FEEDING AND FEEDERS 
349 
they will make more money, and at the 
same time keep the home supplied with 
the most delicious sweet that the world has 
ever known. Such a class of farmers are 
adding dignity and strength to their call¬ 
ing; and when they keep bees they get a 
better seeding from their clover fields; 
more and better fruit from their orchards 
(see Fruit Blossoms and Pollination) ; 
plenty of honey for the family, and a little 
extra clean cash. 
It is not an uncommon thing for a few 
hives on the farm to bring in a net return 
of five and even ten dollars per colony. 
For the money invested there is nothing 
like it. 
Of course it is only fair to say that some 
years on the farm the bees will not do 
much; but it is a poor farmer beekeeper 
who cannot make the bees pay their own 
way during poor seasons, and even make 
handsome returns when the season is good. 
The farmer who has an orchard and raises 
alsike, sweet clover, or alfalfa, will be able 
to keep his few colonies more than busy. 
Every up-to-date farmer, especially if 
he raises clover seed or fruity should keep 
bees. See Fruit Blossoms; Backlot 
Beekeeping; Bees and Fruit-growing; 
Bees and Poultry; A B C op Beekeep¬ 
ing. 
FEEDING AND FEEDERS.— Feeding 
is practiced for two purposes—to prevent 
starvation, and to stimulate brood-rearing 
at times of the year when no honey is com¬ 
ing in from natural sources. These will 
be referred to later under separate heads. 
Whenever possible, feeding should be 
avoided; for at best it is a messy job, ex¬ 
pensive, and, in the case of the beginner, 
liable to cause robbing. In a good local¬ 
ity it may be possible to avoid feeding al¬ 
together. Especially would this be true in 
those places where there is plenty of buck¬ 
wheat or fall flowers. To buy sugar by 
the barrel every fall is very expensive, 
and the beekeeper should lay his plans to 
avoid it as-far as possible. In many cases 
fall feeding is made necessary by extract¬ 
ing too closely, in some cases even from 
the brood-nest. This is bad practice and 
decidedly poor economy. Natural stores 
go farther, pound for pound, than sugar 
syrup. But there are times when it is nec¬ 
essary to give the bees food either to keep 
up and stimulate brood-rearing or to pre¬ 
vent actual starvation. 
When the honey already in the hives at 
autumn is of good quality, and nicely 
sealed, it would be folly to extract it, put 
it on the market, buy sugar, make syrup, 
and feed it to the bees. There would be 
very little gained by it, even if the honey 
sold at a higher price, and the sugar syrup 
were cheaper. Where the natural stores 
are dark, of poor quality, or bad honey- 
dew, it might be advisable to extract and 
put in their place sugar syrup. Yet of 
late years it is coming more and more to 
be the practice to let the bees have every¬ 
thing of their own gathering, provided it 
is nicely ripened and sealed in the comb, 
no matter what the source; and it is very 
seldom that that any one will lose bees in 
outdoor wintering by reason of poor food. 
Where one does not have combs of nice 
stores sealed, it will be necessary to feed 
sugar syrup. The cheapest and best food 
for this purpose is ordinary white granu¬ 
lated sugar. Some of the brown sugars 
may be used; but experience has shown 
that they are not so good, and not so cheap 
in the end, altho selling at a lower price. 
Moreover, they contain gums that are not 
a good feed for the bees. 
Sugar syrup when capped over makes an 
excellent food for winter. It does not cause 
dysentery, and is cheap; but it is not the 
equal of good honey for breeding, as it is 
lacking in some of the necessary food ele¬ 
ments in honey. (See Honey as a Food.) 
On the other hand, sugar syrup is, per¬ 
haps, a little better as a winter food dur¬ 
ing the coldest part of the winter in the 
North. It is less stimulating—that is, less 
inclined to start up premature breeding in 
winter or very early spring. 
It is always poor practice to extract 
good honey out of the brood-nest. While 
at times the natural stores might bring 
twice as much as the same weight of sugar 
syrup, the labor of extracting and the wear 
and tear of the colony itself in feeding and 
evaporating the syrup down are so great 
that no economy is effected. Ordinary 
sugar stores should be supplied only to 
make up the deficiency, if any. 
In midwinter, if the bees are short of 
food, they should be given a comb of sealed 
