PART II.
A little care will have to be exercised in purchasing the swarm. It should be got from a reliable local bee-keeper—a man on whom you can depend to give you what you want, namely, a healthy, natural, “first”[2] swarm, weighing not less than about three pounds. You should receive the swarm in May, but the middle of June will not be too late in many parts of England, especially if the season is at all backward.
STANDARD FRAME FITTED WITH FOUNDATION.
Everything should be in readiness for the swarm. The hive should be given three or four coats of good light stone-colour paint, and a site must be chosen for it. This should be in a quiet corner of the garden, sheltered from the prevailing winds, and, by preference, shaded from the midday sun; but a dark, damp place under the constant drip of trees should be avoided. Most bee-keepers prefer to have their hives facing south or south-east to catch the early morning sun, but this is not a matter of great importance.
The location having been decided upon and the hive set level in it, the next care will be to furnish the hive.
Each frame must have a sheet of beeswax, called brood foundation, fixed into it, to act as a foundation on which the bees may build their comb. Bees naturally start building their combs from some support above them, continuing the work in a downward direction. The foundation must, therefore, be fixed into the top bar of the frame, which has a saw-cut down the middle on purpose to receive it. Prize the saw-cut wide open, and then insert the edge of the foundation into it. Two or three fine shoemaker’s brads driven through the side of the top bar will make the work secure.
Strips of foundation about two inches wide are generally considered sufficient for fitting into frames, but larger sheets answer better. The illustration shows a full-sized sheet of foundation which is held in the centre of the frame by means of tinned wire embedded in the wax. The sides and bottom of full sheets must be kept clear of the frame.
One or two quilts should be cut out of some warm material just the size to cover the tops of the frames; a three-inch round hole should be made in the centre for the feeder. A small square piece of cloth should also be cut for covering the hole when the feeder is not on. Felt or baize is best for quilts, but pieces of old carpet answer the purpose very well. A quilt of ticking or unbleached calico, similarly cut, should be placed under the other quilts, next the bees, to prevent them from nibbling holes in the soft material.
In preparing the hive for the reception of the swarm, see that the frames are equally spaced by means of the metal ends, so that they hang one and a half inches apart from centre to centre. Do not attempt to hive the swarm until late in the afternoon, say about 4 P.M. and 5 P.M. If the swarm arrives in the middle of the day, place it in a cool place, and see that it has plenty of ventilation.
Do not follow the old-fashioned plan of smearing the inside of the hive with beer and sugar. It is a mistake to suppose that the bees require such mixtures when swarming, or, indeed, at any other time. The only thing they want now is a clean dry hive.
For hiving the swarm, the alighting board will have to be extended by means of a large board, one or two feet wide, called a hiving-board, which may be propped up with bricks so as to be on a slight slant. The whole should be covered with a sheet. Also raise the stock-box up a little in front, so as to enlarge the entrance. The stock-box may be kept in this position by means of two little pebbles.
Though the chances of getting badly stung while hiving a swarm of bees are more or less remote, it will be advisable to wear the bee-veil, if it be only for the purpose of inspiring confidence during the first attempt at bee-work. The smoker also, though seldom necessary on this occasion, may come in useful, and should be at hand, charged with a roll of smouldering brown paper.
BEE-VEIL AND SMOKER.
Now shake a few bees on to the sheet. They will immediately commence running up into the hive. Scarcely any will take to the wing. When this first lot of bees has made a good start, some more may be shaken down on top of them, and this will have the effect of making them all much more eager to press into the hive. A few light puffs of smoke from the smoker may now be useful to dislodge an inert cluster, or to correct the course of a group of bees that may have a mistaken notion as to the direction in which the entrance to the hive lies.
Unless the queen has been caged, she should now be carefully looked for amongst the living moving mass on the sheet. It will be very satisfactory if we can succeed in spotting her, and can see her enter the hive safely amongst her subjects, for should she by any chance be missing, the swarm will be useless. She is considerably longer, though very little stouter, than an ordinary worker-bee, her tail being particularly long and tapering; her wings also are shorter than those of the workers, and there is a reddish appearance about her legs. We must not mistake a drone for the queen. There is only one queen in the swarm, but there may be several thousands of drones. The drone-bee may be known by his broad body, long wings and large eyes, which almost meet on the top of his head. The drone is stingless. The queen, on the contrary, possesses a sting, but she cannot pierce the skin with it, so we may handle her, when necessary, without fear.
If the queen is in a cage it will be necessary to liberate her and to let her run into the hive with the workers when the latter have almost all entered the hive.
Next morning the front of the stock-box may be lowered, and we may take a peep into the hive by lifting up a corner of the quilts. All frames not filled with bees may be removed and placed behind the dummy, to be given again to the bees when they require more room, which they will do in a few days.
If the weather keeps fine and warm we shall now see a number of workers flying around the entrance of the hive, and carefully noting the position of their new home. Then off they will go to the fields in search of food in the shape of honey and pollen, to return again before long with their bodies distended with the sweet juice, and their “thighs” laden with the yellow paste.
Meanwhile their comrades at home have not been idle. Clustering inside the hive, they have been busy secreting wax, and have already drawn out some of the foundation into a comb of cells to hold the supplies brought in by the field-workers.
And so the work of construction and storage goes on day after day, harmoniously and rapidly. There are no hitches or quarrelling amongst the twenty thousand or so little workers which constitute the swarm. Each one knows and does her share of the work, with results that are astonishing, as we shall see if we examine the hive at the end of even one short week.
Donning the veil,[3] and armed with the smoker charged, as before, with smouldering brown paper, we send one or two light puffs of smoke into the entrance, which quiets the bees and prepares them for the intended examination. We then remove the roof, taking care not to jar the hive, and, lifting up a corner of the quilts, we send another gentle puff or two of smoke between the frames. We do the same at another corner. After this we make bold to lift out a frame covered with bees, and to our surprise we find that it is filled from top to bottom with a delicate white comb. It is already quite heavy with the honey which glitters in thousands of cells. Here and there a cell contains, instead of honey, a dark mass of pollen-paste called bee-bread.
A more careful inspection of the comb will show that the queen-bee too has done her share of work, not by helping to gather honey or to build combs, but by laying eggs which will hatch into grubs (larvæ), and these, by careful feeding and nursing, will eventually become worker-bees, to take the place of the present workers when they die. Near the centre of the comb is a broad circle of cells, each of which contains a tiny white egg, almost invisible to the eye, which the queen has deposited there. Within this circle, in the very centre of the comb, we shall probably find that these eggs have given place to plump little larvæ, each one coiled up in the bottom of its cell, and floating in a tiny drop of liquid food which the workers have supplied and keep replenishing. When the larvæ are full grown the mouths of their cells will be covered over by a thin capping of wax, and, hidden away underneath this capping, they will change to the third or pupal stage. The perfect bee gradually develops from this stage, and in three weeks from the time that it was deposited in its cell by the queen-bee as an almost microscopic egg it emerges from it as a full-fledged worker-bee, exactly like the other worker-bees in the hive, and fit in a few days’ time for two months of daily incessant toil. No sooner has the young worker quitted its cell than the cell is cleaned out by one of the other workers, and a fresh egg is deposited in it by the queen. Thus thousands of willing workers are raised from mere specks in the space of three short weeks, and as soon as these shall have completed their marvellous transformations, thousands more will be similarly reared in their place. What wonders the beehive contains! But we are only on the threshold of them.
SECTION THROUGH COMB CONTAINING BROOD (ENLARGED).
This paper will close with a few hints that may now come in useful to the beginner.
In the first place don’t meddle with your bees more than is absolutely necessary. It tends to make them bad-tempered, and if they are once thoroughly roused they may be difficult to manage for months, and become the terrors, not the pets, of their owner. When you have decided that an operation is necessary, have everything ready at hand before you begin, such as frames ready fitted with foundation, the smoker well charged and burning, an extra roll or two of brown paper, matches, etc. If possible, have an assistant to help you, and so avoid trouble and delay at a critical moment.
Though swarms, especially “first” ones, usually come off only in settled fine weather, it sometimes happens that they are unfortunate enough to commence life as a separate colony during a spell of bad weather when they cannot obtain food. In such a case, having no stores to fall back upon, they would starve and die if not fed by the bee-keeper, and syrup must be given to them through the feeder. Syrup suitable for feeding bees at this time of the year may be made by the following recipe:—
Ten pounds of pure cane sugar, seven pints of water, a teaspoonful of vinegar, and a pinch of salt. Keep stirring over a brisk fire, and allow to boil for a few minutes.
(To be continued.)
[IN THE TWILIGHT SIDE BY SIDE.]
By RUTH LAMB.