66 AN EASY METHOD 



rituous liquors. All kinds of saccharine matter are eagerly 

 sought after by the bees, at all seasons of the year when the 

 weather is so warm that they can fly ; and all sweets, without 

 regard to poisons, are carried alike to the hive, and deposited 

 by them in the combs for future use. The exudations from 

 hard timber, cracked by frost during the previous winter ; the 

 ooze from blotches on the branches of the several classes of 

 oak, and perhaps of other timber, caused by very dry, hot 

 weather, consist of pure, good honey, which, together with the 

 saccharine deposits in poisonous plants in the low, swampy 

 localities, finds its way indiscriminately into the hive. 



Now, to make good honey by feeding bees, the best' ma^ 

 terials should be employed. The honey of hard timber blos- 

 soms,, or white clover, incorporated with loaf-sugar, will un- 

 questionably make excellent honey ; or materials less pure 

 than these will make honey, (if it be proper to style it thus ; ) 

 but as.it is believed to be a well-settled fact that it requires 

 from one and a half to three pounds of wax made into conib 

 sufficient to contain seventy or eighty pounds, and it takes 

 at least twenty pounds of honey to make one pound of 

 eomb, it will.be seen that nearly one-third of the prepared 

 "feed" is lost while passing through the bees' laboratory ^nd 

 in the preparation for market, besides the amount used by 

 them for food. Now, if we are right in this matter, cheap 

 feed alone can be used to advantage and made cover expenses; 

 and this in large apiaries only, where bees are congregated 

 in large bodies, and are liable to come under the influence 

 of one queen. 



As several large apiaries have been recently established 

 in Western Vermont, for the purpose of making honey for 

 market, by feeding bees, it may be proper to remark that, to 

 our knowledge, none of them has hitherta succeeded so far 

 as to satisfy their owners that they have made a good invest- 



