Beekeeping in Wisconsin 13 



there is in the management of bees. The worker bees are 

 undeveloped females, incapable of laying fertile eggs. They 

 do all of the required work as gathering nectar, pollen, propo- 

 lis, water, also feed and nurse young bees, build comb, clean 

 house, and guard the hive from intruders. The sting or 

 mandibles are used for defense as occasion requires. The 

 drone is the male bee. He does no work and his existence is 

 for the sole purpose of mating with the queen which takes 

 place while they are in flight. 



Some Essentials' in Bee Management 



Inlatesummer and fall. — Whether or not bees winter well 

 depends, in no small degree, upon how well they are managed 

 in the late summer and fall. Essential wintering condi- 

 tions that can be controlled by late summer and fall rrianage- 

 ment are the winter food supply, the presence of young 

 fertile queens, and plenty of young workers. 



The securing of a crop of honey from late summer and fall 

 flowers is not general throughout Wisconsin. It is confined 

 mostly to localities having in sufTicient quantities special 

 occurrences of one or more of these plants; buckwheat, sweet 

 clover, goldenrod, "fire weed" or willow herb, blue and white 

 asters, wild sunflowers and related swamp and lowland 

 plants. Under our conditions, however, very little surplus 

 honey is obtained, as a rule, from these sources. Probably 

 sweet clover, goldenrod and asters yield the most fall 

 surplus when any is secured. 



Choose Winter Bee Food Carefully 



For winter food, combs of two-thirds capped-over clover 

 or basswood honey is, without question, the best. Often, 

 however, this honey supply has been removed for sale and 

 insufficient amounts of other good honeys have been secured 

 by the bees. If an excess of buckwheat honey, or honey from 

 fall flowers, is present in the hives, the bees do not usually 

 winter as well as when they have less than one-half of their 

 stores of that undesirable type of honey. If the bees have 

 gathered, in the late summer and fall, quantities of honey 

 dew from plant hce and exudations of plants, a very heavy 



