I will now present a few statements, exhibiting the practical results which follow the use of my Controllable Hive and New System of Bee Management, and showing the great contrast in profits and general success in the care of bees.
In the season of 1870, one of my hives of native bees yielded two hundred and fifty-three pounds of surplus honey, in glass boxes, from the 20th of May to the 1st of July. In 1875 one hive yielded three hundred and eighty pounds of surplus honey in glass boxes during the season. This was the largest yield I ever had, and shows what is possible by liberal feeding with a thrifty stock of bees, giving them every facility, with a view of securing the largest possible amount of surplus box honey. In this case, I selected in early spring, the very best stock I could find, and pushed it as hard as possible throughout the entire spring, summer and early fall. My success exceeded even my most sanguine expectations. As it may serve to fix others in producing large yields of honey, I will describe minutely the method pursued to secure this large and extraordinary yield.
Very early in the spring I selected the most populous stock in my possession. It was ruled by a young and exceedingly prolific Hybrid queen, a mixture of Italian and Native blood. I commenced early in the spring to feed this stock lightly but regularly, every day at evening. I fed about one-half pound of feed per day, until a few days before the flowers were in bloom profusely. This was done to encourage breeding. Very early in the spring they were fed corn and rye meal, as directed in this work.
For a few days before the flowers were blooming profusely, I fed liberally—in fact, gave them all I could possibly induce them to take up; the object being to get the store comb in the body of the hive, not occupied with brood, completely filled with honey. The glass boxes twenty-six in number (with the Feeder,) each holding about four and one-half pounds of honey, were arranged in connection with the hive (sides and tops,) several weeks prior to the appearance of the flowers, that the bees might become accustomed to them, and the more readily enter them and commence work. When I ceased feeding (which was on the appearance of the flowers yielding a good supply of honey,) the boxes were filled with bees, and comb-building had commenced. The hive was at this time filled to overflowing with bees, and the combs had brood in all stages of growth, from the egg to the perfect bee. I had taken the precaution to cut out nearly all the drone comb, and fit in its place worker comb, so I had but very few drones to consume the honey. I had also arranged so as to have no increase by swarming, but to have all the bees employed storing surplus honey in the boxes throughout the season.
As fast as the boxes were filled, they were removed and empty ones substituted in their place. I never saw bees work with such determined industry, early and late, and in all kinds of weather. When honey failed at the end of the season, there was a set of boxes on the hive partially filled. I immediately gave the bees feed until these two were finished. I found, on weighing the product of this hive in the fall, that they had given me a fraction over three hundred and eighty pounds of surplus honey in boxes. This honey I sold at thirty-five cents a pound, a little over one hundred and thirty-three dollars, for surplus honey sold from this one stock. Reader, go thou and do likewise.
I had one stock of bees which occupied the same stand winter and summer, for six years, and during that time they swarmed but once, and from it I sold every year over fifty dollars' worth of surplus honey in glass boxes. A neighbor several times offered me fifty dollars for this stock, early in the spring before the bees commenced their labors.
In 1874, I purchased a swarm of bees in an old box hive. They had not paid their owner a dollar in profit for years. Some seasons they would swarm and fly away to the woods; in other seasons they would remain clustered on the front of the hive through the entire season, refusing to swarm, or enter the two small boxes covered with a cap on top of the hive. I transferred the bees from this hive to the Controllable Hive, and they gave me a profit of over forty dollars the first year.
I sold my honey in 1874 for from thirty-three to thirty-five dollars per hundred gross weight—that is, no tare deducted for the weight of the box.
In the season of 1880 one stock in a Controllable Hive, in the month of June, without being fed or having extra care, yielded seventy-two pounds of surplus honey in boxes. Another treated in the same manner, yielded over eighty pounds of surplus in the same time. Another new swarm, since the first week in June, filled the brood frames with honey, and produced thirty-eight pounds of surplus honey in glass boxes (filling eight boxes as full as they could be crowded,) and gave me a large swarm the last week in June.
When box honey brings from thirty-three to thirty-five cents a pound, gross weight, my usual yearly average is a little over fifty dollars clean profit from the sale of box honey, from each stock of bees I keep. I intend to keep about twelve stocks each season. I sometimes have a much greater number; yet it is my purpose to keep only this number each season, for the production of surplus honey, swarms, etc. My average yield of surplus box honey is about two hundred pounds (perhaps a trifle less) from each hive of bees that I keep, during each season, when swarming is prevented and each stock liberally fed.