Part 3

=Plan 2.=--If, on the other hand, the operator desires to save the combs of the box hive, the bees may be drummed into a box and the brood combs and other fairly good combs cut to fit frames and tied in place or held with rubber bands, strings, or strips of wood until the bees can repair the damage and fill up the breaks. These frames can then be hung in a hive on the old stand and the bees allowed to go in. The cutting of combs containing brood with more or less bees on them is a disagreeable job, and, since the combs so obtained are usually of little value in an apiary, the first method is recommended.

=Plan 3.=--Another good plan is to wait until the colony swarms and then move the box hive to one side. A movable frame hive is now placed in the former location of the box hive and the swarm is hived in it. In this way all returning field bees are forced to join the swarm. In 21 days all of the worker brood in the box hive will have emerged. These young bees may then be united with the bees in the frame hive and the box hive destroyed.

Colonies often take up their abode in walls of houses and it is often necessary to remove them to prevent damage from melting combs. If the cavity in which the combs are built can be reached, the method of procedure is like that of transferring, except that drumming is impractical and the bees must simply be subdued with smoke and the combs cut out with the bees on them.

Another method which is often better is to place a bee escape over the entrance to the cavity, so that the bees can come out, but can not return. A cone of wire cloth about 8 inches high with a hole at the apex just large enough for one bee to pass will serve as a bee escape, or regular bee escapes (fig. 8) such as are sold by dealers may be used. A hive which they can enter is then placed beside the entrance. The queen is not obtained in this way and, of course, goes right on laying eggs, but as the colony is rapidly reduced in size the amount of brood decreases. As brood emerges, the younger bees leave the cavity and join the bees in the hive, until finally the queen is left practically alone. A new queen should be given to the bees in the hive as soon as possible, and in a short time they are fully established in their new quarters. After about four weeks, when all or nearly all of the brood in the cavity has emerged, the bee escape should be removed and as large a hole made at the entrance of the cavity as possible. The bees will then go in and rob out the honey and carry it to the hive, leaving only empty combs. The empty combs will probably do no damage, as moths usually soon destroy them and they may be left in the cavity and the old entrance carefully closed to prevent another swarm from taking up quarters there.

In transferring bees from a hollow tree the method will depend on the accessibility of the cavity. Usually it is difficult to drum out the bees and the combs can be cut out after subduing the colony with smoke.

=UNITING.=

Frequently colonies become queenless when it is not practicable to give them a new queen, and the best practice under such conditions is to unite the queenless bees to a normal colony. If any colonies are weak in the fall, even if they have a queen, safe wintering is better insured if two or more weak colonies are united, keeping the best queen. Under various other conditions which may arise the bee keeper may find it desirable to unite bees from different colonies. Some fundamental facts in bee behavior must be thoroughly understood to make this a success.

Every colony of bees has a distinctive colony odor and by this means bees recognize the entering of their hive by bees from other colonies and usually resent it. If, however, a bee comes heavily laden from the field and flies directly into the wrong hive without hesitation it is rarely molested. In uniting colonies, the separate colony odors must be hidden, and this is done by smoking each colony vigorously. It may at times be desirable to use tobacco smoke, which not only covers the colony odor but stupefies the bees somewhat. Care should be taken not to use too much tobacco, as it will completely overcome the bees. The queen to be saved should be caged for a day or two to prevent the strange bees from killing her in the first excitement.

Another fact which must be considered is that the bees of a colony carefully mark the location of their own hive and remember that location for some time after they are removed. If, therefore, two colonies in the apiary which are not close together are to be united, they should be moved gradually nearer, not more than a foot at a time, until they are side by side, so that the bees will not return to their original locations and be lost. As the hives are moved gradually the slight changes are noted and no such loss occurs. As a further precaution, a board should be placed in front of the entrance in a slanting position, or brush and weeds may be thrown down so that when the bees fly out they recognize the fact that there has been a change and accustom themselves to the new place. If uniting can be done during a honey flow, there is less danger of loss of bees by fighting, or if done in cool weather, when the bees are not actively rearing brood, the colony odors are diminished and the danger is reduced.

It is an easy matter to unite two or more weak swarms to make one strong one, for during swarming the bees have lost their memory of the old location, are full of honey, and are easily placed wherever the bee keeper wishes. They may simply be thrown together in front of a hive. Swarms may also be given to a newly established colony with little difficulty.

=PREVENTING ROBBING IN THE APIARY.=

When there is no honey flow bees are inclined to rob other colonies, and every precaution must be taken to prevent this. Feeding often attracts other bees, and, if there are indications of robbing, the sirup or honey should be given late in the day. As soon as robbing begins, manipulation of colonies should be discontinued, the hives closed, and, if necessary, the entrances contracted as far as the weather will permit. If brush is thrown in front of the entrance, robbers are less likely to attempt entering. At all times honey which has been removed from the hives should be kept where no bees can get at it, so as not to incite robbing.

=FEEDING.=

During spring manipulations, in preparing bees for winter, and at other times it may be necessary to feed bees for stimulation or to provide stores. _Honey from an unknown source should never be used_, for fear of introducing disease, and sirup made of granulated sugar is cheapest and best for this purpose. The cheaper grades of sugar or molasses should never be used for winter stores. The proportion of sugar to water depends on the season and the purpose of the feeding. For stimulation a proportion of one-fourth to one-third sugar by volume is enough, and for fall feeding, especially if rather late, a solution containing as much sugar as it will hold when cold is best. There seems to be little advantage in boiling the sirup. Tartaric acid in small quantity may be added for the purpose of changing part of the cane sugar to invert sugar, thus retarding granulation. The medication of sirup as a preventive or cure of brood disease is often practiced, but it has not been shown that such a procedure is of any value. If honey is fed, it should be diluted somewhat, the amount of dilution depending on the season. If robbing is likely to occur, feeding should be done in the evening.

Numerous feeders are on the market, adapted for different purposes and methods of manipulation (figs. 17, 18, 19). A simple feeder can be made of a tin pan filled with excelsior or shavings (fig. 20). This is filled with sirup and placed on top of the frames in a super or hive body. It is advisable to lean pieces of wood on the pan as runways for the bees, and to attract them first to the sirup, either by mixing in a little honey or by spilling a little sirup over the frames and sticks.

It may be stated positively that it does not pay financially, or in any other way, to feed sugar sirup to be stored in sections and sold as comb honey. Of course, such things have been tried, but the consumption of sugar during the storing makes the cost greater than the value of pure floral honey.

=SPRING MANAGEMENT.=

The condition of a colony of bees in the early spring depends largely upon the care given the bees the preceding autumn and in the method of wintering. If the colony has wintered well and has a good prolific queen, preferably young, the chances are that it will become strong in time to store a good surplus when the honey flow comes.

The bees which come through the winter, reared the previous autumn, are old and incapable of much work. As the season opens they go out to collect the early nectar and pollen, and also care for the brood. The amount of brood is at first small, and as the new workers emerge they assist in the brood rearing so that the extent of the brood can be gradually increased until it reaches its maximum about the beginning of the summer. The old bees die off rapidly. If brood rearing does not continue late in the fall, so that the colony goes into winter with a large percentage of young bees, the old bees may die off in the spring faster than they are replaced by emerging brood. This is known as "spring dwindling." A preventive remedy for this may be applied by feeding, if necessary, the autumn before, or keeping up brood rearing as late as possible by some other means.

If spring dwindling begins, however, it can be diminished somewhat by keeping the colony warm and by stimulative feeding, so that all the energy of the old bees may be put to the best advantage in rearing brood to replace those drying off. The size of the brood chamber can also be reduced to conserve heat.

It sometimes happens that when a hive is examined in the spring the hive body and combs are spotted with brownish yellow excrement. This is an evidence of what is commonly called "dysentery." The cause of this trouble is long-continued confinement with a poor quality of honey for food. Honeydew honey and some of the inferior floral honeys contain a relatively large percentage of material which bees can not digest, and, if they are not able to fly for some time, the intestines become clogged with fæcal matter and a diseased condition results. Worker bees never normally deposit their fæces in the hive. The obvious preventive for this is to provide the colony with good honey or sugar sirup the previous fall. "Dysentery" frequently entirely destroys colonies, but if the bees can pull through until warm days permit a cleansing flight they recover promptly.

Bees should not be handled in the early spring any more than necessary, for to open a hive in cool weather wastes heat and may even kill the brood by chilling. The hive should be kept as warm as possible in early spring as an aid to brood rearing. It is a good practice to wrap hives in black tar paper in the spring, not only that it may aid in conserving the heat of the colony, but in holding the suns heat rays as a help to the warmth of the hive. This wrapping should be put on as soon as an early examination has shown the colony to be in good condition, and there need be no hurry in taking it off. A black wrapping during the winter is not desirable, as it might induce brood rearing too early and waste the strength of the bees.

As a further stimulus to brood rearing, stimulative feeding of sugar sirup in early spring may be practiced. This produces much the same effect as a light honey flow does and the results are often good. Others prefer to give the bees such a large supply of stores in the fall that when spring comes they will have an abundance for brood rearing, and it will not be necessary to disturb them in cool weather. Both ideas are good, but judicious stimulative feeding usually more than pays for the labor. Colonies should be fed late in the day, so that the bees will not fly as a result of it, and so that robbing will not be started. When the weather is warmer and more settled the brood cluster may be artificially enlarged by spreading the frames so as to insert an empty comb in the middle. The bees will attempt to cover all the brood that they already had, and the queen will at once begin laying in the newly inserted comb, thus making a great increase in the brood. This practice is desirable when carefully done, but may lead to serious results if too much new brood is produced. A beginner had better leave the quantity of brood to the bees.

It is desirable early in the season, before any preparations are made for swarming, to go through the apiary and clip one wing of each queen (see p. 30). This should be done before the hive becomes too populous. It is perhaps best to clip queens as they are introduced, but some colonies may rear new ones without the knowledge of the owner, and a spring examination will insure no escaping swarms. The beginner should perhaps be warned not to clip the wings of a virgin queen.

Queens sometimes die during the winter and early spring, and since there is no brood from which the bees can replace them, the queenless colonies are "hopelessly queenless." Such colonies are usually restless and are not active in pollen gathering. If, on opening a colony, it is found to be without a queen and reduced in numbers, it should be united with another colony by smoking both vigorously and caging the queen in the queen-right colony for a day or two to prevent her being killed. A frame or two of brood may be added to a queenless colony, not only to increase its strength, but to provide young brood from which they can rear a queen Bee keepers in the North can frequently buy queens from southern breeders early in the spring and naturally this is better than leaving the colony without a queen until the bees can rear one, as it is important that there be no stoppage in brood rearing at this season.

=SWARM MANAGEMENT AND INCREASE.=

The excessive rearing of brood at the wrong season or increase in the number of colonies greatly reduces the surplus honey crop by consumption. The ideal to which all progressive bee keepers work, when operating simply for honey, is to stimulate brood rearing to prepare bees for gathering, to retard breeding when it is less desirable, and to prevent swarming. Formerly the measure of success in beekeeping was the amount of increase by swarming, but this is now recognized as being quite the contrary of success.

The stimulation of brood rearing in the spring, however, makes it more likely that swarming will occur; so that the operator must counteract the tendency to swarm. This is especially true in comb honey production. Very few succeed in entirely preventing swarming, but by various methods the situation can be largely controlled.

When a swarm issues, it usually first settles on a limb of a tree or bush near the apiary. It was formerly common to make a noise by beating pans or ringing bells in the belief that this causes the swarm to settle. There is no foundation for such action on the part of the bee keeper. If the bees alight on a small limb that can be spared it may simply be sawed off and the bees carried to the hive and thrown on a sheet or hive cover in front of the entrance. If the limb can not be cut, the swarm can be shaken off into a box or basket on a pole and hived. If the bees light on the trunk of a tree or in some inaccessible place they can first be attracted away by a comb, preferably containing unsealed brood. In these manipulations it is not necessary to get all the bees, but if the queen is not with those which are put into the hive the bees will go into the air again and join the cluster.

If a queen is clipped as recommended under "Spring management" (p. 29) the swarm will issue just the same, but the queen, not being able to fly, will simply wander about on the ground in front of the hive, where she can be caught and caged. The parent colony can then be removed to a new stand and a new hive put in its place. The bees will soon return and the queen can be freed among them as they enter. The field bees on returning will enter the new hive with the swarm, thus decreasing still more the parent colony and making a second swarm less probable. To make sure of this, however, all queen cells except one good one can be removed soon after the swarm issues. Another method of preventing second swarms is to set the old hive beside the swarm and in a week move the old hive to another place. The field bees of the parent colony then join the swarm and the parent colony is so much reduced that a second swarm does not issue.

To hold a swarm it is desirable to put one frame containing healthy unsealed brood in the new hive. The other frames may contain full sheets or starters of foundation. Usually comb honey supers or surplus bodies for extracting frames will have been put on before swarming occurs. These are given to the swarm on the old stand and separated from the brood chamber by queen-excluding perforated zinc. In three or four days the perforated zinc may be removed if desired.

When clipping the queen's wing is not practiced, swarms may be prevented from leaving by the use of queen traps of perforated zinc (fig. 6). These allow the workers to pass out, but not drones or queens, which, on leaving the entrance, pass up to an upper compartment from which they can not return. These are also used for keeping undesirable drones from escaping, and the drones die of starvation. When a swarm issues from a hive provided with a queen trap, the queen goes to the upper compartment and remains there until released by the bee keeper. The workers soon return to the hive. When the operator discovers the queen outside, the colony may be artificially swarmed to prevent another attempt at natural swarming. A queen trap should not be kept on the hive all the time for fear the old queen may be superseded and the young queen prevented from flying out to mate.

=ARTIFICIAL SWARMING=

If increase is desired, it is better to practice some method of artificial swarming and to forestall natural swarming rather than be compelled to await the whims of the colonies. The situation should be under the control of the bee keeper as much as possible. The bees, combs, and brood may be divided into two nearly equal parts and a queen provided for the queenless portion; or small colonies, called nuclei, may be made from the parent colony, so reducing its strength that swarming is not attempted. These plans are not as satisfactory as shaken swarms, since divided colonies lack the vigor of swarms.

A good method of artificially swarming a colony is to shake most of the bees from the combs into another hive on the old stand with starters (narrow strips) of foundation. The hive containing the brood with some bees still adhering is then moved to a new location. If receptacles for surplus honey have been put on previously, as they generally should be, they should now be put over the artificial swarm separated from the brood compartment by perforated zinc.

This method of artificially swarming (usually called by bee keepers "shook" swarming) should not be practiced too early, since natural swarming may take place later. The colony should first have begun its preparations for swarming. The method is particularly useful in comb honey production. The bees may be prevented from leaving the hive by the use of a drone trap (fig. 6) or by putting in one frame containing unsealed brood. Some bee keepers prefer using full sheets of foundation or even drawn combs for the artificial swarm, but narrow strips of foundation have some advantages. By using narrow strips the queen has no cells in which to lay eggs for a time, thus reducing brood rearing, but, since by the time artificial swarming is practiced the profitable brood rearing is usually over, this is no loss but rather a gain. There are also in the brood compartment no cells in which the gathering workers can deposit fresh honey, and they consequently put it in the supers. Gradually the combs below are built out and brood rearing is increased. Later the colony is allowed to put honey in the brood combs for its winter supply. If no increase is desired, the bees which emerge from the removed brood combs may later be united with the artificial swarm and by that time there will usually be little danger of natural swarming.

Artificial swarming can readily be combined with the shaking treatment for bee diseases, thus accomplishing two objects with one manipulation. If disease is present in the parent colony, only strips of foundation should be used and the colony should be confined to the hive until a queen and drone trap and not with a frame of brood.

=PREVENTION OF SWARMING.=

Unless increase is particularly desired, both natural and artificial swarming should be done away with as far as possible, so that the energy of the bees shall go into the gathering of honey. Since crowded and overheated hives are particularly conducive to swarming, this tendency may be largely overcome by giving plenty of ventilation and additional room in the hive. Shade is also a good preventive of swarming. Extra space in the hive may be furnished by adding more hive bodies and frames or by frequent extracting, so that there may be plenty of room for brood rearing and storage at all times. These manipulations are, of course, particularly applicable to extracted honey production.

To curb the swarming impulse frequent examinations of the colonies (about every week or 10 days during the swarming season) for the purpose of cutting out queen cells is a help, but this requires considerable work, and since some cells may be overlooked, and particularly since it frequently fails in spite of the greatest care, it is not usually practiced. Requeening with young queens early in the season, when possible, generally prevents swarming.

Swarming is largely due to crowded brood chambers, and since eggs laid immediately before and during the honey flow do not produce gatherers, several methods have been tried of reducing the brood. The queen may either be entirely removed or be caged in the hive to prevent her from laying. In either event the bees will usually build queen cells to replace her, and these must be kept cut out. These plans would answer the purpose very well were it not for the fact that queenless colonies often do not work vigorously. Under most circumstances these methods can not be recommended. A better method is to remove brood about swarming time and thus reduce the amount. There are generally colonies in the apiary to which frames of brood can be given to advantage.

In addition to these methods various nonswarming devices have been invented, and later a nonswarming hive so constructed that there is no opportunity for the bees to form a dense cluster. The breeding of bees by selecting colonies with less tendency to swarm has been suggested.

On the whole, the best methods are the giving of plenty of room, shade, and ventilation to colonies run for extracted honey; and ventilation, shade, and artificial swarming of colonies run for comb honey. Frequent requeening (about once in two years) is desirable for other reasons, and requeening before swarming time helps in the solution of that difficulty,

=PREPARATION FOR THE HARVEST.=