BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
In order to judge the effect swarming has on honey production, let us see what takes place in the colony. One or two days before a colony swarms, most of the field bees which have been bringing in nectar and pollen, stop working. These bees remaining in the hive cause increased congestion. On the next bright, warm day toward noon, a bee here and there will become excited and start running through the hive; other bees will start running with these; and soon the whole colony will be in an uproar. Suddenly this boiling, seething mass will rush from the entrance and begin flying about in the air with a roar which may be heard for some distance, and we say, "a swarm is out." This swarm is made up of most of the field bees, as many of the younger bees as can fly, part of the drones, and the old queen. The bees fly about in a cloud for a few minutes then begin to cluster on some tree or fence near by. Nearly the entire working force of the colony has gone out, leaving in the old hive the nurse bees, a few drones, and those field bees which were in the field at the time the swarm issued. There are also a number of queen cells more or less fully developed. In a day or two a new queen will emerge, and unless the colony plans to swarm again soon, the bees will settle down to building up a new colony.
**After** the swarm is hived, it must draw out new combs, produce a new batch of brood, gather new stores of honey and pollen, and so gradually get back to storing strength. This will take time, and in the meantime the beekeeper is getting no, or at most very little, surplus honey from this part of his colony. The colony in the old hive must develop its queen to laying age, must develop a new force of field workers and lay in new supplies of pollen and honey before it can again produce surplus honey. This will take longer than for the swarm since this colony has very few field bees left. From this discussion it will be evident that both parts of the original colony will not store as much surplus as the old colony would have done if it had not swarmed. It often happens that a colony which swarms at the beginning of the honey flow will not stcre any surplus from that flow, so it is best from the beekeeper's point of view to prevent swarming as far as possible.
## 4 Swarm Prevention.
Man cannot make bees do as he wishes unless he adapts his work to the natural instincts of the bees. In any attempt to control swarming, then, we must provide conditions which will be favorable toward honey production and away from queen cell building. Colonies differ very much in the persistency with which they carry out an idea. Some colonies will give up the idea of swarming very readily while others will persist in building queen cells in spite of all the beekeeper can do. Some colonies in some seasons will give up preparations for swarming after the beekeeper has killed their queen cells once or twice, while the next year, maybe, they will swarm out after the cells have been cut out repeatedly. Usually, however, if the beekeeper gives plenty of room in the brood nest and gives a super or two before they really need them, he can keep most of his colonies interested in storing honey.
If this method of cell killing is used as a swarm preventive measure, the beekeeper will have to look through his colonies very carefully every eight or ten days during the brood rearing period preceding the honey flow, and kill all the cells. If he misses one, the colony will swarm. This method is very tedious and is not always effective, so some other plan may work better. A plan which provides conditions within the hive very much like those under natural swarming is named after the originator, the "Demaree Plan."
This, briefly, consists in raising all the frames of brood, except one, together with all the young bees, into an upper body, and confining the queen below under an excluder on this
## Proper Supering for Extracted Honey.
Bees will enter extracting supers more readily and work in them better than they will in section supers, especially if they contain drawn combs. On this account it is not such a problem to get extracting supers accepted. If one has a few colonies only, he may follow the same plan as for comb honey supering. If he has a large number of colonies, and some out-yards, it will be better to add several supers at once. Many beekeepers who run scores of colonies, add all the supers which they expect to need at the beginning of the honey flow. Proper supering, in the final analysis, is a matter for each beekeeper to decide for himself, after taking into account all the factors which have any bearing upon the problem, viz., the weather, the condition of the honey plants, the activity of the colonies, the strength of the colonies, etc.
Handling Natural Swarms so as to Get the Most Honey.
Where the beekeeper is working for honey production primarily and cannot prevent swarming entirely, there are one or two ways of handling the colonies to get the best results. The one used most often with success is to move the old hive out of the way a little after the swarm issues, turning the entrance away, and to place a new hive exactly in the place occupied by the other. Have the new hive filled with drawn combs if possible, but at least with full sheets of foundation. Shake or smoke the swarm into a box or basket, and dump it in front of the new hive and see that it gets started into the hive. After all is quiet, turn the old hive about so that the entrance points in the same direction as the new, and leave them for ten days. If the old hive had supers on it when the swarm came out, these should be transferred to the swarm.
If conditions in the yard are such as to make it likely that the virgin in the old hive will be well mated, the colony may be allowed to produce its own queen, but it will make the colony build up quicker to provide it with a laying queen. This should be done soon after the swarm is hired, the queen cells left in the old hive being cut out previously. At the end of ten days the old hive may be taken to a new location and left tobuild up into a new colony. If it is preferred not to have any increase, after the swarm is hived, the cells may be cut out and the old hive set over the new with an excluder between and left to develop the brood. In this way all the brood will be added to the colony and no increase made.
Another plan is to leave the old hive beside the new until all the brood has emerged; then shake the bees in front of the new hive and take the old hive away. With this plan all queen cells must be cut out at the time the swarm is hived and again in ten days so as to keep the colony queenless.
Best Time to Make Increase.
The best time to make increase is at swarming time or a little later. If some of the colonies reach maximum strength before the honey flow starts, they will begin to go backward unless something is done to keep up their interest in brood production. It is a good plan, if the beekeeper wishes increase, to make up nuclei from these strong colonies, by taking frames of brood and bees from them and giving these nuclei either ripe queen cells or laying queens.
This plan may be used also in seasons when the honey flow is delayed for any reason so that the colonies reach their peak of production too soon. Another method is to keep the colonies from building swarming cells as long as possible, but those which persist in building queen cells should be treated by the Demaree plan, and when queen cells in the upper body are nearly ready to hatch, remove the upper body to a new location and provide it with a laying queen or ripe cell from some other stock if you do not wish to breed from that one. In this way all the field force of the colony is kept together for the honey harvest, but the brood and young bees, which will not be old enough to gather much honey during that flow, are used in making the increase.
Unless the beekeeper has had some experience in rearing queens, and has such conditions in his locality that he can breed true, it will be much better to buy queens from some reliable breeder. There is more or less damage to queens from being shipped long distances through the mails, so it is always-best to procure queens from the nearest reliable breeder.
[http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924003433483](http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924003433483)
## Parting Right With Bees
Written by a Beginner in Beekeeping, H. G. Rowe, Out of His Own Experience in Needing Help and Direction During His First Two Years of Beekeeping. Read, Revised and Approved by the Editors of Gleanings in Bee Culture.
_First Editun_
MEDINA, OhioAge and youth alike find keen interest in bees. Here is A. I. Root, known throughout the wide world of bekeeping, in his eightieth year, examining a frame of bees, with a boy of a dozen years as helper.
THE HOW AND WHY OF THIS BOOK.
This book aims to give the beginner in bekeeping only the essentials of the business. It is an apiary primer, written out of the necessities of a humble beginner who did not find in any existing bekeeping literature the simple, direct, kindergarten sort of teaching that a beginner in bekeeping so much needs. He found books written by very able and very scholarly bekeepers who had had many years of experience with bees. But it seemed to this beginner that these beemasters were "shooting over his head," in their beginner books. They seemed to forget that he, as a beginner of the greenest type, did not know a frame from a section, nor that the drone or queen might not be the greatest honey gatherer in the hive. Knowing truly so much of bees and bekeeping themselves, these able authorities did not seem to comprehend how little he knew, and so they knew too much, in very fact, to write for the humble, bee-ignorant beginner.
So it was that this beginner, during the first season of his trialful bekeeping, set down daily in a notebook what he first wanted to know about bees and the simple directions that he needed--but could not find in the bee books. After the close of his first bekeeping season, this beginner read all the literature he could find that had been printed for the beginner, jotted down the omissions in this literature, and then wrote the first draft of "Starting Right with Bees." This was done in the fresh remembrance of many steps taken blindly, of many failures in things attempted, and in the chastened and contrite spirit of one many times needlessly stung. He completely revised this first draft of his modest essay into bekeeping literature at the close of his second bekeeping season. He had lived and learned--a little more. The manuscript was then given to the several Editors of _Gleanings in Bee Culture_ to read, correct and add to as ruthlessly as they might. They were restricted only in one partieuar: that they humble themselves even as this little child of bekeeping and write nothing that he and the great army of beginner bekeepers everywhere could not understand. Mrs. Iona Fowls Wheeler and Mr. Geo. S. Demuth are to be credited in particular for valuable suggestions in the final revision of the manuscript.
The result is this book--for better or for worse than other books written for beginners in bekeeping.
It is hoped that these condensed lessons, if carefully studied, will start the beginner on the highway to success under normal conditions. Very many of the scientific and more intricate details of bekeeping will not be touched upon at all in these pages, as they are not necessary in the first steps and might serve only to confuse the novice.
Furthermore, this book will not as a rule attempt to give several different ways of performing a certain bekeeping operation or of meeting a certain beekeeping problem, but will in each instance give a single simple and proved method. To give a choice of several methods serves only to confuse the beginner.
The reader will not expect to find treated herein such subjects as the anatomy and physiology of the bee, botany of honey-producing flora, queen-rearing, wax and comb production, pollination, honey chemistry, the history of the craft and its advancement, nor the commercial and food phases of honey. This booklet will confine itself to getting the beginner started in the care of bees and production of honey, and leave for his later experience and enthusiasm the scientific and technical phases of the subject.
That the path of many a beginner in bekeeping may be made smoother and shorter and straighter by this little book, and the stings and disappointments made very much fewer, is the hope of the author of this primary book.
H. G. ROWE.
## Some First Considerations
There are some general, practical considerations that the beginner needs to take into account before crossing the threshold of bekeeping, which may quite largely predetermine his attitude toward bekeeping, as to making it a profession or a side line or merely a pleasurable avocation.
### Who Can Succeed with Bees
Beekeeping is an occupation for old or young, rich or poor, men or women. It is for the professional man or woman, tired and worn with office work; and it is also for the vigorous man in his prime who seeks profit and pleasure alike from its pursuit. Any person with fair health and strength or who can attain fair health and strength by outdoor work, who is fairly studious and endowed with some patience and some love of nature, may very reasonably hope to become successful as a beekeeper. But the greater and wider the beekeeper's intelligence and powers of observation, the greater bis success will be. Accordingly, he should be a reader of bee lore and natural history. Patience, persistence in fighting adverse circumstances, promptness in doing the right thing at the right time, and foresight are among the traits most necessary for successful beekeeping. It is not a business for the careless, the disorderly, nor for the lazy person. Successful bekeeping means work both for the brain and the hands. The very few persons who may despair of becoming good beekeepers are such as are hopelessly careless; those who have but little patience, and little or no love for the great outdoors; and the very few who are seriously affected by the poison of bee-stings and stand in constant dread of them. The normal person, with a little care, can avoid stings almost entirely and need have no fear of them. (See page 49.)
**Profit from Beekeeping.**
Many millions of dollars' worth of honey and beeswax are produced in the United States annually. This vast amount is distributed among many beekeepers--not equally, for there are lean years and fat years in different localities, much depending on varying conditions of weather and plant life, on the conditions of health and vigor within the hive, and on the market and selling methods--but most of all, on the skill of the beekeeper himself. There are professional beekeepers devoting themselves entirely to the business who make large incomes from their bees. They operate in favored localities, and, along with their experience, use the most up-to-date methods. Many beekeepers have secured more than 200 pounds of surplus honey in a single season from each of their colonies. (A colony of bees is merely a complete family of bees.) A normal colony will in a single season produce on an average about 50 to 100 pounds of surplus honey. Price of honey, operating expenses and the yield then determine the money profit.
To sum up conservatively the question of financial profit, it may be said that the successful beekeeper is very well paid in money alone for the time he spends in his work; and there is no other branch of agriculture which can be made to yield so great a return on so small an investment of capital as does beekeeping. In most cases, besides the money return, are to be reckoned the pleasure and fascination of beekeeping. It creates an absorbing interest in natural history and not only brings one in contact with the bees and all their wonderful habits but into the realm of plant life, a large part of which is dependent on the pollinating work of the bees, leading on to the study of floriculture and horticulture that opens up a whole new world of wonders.
**Beekeeping Combined with Other Business.**
Beekeeping can be combined with many other useful pursuits to advantage. For instance, the combination of beekeeping with poultry-raising and fruit-growing is an excellent, all-around means of getting a comfortable living from a comparatively small amount of land. A few acres are sufficient for these three activities.
**For those who are finding themselves unable to do the hard work of earlier years the combination of bees and poultry is especially suited. Bees require least attention when poultry needs the most. When one isbusiest with fowls in winter and early spring, the bees are inactive in their hives. When swarms and the honey harvest must be looked after, work in the poultry-yard is not pressing.
In combination with fruit-growing, beekeeping is especially desirable. The bees fertilize the blossoms, and the blossoms furnish considerable nectar. In gathering the nectar of the fruit blossoms, bees unconsciously carry pollen from stamen to pistil and from one blossom to another, aiding in the setting of the fruit, thus materially increasing the size of the fruit crop. In fact, no up-to-date and successful orehardist of today thinks of trying to raise fruit without bees in or near his orchard.
Farmers, fruit-growers and poultry-raisers may keep from 10 to 50 or even 100 colonies cf bees without interfering with other work; and nearly every one can keep from 2 to 10 colonies in a back yard. Moreover, 10 or 20 colonies will yield a much larger revenue per colony than will five or ten times as many located on the same site.
The busy farmer may expect success with bees, although they need much attention at the same time as do the farm crops. If the older children and the women folks of the family chance to love outdoors and take a fancy to bees, the problem of help and care of the bees in the busy farm season is at once solved. Then, too, if the farmer owns any orehards or is engaged in any small-fruit raising, he positively can not afford to be without at least a few colonies of bees on his premises. They should constitute an essential part of his business.
School-teachers who can have an apiary near at hand will find that they can use their vacation months very profitably among the bees, and this vacation time is just when the bees will need greatest attention. A Saturday given now and then in the fall and spring will afford all the time necessary for caring for the bees during these seasons.
Professional men, generally, and all classes confined to the indoors while at their regular work, may well look to beekeeping as a source of interesting recreation and profit.
When to Start.
For the beginner, inexperienced in beekeeping, the best time to start is during the fruit bloom or at the time of the first honey flow of any kind that will give the bees a few days' food supply. This time will vary considerably because of different latitudes. In any latitude the beginner should start after possible early spring-managing problems are past. For instance, in the northern and north-central states of the United States this is during early fruit bloom. Of course, the experienced beekeeper may safely buy bees at any season of the year, and he often does so in the fall, because bees may then be bought at a mueh lower figure than in the early summer when there is a prospect of a honey crop near at hand.
How to Begin Beekeeping.
Before the beginner in beekeeping actually makes his start there are several things he may do to his very great advantage. If he can visit an experienced beekeeper for a day or several days and come to understand something of the appliances and methods used in beekeeping, it will be of much assistance in his future work. He will thus pick up a fund of information that might take him weeks or months to acquire from text-books or from his own experience. Almost any experienced beekeeper is ready to give an enthusiastic beginner a practical demonstration of many of the the manipulations of the hive. Again, in advance of beginning, the novice should read all the beekeeping literature that he can reasonably acquire. The more theory he gets in advance of his practice, the better off he will be. We can not too strongly urge both the visit to some experienced beekeeper and the reading of beekeeping lore when making the start.
The importance of beginning in a small way with bees and with as little expense as possible can not be emphasized too strongly. Nothing is more discouraging, after having plunged into the business too extensively, than to lose a large part of the bees either through bad wintering or from some other cause due to the lack of practical experience or to insufficient theoretical knowledge. Very many enthusiastic beginners in beekeeping have had their enthusiasm and love of bees killed by disaster due to starting too ambitiously. Sometimes a person is offered a bargain of 50 or 100 colonies of bees, including hives and implements, at a ridiculously low price. But this temptation should be put aside by the beginner, because it almost invariably leads to failure. Two or three colonies of bees are about the right number to start with. After the first year, the beginner will want at least as many as five colonies, and these will require beekeepers' supplies in such amount as to be bought in original packages, effecting a very considerable saving. The purehase at first of a large number of bee appliances and tools is as much to be avoided as is a beginning with too many bees. Get along with just as few appliances and as little expense as possible at first.
But before discussing equipment, a word ought to be said as to whether the beginner should seek to produce comb honey or extracted honey, for the work is quite different and the equipment somewhat different.
**COMB Honey OR EXTRACTED Honey -- WHICH?**
CHAPTER II.
The honey which the bees produce in excess of their winter needs is called surplus honey. This may be stored in comb built in small boxes called sections, which hold about one pound of honey each and are sold with the honey; or it may be stored in combs built in "shallow" frames holding about three pounds, the honey being cut out and used or sold in the comb as chunk honey; or it may be extracted from the combs built in either "shallow" or "deep" frames and the same frames of combs used in the hive repeatedly year after year. The honey produced in the sections is called comb honey, and that extracted from the combs is called extracted honey.
Now at the very outset it will be necessary to decide whether to produce comb honey or extracted, for, as just explained, the equipment in the two cases will differ. There are several good reasons why the average beginner will find it to his advantage to produce extracted rather than comb honey, although many a beginner has first produced comb honey.
**Comb and Extracted Honey Production Compared.**
For the first year, the comb and the extracted honey outfits do not differ materially in price, except for the extractor; but in succeeding years the financial advantage is in favor of the extracted-honey production, for the same combs in which the bees store honey the first year may be used repeatedly year after year, while the sections and foundation in which comb honey is stored must be replaced at considerable cost every season.
Comb is made of wax, which is a secretion from certain glands of the bees; and for the production of a pound of wax it is probably necessary for the bees to consume five to fifteen pounds of honey, which might otherwise be sold as surplus. Therefore, besides the extra cost of supplies the beekeeper loses considerable from the fact that bees producing comb honey are compelled each year to build all the comb in which they store their surplus honey instead of using the same comb year after year as in the ease of extracted-honey production. Such comb would quite likely contain as much as three pounds of wax and might, therefore, require fifteen or more pounds of honey for its production.