A YEAR AMONG THE BEES. 
21 
For filling, I used a common tin watering-pot with the rose 
taken off, and a funnel with the lower end made about 
feet long, so as to avoid stooping. 
The syrup is made of granulated sugar. Into a kettle on 
the stove, I put five quarts of hot water. When at or near 
the boiling-point, 2.5 pounds of sugar are slowly poured in, 
stirring all the while, and the stirring is kept up till the 
syrup becomes clear. To each quart of this syrup 2 quarts of 
water are added as it is poured in the feeding-can, using hot 
and cold water in such proportions that the thinned syrup 
shall be as hot or hotter than the finger can be borne in it. 
Even if it should be hot enough to scald bees, it is cooled by 
what is already in the feed dishes. 
There are serious objections to this out-door feeding. Y ou 
are not sure what portion of it your own bees will get, if 
other bees are in flying distance. Considerable experience 
has proved to me that by this method of feeding, the strong 
colonies get the lion’s share, and the weak colonies very little. 
Moreover, I have seen indications that part of the colonies 
get none, both of the weak and strong. You are also 
dependent on the weather, as wet and chilly days may come, 
when bees cannot fly. 
These difficulties are obviated by feeding at night at the 
entrance, or by feeding in the hive. After trying various 
feeders, and ways of feeding, at the entrance and in the hive, 
I have settled upon the old way of feeding in the combs. I 
think I first got the idea from Quinby’s book, or from the 
writings of L. C. Root. 
Filling the combs, with the greatest care that can be taken, 
is hardly a job suitable to be undertaken in a room carpeted 
with Brussels. Although I have improved upon my first 
method of filling, so that the amount of daubiness and 
stickiness is reduced perhaps fifty per cent. ; yet, when Emma, 
who is the filler, is through filling a hundred frames, although 
not ordinarily proud, she is decidedly “ stuck up.” I speak 
of Emma as the filler, because we carry into practice (although 
there are only four of us) the doctrine of division of labor, 
