OBJECTS IN FEEDING. 
33 
is very cold or the colony weak, they cannot leave the cluster 
to get it, and will consequently starve when there is plenty 
of honey by them. Early spring feeding is liable to the 
same objections. When feeding is resorted to, bees act. as 
though they were collecting honey from natural sources, be- 
ing aroused to action they eat freely themselves and rear a 
greater quantity of brood which requires much honey for 
their sustenance, so that if bees are thus aroused by feeding, 
then cease for a time, they will continue to feed their 
brood until their store is exhausted ; then if honey is not to 
be had from flowers for a week or ten days, they will either 
Btarve in their hives, or being driven to desperation, will 
leave and attempt to enter some other one, where they will 
be mercilessly massacred. They often leave even when they 
have a pound or two of honey. This always occurs in very 
fine days, and I think is in part occasioned by annoyance from 
robber bees, who attempt to enter their hives. If there comes 
a very warm day in the last of March or on the first of April, 
in a spring when bees are not well supplied, I always feel 
certain of being accosted, when I go on the street on the fol- 
lowing day, with the inquiry, from bee-keepers of the sur- 
rounding country: “Why did the bees all come out of one of my 
hives yesterday, and attempt to enter another and were 
killed?” or, “Why did a swarm of some person’s bees come 
yesterday and attempt to enter one of my hives?” 
When a colony thus attempts to decamp they should be put 
back into their hive and then fed regularly every evening 
until they can collect honey from flowers. It will add to the 
safety of the hive if the queen’s wings are cropped so that 
she cannot fly, or to have an entrance regulator applied. 
[See “Entrance llegulator.”] If feeding is commenced in 
the spring it must be continued until the bees can collect 
from the flowers. But at this time feed sparingly, say a 
half pound or more daily. If too much is fed they may fill 
so many of their cells with honey as not to leave sufficient 
room for brood, and abundance of brood in the spring is 
more valuable than the same combs filled with honey; so 
that in some cases in movable comb hives when the breed- 
ing chamber is too much filled with houey, it is best to lift 
out some of the full combs and set empty ones in their place. 
But no bee-keeper should depeud on winter or spring feed- 
ing; for it is most invariably perplexing and unsatisfactory. 
