In commencing to keep bees, if possible start with good, strong, healthy stocks, in the right kind of a hive; then you will have no difficulty in changing them. But if this cannot possibly be done, be sure to start with strong, healthy stocks. If you must take second-class hives, of this class the plain movable comb and box hives are best. But be sure to let the patent hives entirely alone; they are a curse to the bee-keeper. If you get your bees in second-class hives, transfer them to Controllable Hives, or as fast as they swarm put them in Controllable Hives. In this way you will soon have your bees in shape to pay you a good profit.
When you begin keeping bees, study closely their natural habits and requirements. Give them such care and attention as your judgement and present knowledge teaches they require. Persevere, and ultimate success is certain.
Every one who attains success with bees, will find that there is something more to be done, than simply to stand with folded hands, with the expectation that a fortune must inevitably follow. Know the precise condition of your bees at all times—whether they are weak or strong, whether they are without a queen, or whether the queen has become so old as to have passed her usefulness. After a period of years, queens become barren, and unless they are removed, and a young queen substituted, the bees will rapidly decline in numbers, and all disappear from the hive in a few weeks or months.
It cannot be too strongly urged upon the beginner, this great necessity of securing strong, healthy stocks to begin with; and if possible, get them in the Controllable Hives. All who do not fully understand the management and nature of bees would save themselves much trouble and perplexity, by procuring, to begin with, one or more healthy colonics in the Controllable Hive. Your chances of success in the end, and your profits of the first season, are greater from one swarm in this hive, than from six in second-class hives. If you purchase bees in inferior hives, you will need to exercise great care that they are not diseased. There is not one box or patent hive in fifty (as ordinarily managed) but that is deceased. They are either badly infested with the bee moth, have old, mouldy black combs, an old and diseased queen, or are in some way diseased. No matter how low the price paid for such stocks, they will be found expensive. Be sure to get none but the best to commence with; they are the cheapest in the end.
I might illustrate this with many cases that have come under my observation. One or two I will mention: A gentlemen in Connecticut ordered of me a swarm of Italian bees in the Controllable Hive, in the spring of 1880, for which he paid me twenty dollars. He wrote me in June that they were doing finely, and that he never saw bees work so well—they were at work in all the boxes, some of them being nearly filled with honey, and all the combs being filled with bees at work storing; and from appearances he should get a large amount of surplus box honey from them.
Another gentleman wrote me, almost the same time, asking my price for a swarm of Italian bees, and when informed that it was twenty dollars, he wrote me that as he could get the Italian bees nearer his home for ten dollars, he would not order of me, but would invest his twenty dollars and get two swarms instead of one. He has since written me that one of the swarms for which he paid ten dollars he has lost outright, leaving him only a mass of moth worms in old and mouldy black combs. The other has proved to be queenless, and has caused him more trouble and perplexity than it is worth, to say the least. There is now not over a pint of bees in the hive, but he has put in a queen and hopes to save them from total loss.
I know of another case where a gentleman bought six swarms of bees in box hives. They were very heavy and he thought of course they were all right. He knew nothing of the diseases of bees, and supposed if they were heavy, and had honey enough, that was all that was necessary. He bought them in the fall at a very low price, and was much elated over his purchase. Five of the six swarms died during the winter, and the remaining one came out in the spring so weak as to be no profit whatever the next season; and the next winter that also died.
It is an established fact that to succeed well with bees they must be kept in hives suited to their habits and requirements, and with the view of rendering them profitable. Such is the Controllable Hive. And they must be managed on principles in accordance with nature's laws, and the instincts and habits of the honey bee. Such is the new system recommended in this book—Bee Keeping Reduced to a Science; no "luck," no "guess-work," no "chance" about it.
Trusting that this little work may be the means of greatly increasing the profits of bees, I bring it to a close.
