The weight of the hive should be marked on it when empty, so that the exact amount of its contents may at any time be ascertained. Experienced apiarians are able to judge of the weight of a hive by lifting it a few inches from the stand; or by looking in at the window of a stock hive a conclusive opinion may be formed as to the state of the colony. If the combs within view be well filled and sealed, it will be safe to consider that the hive contains sufficient stores to carry the bees through the winter.
§ XIX. FEEDING.
The bee-keeper, after the honey harvest, should ascertain the state of the stock hive, because it sometimes happens that hives which were very strong and productive during summer have been left poorly off for the winter. The bees, no doubt under the impression that those nicely filled supers would prove to them an ample sustenance, have given up the whole stock hive to the queen for breeding. If this be not looked after and rectified the colony will starve off; or possibly on some mild day in winter—even before all is exhausted—they will decamp as if for a swarm.
The apiarian must therefore ascertain the state of the stock hive at Michaelmas by means of a weighing machine. The weight, exclusive of the hive, ought to be from twenty to twenty-four pounds, and if not so, the bees must be fed till that weight is reached. This is done by the feeders above described ([page 202]), from which they suck the syrup as if honey-gathering, and then store it away, a quart in a day or so. The time of doing this should not be deferred later, as it is important that the food should be placed in the cells and sealed up, and they cannot secrete the wax for this purpose without a warm temperature; if it remained unsealed it would be liable to turn sour and cause disease. Again, at mid-winter and in very cold weather, bees, though they never become torpid like wasps, are in a state of dormant inactivity from which it is better not to arouse them.
On the return of spring it will again be essential to attend to feeding the bees, and this precaution must be exercised till May, when they will be able to take care of themselves. A little food in the spring, even when the store is not all expended, is of value as stimulating the queen to lay more abundantly, for bees are provident and do not rear the young rapidly when supplies are short. In this particular their intelligence is very striking; they have needed no Malthus to teach them that the means of subsistence must regulate the increase of population.
"Part of the wondrous whole by Heaven designed,
Blest with some portion of ethereal mind,[31]
The prescient female rears her tender brood
In strict proportion to the hoarded food."
Evans.