March 1908.] 



261 



Apiculture. 



It must, however, be remembered that 

 the iuitial outlay in starting an apiary 

 of European bees will be considerably 

 larger than in the case of mee-messa. 

 And though, as far as we can see at 

 present, the European bee should yield 

 a far larger harvest of honey, I would 

 recommend the beginner to start with 

 mee-messa. 



If you chance to purchase a stock 

 of bees on frames to start your apiray, 

 you will probably find that the combs 

 (especially if they are European bees) 

 are dark brown in colour. Some novices 

 are apt to look on such a colour as a 

 suspicious sign, though without reason. 

 No comb is pure white unless it has 

 never contained brood— the cocoons from 

 which the young bees emerge giving 

 this shade of brown. Indeed, the older 

 and browner the comb, the better for 

 trevelling, as such combs are extremely 

 unlikely to break. In selling bees, 

 therefore, you should inform your cus- 

 tomers of this. Again, it often happens 

 that, at the end of a winter (or Monsoon) 

 many of the cells contain a mildewed 

 mass. This is nothing more than pollen 

 that the bees have not used. Such 

 combs should, if possible, be given to 

 a strong colony to clean up. Or, if 

 you prefer it, you can cut out the 

 mildewed parts with a sharp knife and 

 return the damaged frame to the hive 

 to be repaired. The pieces of comb can 

 then be rendered down. There is, by the 

 bye, a very good maxim to remember ? 

 never waste the smallest particle of 

 wax. It is always valuable, and is often 

 very useful to have on hand. 



HANDLING BROOD. 



Many treatises on apiculture recom- 

 mend the spreading of brood-combs 

 with a view to forcing the queen to 

 lay quicker. This has been proved to 

 be safe in the low-country ; but in 

 the colder climate of the high lands 

 it is a thing to beware of. The idea 

 is to shift the frames to either side 

 from the middle, and to insert, in the 

 very heart of the brood-nest, a frame 

 of foundation or fully drawn-out comb. 

 The danger is that, during the cold 

 nights of the higher elevations, the 

 bees will be inclined to cluster towards 

 the centre, leaving the outermost frames 

 deserted. Thus the brood in the outer 

 frames will get chilled and die. It will 

 be noticed that bees (and especially 

 mee-messa) will be inclined to build more 

 towards the front of the hive. If, 

 therefore, the frames run at right angles 

 to the entrance, you can, if you wish 

 to spread brood, start by reversing all 

 the frames from front to rear. You 

 should be careful, however, to replace 



34 



them in the same relative positions to 

 one another. Thus, the frame taken 

 from the extreme right will be put back 

 on the extreme left, and vice versa. 

 In this way you will induce your bees to 

 fill up all the frame. You will find that, 

 once a comb has contained brood, the 

 bees prefer to utilize it for that purpose 

 again. 



BRACE-COMBS. 



The native bee (and in a far lesser de- 

 gree the European) will be found to build 

 small pieces of comb across from one 

 main comb to the next. This is done 

 for the sake of strength. You must be 

 careful, therefore, in such cases, before 

 you lift out a frame, to pass a sharp 

 knife gently through these brace-combs. 

 They are invariably near the top of the 

 frame, so that they are easily got at ; 

 and as the bees only store honey in 

 them, you will not be destroying any 

 brood. On the contrary, the fact of 

 laying open such a store of sweets will 

 cause the bees to be very easy to handle, 

 as they will be busy licking it up. Of 

 European bees, I fancy the English 

 Black is the worst offender along these 

 lines, while the Cyprian is probably 

 the best. 



PROPOLIS. 



This is a sort of glue that bees gather 

 from various places. They use it to 

 block up small holes in their home, cover 

 over any dead thing that is too large to 

 carry out, and to fix combs firmly to 

 the sides of hives. So far as my expe- 

 rience goes, propolis gathered in Ceylon 

 is far less hard than that gathered at 

 home. Sometimes in England the quilts 

 are so firmly glued down on top of the 

 frames and the frames themselves so 

 effectually stuck to the runners on which 

 their lugs rest, that it requires a con- 

 siderable wrench to get them loose. 

 This, of course, irritates the bees. If 

 you use the true Hoffmau frames, you 

 will find that European bees will inva- 

 riably glue their shoulders together, so 

 that you will need to ease them gently 

 but firmly apart. By using W. B. C. 

 metal-ends, however, you will expe- 

 rience far less trouble. The English bee 

 is the worst propolizer; while the mee- 

 messa is undoubtedly the best— hardly 

 employing the substance at all. That is 

 another point in favour of the native 

 bee. 



CLEANING. 



It is as well always to have at least 

 one spare hive. Once a year go round 

 all your hives, transferring the frames 

 to an empty hive, and then well scrub- 

 bing (and, if necessary, re-painting) the 

 old hives, letting their interiors be tho- 

 roughly saturated with sunlight. There 



