If you wish surplus honey instead of swarms, put on your side boxes as early in the spring as the bees commence brisk work on flowers,—as a general rule, say a few days before fruit blossoms appear. Feed as directed for swarms until about ten days before white clover blossoms, then put on the top boxes, leaving room only for feeder. Then for ten or twelve days feed them all they will take. Feed at evening. They will at first, perhaps, take from five to ten pounds every night. Crowd them hard, for the object is now to get every part of the brood section (not occupied by eggs and brood) filled with honey; and if possible, crowd the bees into the boxes to commence the work of comb building, so that during the yield of honey from flowers, you can get every ounce collected, stored in the boxes.
By early and judicious feeding, we have encouraged breeding so that now our hives are filled, almost overflowing, with bees, ready to gather the harvest from the flowers as soon as they begin to yield honey.
Discontinue feeding while the yield of honey continues in full supply from the flowers. At the close of the yield, if you have boxes half filled or more, feed all they will take up for a few days, or until your boxes are finished.
FEEDING FOR WINTER.
In September or October feed such stocks as are short of stores, to winter them. Each stock should have twenty pounds of honey in the brood section to winter safely. If they have less than that, feed until they have that quantity, or take a frame of honey from a stock that has some to spare, and exchange with the one that is short, and so proceed until all have sufficient stores to winter safely.
In no case take out frames at the close of the season, and leave that space without a frame, or with an empty frame. At the commencement of winter every hive must (to winter safely) have its full number of frames filled with comb, no matter if they are not filled with honey (if the hive has the required number of pounds,) but each frame must be filled, or nearly filled with comb, or there is great danger of loss from sudden changes of temperature through the winter.
In feeding for box honey, it often requires more than one pound of feed to secure a pound in boxes, for the bees consume some while storing it, and they often find some place in the hive which, like the crowded omnibus or street car is not so full but that additions may be made. It would not pay to feed for box honey, were there no yield of honey from natural sources.
The reader will bear in mind this simple fact: Bees do not make honey, they simply collect it. Honey undergoes no chemical change in the stomach of the bee.
Several years since, my bees had access to several molasses hogheads, and the result was, I found pure molasses stored in my hives, in the same comb with nice white honey. I am satisfied that the bee does not make honey but collects it. My feed is prepared and recommended in view of this fact, and in perfect accord with all points bearing upon this subject.
The feed is of the same color as the nicest, white clover honey, and when put in boxes by the bees with the honey collected from flowers (I have no doubt in some instances in alternate layers in the same cell with honey from flowers,) it cannot be distinguished, either in color or taste, from honey wholly collected from flowers.