Bee-l\Ce piiiij in Vicforin. 



To Stop Robbing. 



Wlicu robbing has only just commenced it may often be stopped. If 

 a weak Live is being attacked, the entrance should be contracted, to give 

 the defenders a better chance of repelling robbers. If robbers are hover- 

 ing round or bunching on the crevices between the lower and upper 

 story, a little kerosene or carbolic acid applied to the wood with a brush 

 will cause them to desist. If contracting a hive entrance is not effective, 

 the same remedy may be applied, taking care not to put it too close to 

 the entrance. The uninitiated often find it difficult to distinguish robbers 

 from the bees belonging to the hive, and it may here be pointed out that 

 a robber is easily recognised by the way it carries the third pair of legs 

 while on the wing. Ordinarily, the hinder legs are not very noticeable 

 on a bee in flight; on a robber bee they are very conspicuous, being ex- 

 tended full length backwards and outwards. When robbing has only 

 just started, the robbers may all come from one or two hives. To dis- 

 cover from which, put some flour in the entrance of the hive that is 

 being robbed, and then walk round the other hives and look for returning 

 flour-liedaubed bees. If it is only a case of one colony robbing another, 

 changing the places of the two hives will confound the robbers and restore 

 order. 



XVII. — Feeding Bees. 



Feeding bees is carried out in Europe and North America to a far 

 greater extent than in Australia, where nature nearly always provides 

 the necessary supplies ; only twice has it been necessary to supply the 

 bees with artificial winter stores in the writer's twenty-seven years of 

 bee-keejjing. 



Feeding is done for three distinct purposes. (1) To stimulate brood- 

 rearing, (2) to tide over a period of dearth during the working season, 

 and (3) to supjDly the colonies with winter stores. 



Stimulative Feeding. 



This is practised in Europe and very extensively in the United 

 States of America. The object is to have a stronger force of worker 

 bees in the hives by the time an early honey flow is expected than 

 could possibly be present if the colonies were left to develop naturally 

 under the influence of the gradually rising temperatures of spring. 

 The feeding in this instance consists in giving each colony daily a small 

 amount of sugar syrup of equal weights of sugar and water, given blood- 

 warm in a feeder inside the hive, preferably towards evening. Feeding 

 should commence five to six weeks before the honey flow, so that most 

 of the bees raised will be of field age when the expected flow is at its 

 best. 



In Victoria, in normal seasons, there is sufficient natural stimula- 

 tion early enough in spring to fully devalop the strength of the colonies 

 for the main honey flow without resorting to artificial stimulation if 

 the bees are favorably located during the winter and early spring. 

 In localities where an early honey flow occurs it may, however, yet be 

 found that stimulation feeding, judiciously done, would be very profit- 

 able. 



