T H 1< 
Huetvaltan Bcchcqpci's’ 
JOURNAL. 
Vol. III. — No. 2.] NOVEMBER,- IKS, s. [Price 6d. 
Cbitorial. 
The Editors have to apologize to the subscribers 
and readers of The Australian Btrkrrprr*' 
Journal for the delay in the issue of the present 
number, which has been unavoidable. They 
trust they will be able to issue more punctually 
for the future. 
HINTS FOR OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER. 
In almost all parts of Australia beekepers find 
that they are in the midst of their busiest time, 
by the latter end of October, if not earlier ; 
swarming will be the order of the day, and the 
constant attention of the Bee master will now 
be required. 
I One of the first matters to be attended to is to 
see that every hive in whicli brood is being 
reared is well supplied with food, for it must be 
remembered, that colonies that arc not very 
strong have such heavy demands on the popula- 
tion to keep up the temperature of the brood 
nest, that comparrtively few bees can be spared 
for foraging, and so we frequently find in such 
hives that although well stocked with brood, 
little or no honey is found in the combs, even 
when strong colonies are carrying in more than 
they require, and on storing it as surplus. Sec 
therefore, that all breeding colonies have plenty 
of food, weak ones at all events should be fed 
unless there is plenty of honey in the combs, 
and if the honey flow is poor, or the weather 
cold, wet or uupropitious for them, don't hesitate 
to feed the strong colonies also if they run short 
of stores ; starving bees at feeding time, or 
indeed keeping them without a plentiful supply 
is the worst thing a beekeeper can do, for with- 
out a populous hive no honey can be stored, ami 
a stock short of food quickly stops increase, and 
in many cases cannot be stimulated to rapid 
breeding when once they have been cheeked by 
scarcity of food. In October and part of Novem- 
ber at least this is a most important point in 
Beekeeping. Unless honey be given as food, 
white sugar syrup made as directed in the earlier 
numbers should be given freely but not too 
rapidly. We cannot lay too much stress on the 
wisdom of helping colonies all we can, through- 
out the early part of the breeding season, and 
even later if necessary. Our best surplus honey 
is often got after the middle of January, and all 
hives that are not strong at the first or Spring 
honey How. should at all events be helped and 
encouraged so far as to be strong for the later 
Summer and Autumn harvest. 
We gave in our last number several hints with 
regard to the management of swarming, and we 
now propose to say a few words about securing 
honey in comb or for extracting. 
Many bee-keepers complain they cannot get 
their bees to work readily in, section boxes, 
put on as supers ; this is by no means an uncom- 
mon occurrence, even with strong and good 
working stocks, and is the ordinary course with 
weak ones. It is no good to put section boxes 
over bees that are not sufficiently numerous to 
fill every comb in the hive and sometimes we 
find stocks which will store honey in every 
comb in the brood chamber so that the Queen 
has no room to lay an Egg rather than take any 
upstairs into the super, but such bees can be 
made very profitable by a little watching and 
management ; take out several, say four of the 
outside combs that are filled with honey, push 
the other combs towards the sides, so that you 
have room in the centre of the hive to replace 
the combs removed by the empty ones, if there 
are any on hand, or else extract the honey from 
those removed, and then place a couple ‘say in 
the centre, and one on each side of the hive. 
The Queen will commence to lay in the empty 
combs in the centre and the bees store honey in 
the outer ones ; in a day or two remove more 
outside combs and extract, placing another 
empty one in the centre and one on each side, in 
this way such stocks will often store a large 
quantity of honey during the season. 
But about supering with section boxes, we 
find the best way to proceed is to make up one 
