MANAGEMENT OF OUT-APIARIES 33 



four and five stories of brood turn out a colony of enormous proportions 

 during the next two months, with an "army" of bees marching in and out 

 at the entrance while ordinary colonies are doing little if anything; and 

 the result has always been plenty of honey in these combs for use in spring, 

 or "millions of /honey at our house," even after the poorest season for fall 

 honey I have ever known; while in good seasons from 200 to 300 pounds 

 to each colony has been the result, each of the four upper ten-frame Lang- 

 stroth hives being about all a man could lift when piling up in the fall. 



Since this was written I have had just one person who has told me 

 that one year he did not get enough honey stored in these upper stories to 

 carry out fully the plan as given in this book ; and to supply the deficiency 

 he resorted to feeding sugar syrup when the bees needed it in the spring. 

 But to lay alongside of that one letter, I have had scores telling me that 

 these rousing colonies which begin to show their strength in ten days to two 

 weeks after the brood is ^cked on the excluder, do not fail to give an 

 abundance for the spring part of this plan. As the "swarming" by shak- 

 ing is done at the beginning of the clover flow, or about June 15th in this 

 locality, and the clover and basswood flows last till July 15 to 25, this 

 gives from two or three weeks of nectar from these sources, after the tiered 

 colonies have become strong in "field bees," and during this time these 

 100,000-to-150,000-strong colonies, more often than otherwise, fill the four 

 upper stories of combs, from which the brood has emerged, full of white 

 honey, even though there is no fall flow from buckwheat, heartsease, golden- 

 rod, asters, or other fall flowers. However, there are very few localities 

 where there is not a flow of greater or less extent from fall flowers. In fact, 

 several, from different parts of the United States and Canada have written 

 me that these rousing colonies stored so much white honey in these upper 

 hives, after the brood had emerged therefrom that they, at the close of the 

 white honey harvest, had extracted from the three upper hives from 100 

 to 150 pounds of nice thick white honey, after which the bees had filled 

 these combs again from fall flowers, or to an extent great enough for suc- 

 cessfully carrying out the plan the next spring. But we will suppose that 

 there are places where bees are kept where there is positively no flow of 

 nectar after the harvest of white honey is past ; what is there to hinder the 

 great army of bees, which come on the stage as fleld-workers two weeks after 

 the shaking is done, from storing a lot of white honey in these combs? 

 Nothing, only that the white honey flow does not hold out longer than tAVO 

 weeks after the "swarming" has been done. And as this swarming should 

 be done near, or at the very beginning of the flow, it would indeed be a 

 short season which did not hold out longer than two weeks. Again, let us 

 suppose that there are places in the United States and Canada where the 

 season is so short that these colonies with the tiered-up brood will store 

 little if any white honey in their combs, and that there is no fall flow of 

 any kind, what is there to hinder running a few colonies with combs the 

 same as is done for extracted honey, and then setting away these full combs 

 for the reserve necessary to carry out the plan successfully in the spring? 

 Hundreds of practical beekeepers thus set away frames of sealed honey 

 each year for spring feeding, in localities where there are no early flowers 

 which yield nectar, and the setting away of frames of sealed honey in order 

 to carry out the plan as given in this book would result in feeding the 

 colonies, as well as carrying out the plan, where such was found necessary. 

 I have dwelt thus largely on thig matter qf lack of stores in the reserve 



