JUNE.
This is the month for swarms. It is also the month, in most localities, when the best quality of box honey is collected. If you have arranged for swarms to appear this month, have everything in readiness for them. If you are arranging for surplus honey, remove the boxes as fast as filled, and replace with empty ones. Hive the swarms as soon as clustered. Be sure not to let them remain in the hot sun for any length of time. Have your hives all ready. This month is a good time to rear queens in the miniature hives. Keep the grass and weeds about the hives cut down. They harbor the moth miller, when suffered to grow about the hives.
JULY.
Continue to take off boxes as fast as filled. Keep a sharp lookout that the moth worms do not get in and injure the honey in the boxes which you have removed. If the supply of honey fails when the boxes are only partially filled, feed the bees liberally, until the boxes are finished. Do this as soon as honey fails, as the bees will store faster in boxes if fed as soon as the natural supply of honey ceases. It will be well to put on a few boxes—say, one side to each new swarm which has been hived early; and also on old stocks that swarmed early. Put the boxes on one side first; then if the bees go to work in them, put in the other side.
AUGUST.
If you have a market near home, the surplus honey in boxes will sell very well the last of this month, before honey is brought from away; but if you are to ship a great distance, the weather will be too warm in this month. Keep a close watch that the boxes you have taken off do not get wormy. Eternal vigilance is the price of success.
Keep boxes on your hives through this month and next for surplus honey. Keep down the grass and weeds from about the hives.
SEPTEMBER.
In some localities September gives a very good yield of honey. I recollect one season in particular, since I adopted my present system of bee management, when the yield of box honey in September was very remarkable. Some of my hives of bees filled their full sets of boxes almost entirely in a few days. I think that it was in considerably less than two weeks, that they finished them up, and they had only a slight start—a few small pieces of comb in some of the boxes, and in the others none at all.
Feed at the last of the month to complete all partially filled boxes, and at the very last of the month, or first of October, feed such swarms as may be deficient of stores for winter, if you prefer to do this rather than to equalize by exchange of comb frames, as directed in another place. If you decide to thus equalize, do it the last of October or the first of November.