The Feeding of Bees 79 



Mr. Alexander, who, by the way, made a success of keeping as 

 many as 700 colonies in one apiary, made a feeder out of a piece of 2 x 4 

 scantling about four inches longer than the width of the hive. With a 

 cutter-head, or a saw set wabbling, grooves are cut in its upper surface 

 to within half an inch of the ends. This feeder is placed underneath 

 the back of the hive, its upper surface on a level with the bottom-board, 

 the hive being shoved back on the bottom-board sufficiently to cover the 

 feeder. The feed is poured into the end of the feeder that projects out 

 beyond the side of the hive, after which a block four inches square is 

 laid over the projecting end to keep out robbers. When there are 

 sufficient stores in the hive it is not necessary to feed so very much 

 honey, a small quantity of food brought into the hive each day encour- 

 aging the bees to keep on breeding, using their sealed stores for this 

 purpose. 



Before feeding a whole apiary in this manner, year after year, I 

 would suggest that the bee-keeper make an experiment: Feed one-half 

 the colonies; keep an accurate account of the cost of feeding, and also 

 an account of the net profit from each lot. Such an experiment, continued 

 a few years, will answer the question as to whether such feeding is 

 profitable in that particular locality. 



Do the best we can with most methods of management, there will 

 always be more or less unfinished sections left at the end of the season. 

 What shall be done with these is really a serious question. If their 

 number is not too great, those nearly completed may be sold in the local 

 market, while the honey may be extracted from the remainder, and the 

 bees allowed to clean them up by stacking them up in supers, out of 

 doors, and giving only a small entrance to the pile of filled supers, when 

 they may be used the next spring as "bait" sections to induce the bees 

 to make an early start in the supers. If bees in large numbers are al- 

 lowed to reach the sections while still wet with honey, they will, in 

 their eagerness, tear down the cells and spoil the combs. For this reason 

 the entrance should allow only one or two bees to pass at a time. 



When the local market is not sufficient to take the nearly completed 

 sections, and there is a dearth of honey during the hot weather of 

 August, it is possible to "feed back" extracted honey and secure the 

 completion, at a profit, of all unfinished sections. I have fed back thou- 

 sands of pounds of extracted honey for this purpose, and, for the 

 benefit of those who wish to give the plan a trial, I will describe my 

 methods. 



As soon as I see that the white-honey harvest is drawing to a close, 

 which, with me, is about the middle of July, I remove all of the sections 

 from the hives, look them over, take out the finished ones, and sort the 

 remainder into three grades, viz., almost finished, half done, and just 



