Live Stock. 380 [June 1907. 



bees, you can easily build up a weak stock into a strong "one between the close of 

 the monsoon and the opening of the honey-flow. This is done by judicious feeding. 



Take 3 lbs. of cane sugar, place it in a saucepan with a pinch of salt and a 

 quart of water. Bring it to the boil, throwing in an eggshell to clear it. Then, 

 when it is cool, place it in the feeder, putting the feeder on top of the frames. Now, 

 if you give a great quantity of this syrup, the bees will start storing it in their cells, 

 so that the queen is left no room in which to deposit her eggs : and so the stock will 

 grow weaker instead of stronger. The thing is, therefore, to give just so much 

 syrup as shall be sufficient to feed the bees daily ; and the queen, under the im- 

 pression that the honey-flow has commenced, wiil start laying freely. The Wilkes 

 Convertible Feeder can be used either as a fast or slow feeder, the flow of the syrup 

 being regulated with the greatest ease and nicety. A quarter of a pint daily to 

 begin with, gradually increasing after a month to half a pint, will be about the 

 right quantity. 



Rapid feeding should only be resorted to when you find that, shortly before 

 the monsoon, some of your stocks are short of winter stores. 5Tou should then let 

 them take down a quart a day if they can manage it, as it is important that it 

 should be sealed over by the time the monsoon breaks. Thus, if you have hived a 

 new swarm in Colombo at the beginning of May, they will not have time to gather 

 enough honey to last them through a long spell of bad weather. It takes them 

 some time to build their combs to receive the honey, and it takes 20 lbs. of honey 

 for bees to produce 1 lb. of wax, Therefore they must be fed as fast as possible. 



In dealing with the question of hiving a swarm, I told you to prop up the 

 entrance of the hive to 2 inches in depth. The reason of this is that, when bees are 

 running in a mass into a hive, those that enter first cluster round the entrance, thus 

 blocking the road for the rest. If, however, the entrance is made wide, there is 

 room for all to pass. If they are prevented from running straight in, they 

 will cluster on the outside of the front of the hive. In any case, in hiving 

 Mee-messa, it will be found advisable to have the smoker handy to guide them in 

 the direction they should take, by means of a judicious puff here and there. As 

 soon as they are hived, the props should be removed ; and they should then be fed 

 quickly, so as to enable them to build their combs without unnecessary delay.— 



(To be continued.) 



