The advantages of uniting weak hives are very considerable. I need only mention three. 1. The bees are saved; 2. They are saved without trouble or expence; 3. All the hives are strong.
The first of these advantages is the preservation of the bees. In every country, swarms are destroyed that have not been able to gather a sufficient store of provision. Those found to be too light are unmercifully condemned to be suffocated; and what little honey they have collected, is considered as pure gain, because the bees would have perished from want, after having consumed the scanty fruits of their own industry; and, by putting them to death a little sooner, something at least may be made of them. Thus people reason, and thus the murderous practice is so generally adopted. The same plan is followed in regard to old hives that are exhausted by giving out too many swarms; and in short, to all those that have not abundance of provision laid up; and the very heavy ones, on the other hand, have their bees slain to get possession of the honey. What a frightful proscription is this! What blanks occur in the apiaries, especially in bad years, such as 1812 and 1813! And how injurious to our own interest is this indiscriminate destruction of weak and healthy, of rich and poor! There is no mercy shewn but to them that have just enough to keep them alive; and not even one of them would be spared, were they not indispensably necessary to repeople the apiaries by new swarms. According to my method, all these evils are prevented. All the hives may be robbed of their treasures; but the lives of the bees are spared.
A second and very considerable advantage is the saving of honey. I have already said, that there must be at least three pots or fifteen pounds of honey to maintain one hive, whether it be strong or weak. If three swarms, then, have only that quantity among them, each has but a third of the provision that it requires; and, to keep them alive, you must sacrifice six pots of honey, that is, two-thirds of the whole provision, or two pots for each. It is to avoid this great expence, which would equal if not exceed the value of the swarms, that most people have recourse to the prompt measure of suffocation. But, by uniting the swarms, all the working bees may be saved, without any expence, and without any waste of honey but the small quantity employed to sprinkle the combs of the hive, into which you make them enter. The honey-combs found in those which you empty, are sufficient to feed the three united swarms, by giving it to them after the manner I have directed at page 33. The wax is all your own. It costs only a little care and a little trouble, which will be amply repaid by the benefit insured. And will it be accounted a slight pleasure to witness the prosperity of the bees we have saved?
A third advantage, which appears to me one of great value, is, that all the hives which we possess are strong hives (meaning by the term strong, such hives as are well stocked with bees). Weak hives decline and yield nothing; have frequent need of assistance; are exposed to pillage; give out no swarms; and produce scarcely heat sufficient to hatch a little brood in a corner of their dwelling, which never comes to good. How often have I seen the brood come to an untimely end. In vain the bees will crowd together, to procure the necessary degree of heat, when there is much empty space in the hive. A number of weak hives may do well enough to make a shew in the apiary, but will be no profit to the proprietor. It costs a good deal to feed them, if one would keep them alive; and there is very little to be gained by putting them to death. Not so with the united hives; they were all vigorous; in condition to defy the rigour of the seasons; to repel their enemies; and to gather a great quantity of honey. The population augments rapidly, and they give out early swarms; or if some of them do not produce swarms, they furnish so much the more wax and honey, and will collect more in one day than weak hives will do in a whole week; in short, there is no comparison between them.
CHAPTER XX.
TIME AND MANNER OF RENEWING OLD HIVES.
It is a common prejudice, that hives cannot be profitably preserved beyond three, four, or six years at most, and that, beyond that term, they become weak, give out no more swarms, and finish by being pillaged, or becoming the prey of moths, which, if suffered to establish themselves, soon make horrible devastation among them. A great many experiments, however, have fully convinced me that such is not the case, and that the duration of the hives may be greatly prolonged by renewing them.
I have several from twelve to twenty years old, that are as prosperous, and swarm as well, as the young ones. I have even one of June 1789, consequently now in its twenty-fifth year, and it gave off an excellent swarm on the 4th of June 1811, the same in 1813, then aged twenty-four years, and again another this year 1814. Besides these numerous swarms, I have taken from it 142 pounds of honey-comb, either by pruning, or by means of capes. I have never united it with other bees, because its neighbours had always enough to subsist on, and I have renewed it only once.
The decay of old hives proceeds from three causes. The first is the candying of the old honey, of which the bees have sometimes an ample store, but which, from inability to eat it, becomes in that state very troublesome, in place of being of use to them. When forced by hunger to have recourse to it, they draw it out of the cells, and throw it down on the board that serves as a floor to their habitation, in order to profit by any of the sweet drops that happen to be in a liquid state. In nibbling and scraping to empty the cells, it happens that many of them become so daubed, that, being unable to get away from it, they fall down, and soon perish, if the weather is cold. Thus the old honey is lost as much to the proprietors as to the labourers that have gathered it. Supposing, again, that they do not touch it, the place it occupies is lost either for the purpose of depositing new honey or brood, and hence the weak state the hives fall into, if not renewed.
A second cause of their decay is owing to the great quantity of the pollen or dust of flowers that the bees gather and carry home on their legs, especially in the spring and autumn, when large portions of the combs will be found filled with it on both sides. It is an essential ingredient in the pap with which they nourish the young brood, but good for nothing else. Different authors have named it bee-bread; but the bees never eat it: indeed it is a well attested fact, that they will die of hunger on the combs that are filled with it. As it is very heavy, it sometimes cheats those people who estimate the provision of a hive by its weight. This is one of the reasons why I have recommended, in Chap. IX. to allow eight or ten pounds more to old hives than to new swarms.