464 bee-keeper's calendar. 



September. — This is often a very busy month with bees. 

 The Fall flowers come into blossom, and in some seasons 

 colonies which have hitherto amassed but little honey, be- 

 come heavy and even yield a surplus to their owner. Bees 

 are very reluctant to work in boxes, so late in the season, 

 even if supplies are very abundant; but if empty combs 

 are inserted in the place of full ones removed, they will fill 

 them with astonishing celerity. These full combs may af- 

 terwards be returned, if the bees have not a sufficient supply 

 without them. They can be profitably used for making new 

 stocks, out of bees driven from hives condemned, by old- 

 fashioned bee-keepers, to the sulphur pit. 



If no Fall supplies abound, and any stocks are too light 

 to winter with safety, then, in the Northern States, the latter 

 part of this month is the proper time for feeding them. I 

 have already stated (p. 36) that it is impossible to tell how 

 much food a colony will require to carry it safely through 

 the winter; it will be found, however, very unsafe to trust 

 to a bare supply, for even if there is food enough, it may not 

 always be readily accessible to the bees. , For this reason I 

 prefer to leave in all my hives a very generous supply, as I 



nary knowledge possessed by him of their habits. Several important 

 points which I have met with in no other work, and which I had sup- 

 posed to be discoveries of my own, appear to have been familiar to 

 this truly wonderfat genius. Speaking of the larvae of the bee-moth, 

 he says : " Good bees expel them ; but others from slothfulness, neg- 

 lect their combs, which then perish." His good bees were evidently 

 such as possessed abundant stores and a healthy queen ; and his had 

 ones neglected to expel the worms, not from idleness, but from despair, 

 (see p. 262). We learn from this remark of Aristotle, that the moth 

 preyed upon queenless slocks, more than two thousand years ago, pre- 

 cisely in the same way as now. So, doubtless, it will continue lo do 

 in spite of all pretended moth-proof hives, as long as time shall 

 endure. 



