666 
POLLEN 
wheat flour, oatmeal, or pea meal, and 
sometimes to strange mixtures of eggs, 
milk, and sugar. Rye meal is a favorite 
spring feed, and cottonseed meal has been 
strongly advocated. If it is desired to feed 
the meal inside the hive, flour candy is 
used. This is made by mixing one part of 
rye meal with three parts sugar and a little 
water, and cooking it until it will sugar. 
It is then vigorously stirred and poured 
into greased pans. It is difficult to make, 
may cause brood-rearing at the wrong time, 
and is probably of no benefit. The dry 
meal is placed in shallow pans, protected 
from the rain and wind, and if a little dry 
pollen, saved from the tassels of corn the 
preceding season, is scattered over it, the 
bees will soon begin carrying it into the 
hives very eagerly. Care should be taken 
to prevent the packing of the combs with 
it to the exclusion of pollen later in the 
season. 
There is no doubt but that these substi¬ 
tutes will stimulate brood-rearing, for in 
colonies in which there were healthy queens, 
but no pollen, eggs, or brood, three days 
after rye meal had been fed, there was a 
large number of eggs in the cells. The 
fact that brood-rearing can thus be stimu¬ 
lated has led many beekeepers to jump to 
the conclusion that the use of pollen sub¬ 
stitutes must be desirable. But careful ob¬ 
servation of the effects of feeding pollen 
substitutes, especially in regions where 
there are pollen famines, seems to show 
that they are not only not beneficial, but 
are positively injurious. In the tupelo sec¬ 
tion of Florida, along the Apalachicola 
River there is plenty of pollen until about 
June 15, but after this date there is little 
or none for nearly 90 days, or until Sep¬ 
tember, for the tupelo furnishes very little. 
The colonies become very weak and the 
queens cease laying, but two prominent 
beekeepers in this section report that they 
never feed meal. It is the practice of one 
beekeeper after the flow from tupelo is 
over to move his apiary southward to a 
locality where pollen is more abundant, 
and where it remains for the balance of the 
year. In Australia pollen famines are as 
regular as the seasons themselves. There 
is a “critical period” in midsummer, when 
the pollen fails, the queen ceases to lay 
eggs, and the brood dies of starvation. 
This shortage is due to the failure of the 
gum-trees, or Eucalypti, to produce much 
pollen. So small is the supply that colo¬ 
nies working on yellow gum dwindle down 
to mere handfuls, altho there is a fine crop 
of honey. Beuhne says that he has used all 
kinds of substitutes in large quantities; 
but, altho hives were well filled with brood, 
the bees thus raised were lacking in vitality 
and were short-lived. He has never been 
able to obtain a strong force of field bees. 
In Connecticut Latham states that as the 
result of years of observation he believes 
that the ground grains do more harm than 
good. One season strong colonies were fed 
freely with cottonseed meal; but when 
examined a month later they showed clearly 
the futility of feeding substitutes, for they 
not only showed no advance but were actu¬ 
ally weaker in bee strength. Out-apiaries 
which never received any meal invariably 
contained stx-onger colonies than the home 
apiary which was fed. Feeding meal in 
early spring apparently causes the bees to 
fly out and waste away in cold weather, 
when they had better remain quiet, and 
retards building up later on; injures their 
digestive powers; while the weak bees and 
brood thus obtained lessen in the end 
rather than add to the strength of the 
colony. In the course of centuries bees 
have become adapted to the use of pollen, 
and it is not surprising that neither the 
nurse bees nor the larvae can digest meal 
equally well. 
Discarding the feeding of pollen substi¬ 
tutes as of no benefit, or injurious, the only 
practical method in most instances of meet¬ 
ing a dearth of pollen would seem to be the 
giving of combs of pollen. It is often as 
important for beekeepers to reserve sur¬ 
plus combs of pollen as it is combs of 
honey. Not infrequently, especially in lo¬ 
calities where pollen is very abundant, 
combs largely filled with pollen can be re¬ 
moved from the hive without apparent dis¬ 
advantage. Bees without queens are said 
also to store large quantities of pollen. Such 
combs stored in a dry room would keep for 
a long time, and, introduced into the hive 
as required, would often make a great dif¬ 
ference in the season’s results. 
