A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees

by John M. Weeks

RULE XI.

ON FEEDING BEES.

If it is found that a swarm need feeding, hitch on the feeder, well stored with good honey, while the weather is warm in October.

The apiarian should use the same precaution in feeding, as directed in Rule 4, to prevent robberies.

REMARKS.

The best time to feed is in the fall, before cold weather commences. All hives should be weighed, and the weight marked on the hive before bees are hived in them. Then, by weighing a stock as soon as frost has killed the blossoms in the fall, the apiarian will be able to form a just estimate of their necessities.

When bees are fed in the fall, they will carry up and deposit their food in such a manner as will be convenient for them in the winter. If feeding is neglected until cold weather the bees must be removed to a warm room, or dry cellar, and then they will carry up their food, generally, no faster than they consume it.

A feeder should be made like a box with five sides closed, leaving a part of the sixth side open, to admit the bees from their common entrance with its floor level, when hitched on the front of the hive. It should be of sufficient depth to lay in broad comb, filled with honey. If strained honey without combs is used for feeding, a float, perforated with many holes, should be laid over the whole of the honey in the box, or feeder, so as to prevent any of the bees from drowning; and at the same time, this float should be so thin as to enable them to reach the honey. It should be made so small that it will settle down as fast as the honey is removed by the bees. As soon as warm weather commences in the spring, the feeder may be used. Small drawers cannot be depended on as feeders, except in the spring and summer, unless they are kept so warm that the vapor of the bees will not freeze in them. It would be extremely hazardous for the bees to enter a frosty drawer. They will sooner starve than attempt the experiment. Drawers may be used without danger from robbers, but when the feeder is used, robbers must be guarded against as directed in Rule 4.

Care should be exercised, in fall-feeding, to supply them with good honey, otherwise the colony may be lost before spring by disease. Poor honey may be given them in the spring, at the time when they can obtain and provide themselves with medicine, which they only best understand.