BEE-CULTURE. 
2i 
the spring, for winter and spring feeding is generally very 
unsatisfactory; and to have bees die in the spring, after eating 
fifteen or twenty pounds of nice honey, is quite a disappoint- 
ment. Difference in colonies, and different seasons, and the 
manner of wintering, variously affect the amount required by 
a colony. It is perhaps best to have a rule not to commence 
wintering a colony with less than twenty-five pounds of hon- 
ey, although it is seldom a colony will consume so much as 
that ; but it is unsafe to run them too close. On the first of 
November, unless the combs in a hive are very old, if it 
weighs thirty-five pounds over and above the weight of the 
empty hive, it may be supposed to contain honey enough to 
winter. 
EQUALIZING STOCKS FOR WINTER. 
An apiarian, with a considerable number of bees, will, in 
the fall, have some colonies that are rich in honey but scarce 
in bees by overswarming, loss of queen, or other misfortune. 
Other hives will have enough bees, but only from one to twenty 
pounds of honey and but little bee-bread, the remainder hav- 
ing proper proportions of honey, bee-bread, and bees. These 
defective colonies should have been avoided by preventing so 
much swarming (see article on swarming) ; but in this, as 
in many other things, we do not always accomplish what we 
should or might accomplish. The question is, bow to make 
the most of things as they are. As soon as honey-making is 
over, the bee-keeper finds that he has a number of such de- 
fective stocks, he must lessen the number of them by driviug 
the bees that have almost no honey into those that have an 
abundance of it, but are scarce in bees ; and uniting the bees 
and honey of others in order to make them sufficiently strong 
and rich. But before 1 show how this is done, I must show 
how bees may be agreeably united. 
Bees are jealous or foreigners, and before such can 
enjoy the full privilege of citizenship they must comply 
with their naturalization laws ; and one of these laws is, that 
they must come in well loaded with honey. When bees aro 
gathering honey freely, and a bee misses its own hive and 
proposes to enter another, if it is well loaded with honey it 
is permitted to enter and domicil with them. So, if you 
have two colonies, the one very strong and the other very 
