30 
BEE-CULTURE. 
Whoever succeeds in securing strong stocks has satisfactory 
results ; whoever keeps weak ones has little but perplexity. 
It is especially important that hives should be very populous 
during the months of May, June, and July, when honey is to 
be gathered. The bee-keeper should, therefore, make every- 
thing bend to the production of large numbers of bees during 
the early part of the season. Strong colonies of bees gener- 
ally commence breeding about the first of January, the 
queen laying a few eggs in the centre of the cluster of bees. 
When she has laid a few in one side of the comb, she goes 
to the other side and lays a few just opposite. She will then 
enlarge the circle of eggs on both sides of the comb, and then 
proceed to the adjacent combs on each side ofwhere she has 
been laying, and deposit the eggs in the same manner as in 
the first comb. She will then return and enlarge the first 
circle, and deposit eggs in the empty cells in the centre ; for 
by this time (if twenty-onfi days have elapsed,) young bees 
will begin to have been hatched from them. In this manner 
the bees manage to concentrate their heat on the brood. The 
more numerous the bees the greater number they can produce. 
As soon as they begin to gather honey and bee-bread they 
commence to breed more rapidly, until at the commencement 
of good honey-gathering they will be hatching a thousand or 
more bees each day; and if the keeper now has a colony of 
thirty thousand bees, ten thousand may remain in the hive 
during the day to do in-door work and keep the brood warm, 
whilstthe twenty thousand may go abroad for stores, and will 
soon have a good stock of surplus honey, and will give off 
swarms of bees. The case is quite the reverse with weak, 
starving stocks. It will be the first of March before they 
will commence rearing brood, for they would have neither 
bees to keep it warm nor honey to feed it. When they com- 
mence collecting honey from fruit trees and other early 
bloom, they will commenoe rearing a goodly number of bees, 
which will require a considerable amount of honey. It may 
then be two or three weeks before white clover appears; and 
having commenced to rear their brood, they will continue to 
feed and develop it until they have consumed their small 
stock of honey. Then, if they should be oonfined to their 
hives by four or five days cold weather, they will all perish. 
Thousands of colonies of bees in 'Ohio perished last season 
between fruit bloom and white clover in this manner. Should 
