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 experiments 

 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 in- 

 crease." 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 hrood-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 lar^'se 

 so that there is an additional lot of brood in these cells. This fact led to 

 what has been known as the "spreading of the brood," which has been both 



