A bee-hive is a school of loyalty and filial love.
[For the American Bee Journal.]
Novice.
Dear Bee Journal:—Just hear the good news,—our bees are again at work! Not, indeed, at the rate of ten or fifteen pounds per day, as in June last; but they are really at work at this date, September 9th.
We had been building some more “air castles,” and had talked of another yield of honey in August and September. After waiting some time, and watching and weighing a hive without any increase, we at last began to perceive a gain in weight, first of half a pound, then a whole one, and yesterday a stock of Italians gained two pounds and a half, which was enough to make us toss up our hat and almost embrace the little yellow pets (with judicious gentleness, of course).
A neighbor says the way we follow the bees across fields and through woods, and delve into the subject and remove obstructions, it is no wonder they get honey if it be on the face of the earth—and perhaps that is so.
But, look here, my dear reader, did you understand us to say that our bees were building combs? Not at all; “nary” comb will they build, with a few exceptions, and certainly none in those old-fashioned traps called boxes. It is this way. Where there are empty combs right above the brood, they will fill them with honey; as, for instance, in the upper story of the Langstroth hive. But they seldom put any honey in combs very far to one side; and hives that are full, or nearly so, do not increase in weight at all. So you see it all depends on having plenty of empty combs. We really think a few more just now would be worth a dollar apiece to us. A little feeding given just right will induce comb building, but we think not so as to pay.
The one stock that we weighed all through the season has now given us three hundred and thirty (330) pounds; and had it not been for replacing their queen, they would have done much better. Their new queen is nearly a black one, and so, also, are her workers; and, by the way, Mr. Editor, here lies a trouble. In slicing the heads off of all our drone brood this summer, we increased our yield of honey, which was all right. But we increased the yield also of new queens that produce black workers, or at least so nearly black that we have resolved to purchase twenty-five pure queens, to replace all that are not fully up to our ideas. It is true we might raise them, but at the prices at which they are now offered, we begin to think we had rather raise honey, and let some one who has more time or likes the bother better, raise queens. In making new swarms we have no trouble; but in raising surplus queens to replace others, etc., we have not made it go to suit us. We have made some experiments in artificial fertilization this fall, but have not succeeded. Queen nurseries and hatching queens in cages have also been an “unsuccessful bother” to us. We know we are but a poor novice, and should not expect to succeed always, but it does seem as if queens that do not lay, are rather a risky property to meddle with.
But there is one thing we do like, and find it a real pleasure, namely, to keep a record. Thus, we found sixty-five stocks too many to remember all about, so we got a blank book with 150 pages (bear in mind it is a good idea to have a few extra pages, even if you are sure you never will want to use them). No. 1 hive is on page 1, No. 2 on page 2, and so on to the end of the chapter. Each page tells when the queen of the hive it refers to was hatched, whether pure or not, prolific or not; if weighed, how much honey produced; if queen to be replaced, how and when; and, in short, all about the hive.