FEEDING OUTDOORS 
357 
down the honey, since the density varies so 
much. For average honey enough water 
must be added so that the syrup will be 75 
per cent honey and 25 per cent water. 
Very thick honey needs more water, while 
thin honey needs less. 
It is necessary to have the broofl-chamber 
well occupied by brood, for bees never do 
well in supers over brood-chambers con¬ 
taining much capped honey. The first 
requisite, then, is a good queen, which will 
be able to hold her own against any amount 
of feeding. The brood-chamber must be 
contracted, furthermore, so that the queen 
will be able to keep every comb filled with 
brood. In this connection the sectional 
hive is very convenient for the reason that 
one section may be removed, thus contract¬ 
ing the brood section and still allowing 
brood in the shallow frames to be under 
the entire super. It is quite important, 
however, to have the combs in the brood- 
chamber as new as possible, for the bees 
are quite apt to carry up bits of comb to 
be used in capping cells in the supers, and 
old dark comb will discolor the super¬ 
cappings to quite an extent. 
The thinned-down honey should be put 
into the feeder just before sundown, so 
that there may be no uproar' that may 
cause robbing. It is not desirable to have 
more than two supers of sections on the 
fed colonies at a time. As soon as the 
combs in the super next the brood-chamber 
are nearly capped, this super should be 
raised up and the upper one placed under 
it next to the brood-chamber. As soon as 
the top super is finished and capped solid 
to the wood, it may be removed and a fresh 
super placed next to the brood-chamber. 
Of course it is not essential that combs be 
built out and capped solid to the wood. 
The combs all capped over, except cells 
next to the wood, would grade No. 1. 
CAUTION : FED-BACK COMB HONEY LIABLE TO 
granulate. 
Under Comb Honey, to Produce, sub¬ 
head, “Bait Sections,” reference is made 
to the fact that bait sections or fed-back 
comb honey is more liable to granulate than 
ordinary comb honey. Dealers have com¬ 
plained that the former granulates very 
rapidly on their hands; and when they 
know it they will not accept it unless for 
immediate sale. It should be sold in one’s 
own locality, and sold as early as possible. 
While not all of it will granulate, the his¬ 
tory of such honey is decidedly unfavor¬ 
able. 
FEEDING OUTDOORS.— After what 
has been said elsewhere in this work re¬ 
garding the danger of exposing sweets in 
the open air during the robbing season, it 
may seem the height of folly to recommend 
what appears to be the same thing that 
has been condemned; but, as will be 
shown, this outside feeding may be prac¬ 
ticed without the bad results that follow 
from the exposure of sweets under other 
conditions. It is well known that, when 
bees are busy in the field in a natural 
honey flow, hives can be opened without 
any robbing. Now, then, if the bees can 
be kept busy by making them go after 
food, set outdoors, that is of the consist¬ 
ency of raw nectar, much the same result 
will be artificially accomplished. 
But proceeding farther the question may 
be asked, “Why feed outdoors at all if the 
proper stimulation can be given by plac¬ 
ing the food inside the hives that need it, 
rather than supplying all colonies alike, 
irrespective of whether they need stores or 
not?” 
While it is ordinarily better to feed each' 
individual colony according to its needs, 
there are times when one can feed a whole 
apiary by placing a weak syrup in an out¬ 
door feeder. At any time when robbers in¬ 
terfere with the manipulations of the colo¬ 
nies, sweetened water outdoors diverts the 
meddlers by making a sort of artificial 
honey flow. When the bees can gather any¬ 
thing from the fields they are not disposed 
to rob. In the same way if the bees can be 
kept busy artificially, much the same re¬ 
sults can be accomplished. This can be 
done with an outdoor feeder and sweetened 
water, as explained farther on. If one 
engages in queen-rearing, or desires to ex¬ 
tract when bees will ordinarily rob, an 
outdoor feeder can be started so that the 
necessary work can be performed easily 
and secure from pilfering bees. Again, it 
will sometimes happen that the whole api¬ 
ary is on the verge of starvation, and out¬ 
side feeding can be used to tide the bees 
over until the expected honey flow starts, 
