BUILDING UP COLONIES 
1G8 
than willing to do their utmost in brood¬ 
rearing in the spring, especially in the 
North, the beekeeper needs only to see that 
the bees are not hindered in carrying out 
their own program in their own way. If 
egg-laying should be stopped entirely- for 
a single day when the queen should be lay¬ 
ing at full capacity, the number of work¬ 
ers that will be ready for the early honey 
flow is thereby reduced by the number of 
eggs the queen should have laid. In some 
cases the eggs laid by a queen in a single 
day at this time result in a half pound of 
young bees three weeks later. It is, there¬ 
fore, extremely important that nothing 
shall be permitted to interfere with brood- 
rearing at this critical time. 
During the first half of the building-up 
period it is better if the bees rear brood 
only moderately. The cool weather of early 
spring (April in the North, February or 
March farther south) is advantageous in 
tending to hold back extensive brood-rear¬ 
ing during the first month of the building- 
up period. Stimulative feeding and the 
spreading of brood to increase brood-rear¬ 
ing should not be practiced at this time. 
These, if done at all, should be done later 
during the month just preceding the main 
honey flow. Usually the instinct to rear 
brood extensively is so strong in eai’lv 
spring that feeding to stimulate brood¬ 
rearing is unnecessary if the colony is well 
supplied with stores. 
When stimulative feeding is practiced it 
should not be begun until three or four 
weeks previous to the beginning of the 
main honey flow and should be continued 
until the honey flow begins. Stimulative 
feeding and spreading brood are of greater 
value in locations which do not furnish a 
surplus honey flow immediately after the 
spring building-up period, in which case 
these measures may be necessary to in¬ 
crease brood-rearing after the colonies 
have passed their period of heavy brood¬ 
rearing in the spring, especially if there is 
a dearth of nectar at the time the bees 
should be rearing the workers for the hon¬ 
ey flow. 
Colonies that have been wintered outside 
should be left packed until a week or two 
before the honey flow, if this can be done 
without too much trouble. Colonies that 
were wintered in the cellar should be well 
protected from wind and the covers should 
be left sealed down during early spring un¬ 
less it becomes necessary to open the hive. 
By looking in from below, they may be ex¬ 
amined without removing the cover. In 
some locations beekeepers find that it pays 
to pack the bees after they are taken out 
of the cellar, tho in most cases this is not 
done. 
In order that the bees may rear the great 
army of workers for the honey flow there 
must be sufficient room in the combs for 
the greatest amount that the colony can 
produce, which in the North may be 60,000 
to 70,000 cells in the best colonies. While 
this number of cells of brood might all be 
crowded into ten or eleven standard combs, 
it is usually spread over more. 
For this reason the combs should be as 
nearly perfect as possible, for imperfect 
combs in the brood-frames not only reduce 
their capacity for brood-rearing, but they 
also stand in the way of the rapid expan¬ 
sion of the brood-nest in the spring. (See 
Combs.) If a comb which is not suitable 
for brood-rearing is between the comb on 
which the queen is working and the other 
pombs beyond, this imperfect comb stands 
as a barrier to progress in brood-rearing. 
Prone comb in the lower corners of the 
brood-frames and comb that is too badly 
stretched to be used for worker brood in its 
upper portion greatly reduce the capacity 
,for worker brood, and when two stories of 
such combs are used to supply sufficient 
room for brood-rearing, this imperfect 
comb near the top-bar stands as a barrier 
to the free expansion of the brood-nest 
thru the two stories. 
Most colonies, that are normal in April 
but which fail to deyelop their full strength 
before the honey flow in June, fail because 
of a lack of stores. One of the hardest 
things for beekeepers to learn is the sur¬ 
prisingly large amount of stores needed for 
the colony to rear the large force of work¬ 
ers required to gather the crop of honey. 
During the latter half of the building-up 
period the amount of brood is increased 
with astonishing rapidity, provided the 
bees have sufficient food to convert into 
young bees. When there is no opportunity 
to gather nectar from the fields at this time 
on account of cold or wet weather the stores 
of honey within the hives disappear rap- 
