Every step in beekeeping; a book for amateur and professional by Douglass Benjamin Wallace

Author:Douglass, Benjamin Wallace
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bees
Publisher: Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merrill company
Published: 1921-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

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more than enough for the daily needs of the hive. These periods are called "honey flows" and their occurrence varies with the season and with the situation of the apiary—both as to its situation in a given neighborhood and its sectional position with regard to the rest of the country.

In the Central States we have our greatest yield of honey from white clover. In parts of Michigan wild raspberry produces the bulk of the crop. In New York, buckwheat furnishes honey late in summer. In a few places basswood yields almost at the same time as white clover. In the West, sage, mesquite and other plants produce their crop. All of these have their period of maximum production and these periods (^nev^o^s.) sometimes may last for only a few weeks or even for a few days.

If the beekeeper does not have his bees ready for the harvest when it comes, it will remain in the field and soon enter the same class as water that has passed be-

low the mill. Consequently the individual beekeeper must know something about the honey producing plants of his neighborhood and must adjust his system of management to suit his own conditions. I am saying this partly for my own protection because no system of hive management could be applied to all parts of the country with success. I can only outline a system that works in the white clover belt and I will try to adapt it to other conditions where it seems possible to do so.

Eegardless of the location of the apiary or of the sort of honey that is to be produced, the first thing the beginner should learn is that a season's management of an apiary begins in the summer of the previous year. The bees which live over winter are all hatched from eggs laid in August and September and unless a colony has a good queen and plenty of surplus stores it will not rear enough young bees to winter as a strong colony. Given the

proper number of bees the colony must have twenty-five or thirty pounds of surplus honey for winter feed and to start brood rearing in the spring.

A strong colony with plenty of stores and housed in a proper hive will usually winter in good condition—although I will have more to say about this in a later chapter.

In very early spring the colonies must be examined to determine whether or not they have sufficient stores to last them until the first nectar-producing flowers open. It might be supposed that a colony that was sufficiently provided in the fall would not require this early examination, but such is not the case because in some seasons bees will consume much more of their reserve food than they will at other times. A warm open winter always results in greater hive activity and as a result more honey is used. Such a winter, too, induces very early brood rearing and as a result the

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