BUILDING UP COLONIES 
165 
''i 
One of the apiaries of G. B. Barman, Pasadena, ■who owns and operates over one thousand colonies. He 
uses permanent extracting-houses at each location, as he prefers to operate with an eight-frame power- 
extractor outfit, and have plenty of room for supers and equipment. 
hilly, a Ford or other light machine will 
pull this trailer around very easily. 
THE SUBSTANTIAL BUILDING FOR THE HOME 
YARD OR CENTRAL EXTRACTING-PLANT. 
As has been mentioned, the building! 
suitable for an out-apiary is usually in¬ 
adequate for the home yard where there 
must be room for considerable storage, for 
making supplies, and for all the inside 
work, in fact, in connection with the busi¬ 
ness. For this reason expensive conveni¬ 
ences are usually out of place in a building- 
in an outyard. At home it pays to erect a 
larger and more substantial building, in¬ 
cluding such conveniences as are time and 
labor savers. David Running of Filion, 
Mich., has one of the best and most com¬ 
pletely equipped concrete buildings in the 
country. Concrete, so far as the cost of 
material is concerned, especially where 
gravel is cheap, often costs less than lum¬ 
ber. Mr. Running’s building is 16 x 40 
feet, with two different floors besides the 
basement used as a bee-cellar. To save the 
expense of so much cement, a large number 
of stones were used, which cost nothing 
but the labor of picking them up. The 
walls, moreover, are only six inches thick. 
In most instances eight inches for solid con¬ 
crete is thin enough. The lumber used for 
making the forms is not wasted, for it can 
all go into the roof. 
More and more beekeepers are using 
automobiles or auto trucks in their busi¬ 
ness. While it is not always possible nor 
desirable it is oftentimes convenient, if 
the honey-house and workshop includes 
also the garage. Henry Hograve of Wau- 
keta, Wis., has suqli a building, which he 
finds a distinct advantage. Mr. Hograve 
has a driveway thru the center of his api¬ 
ary, and he uses the auto for carrying full 
supers right into the garage. From there 
they are pushed thru an opening on to a 
platform in the extracting-room. It would 
doubtless facilitate loading and unloading 
and save considerable lifting, if the floor 
of the garage could be two or three feet 
lower than the door of the adjoining 
room. 
BUILDING UP COLONIES.— Under 
the heads of Increase, Spring Manage¬ 
ment, and Uniting, will be found hints 
on building up colonies in the spring and 
fall; but this article will confine itself to 
the question of building up colonies so 
that they will be ready for the honey flow. 
The number of worker bees in a normal 
colony varies during the different seasons of 
the year from a few thousand up to 80,000, 
or even in some cases probably as many as 
100,000. The number is usually lowest in 
established colonies in early spring at about 
the time the first young bees begin to 
emerge in any considerable numbers. From 
this time on, if conditions are favorable 
for brood-rearing the amount of brood is 
increased rapidly until the greatest capac¬ 
ity of the queen for egg-laying has been 
reached. This maximum egg-laying is 
maintained for a short time only after 
which the amount of brood is greatly re¬ 
duced, and later in the season as the older 
bees die off, the number of workers in the 
colony decreases to that which is normal 
