BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
In liquifying candided honey, it should be remembered that every particle must be dissolved, otherwise granulation will soon recommence, the remaining undissolved crystals, however small, acting as nuclei for fresh crystallization.
### 11.--Comb-honey
In Vietoria, and in Australia generally, the amount of honey marketed in the conb is only a small fraction of the total production. In England, the United States, and Canada, a considerable portion, perhaps nearly one-half, of the honey used for table purposes is in the comb.
In North America, the production of comb-honey in 1 lb, sections has attained to large dimensions, and many large apiaries are run exclusively for the raising of high grade section-honey, high prices being obtainable for what is graded as "' fancy.' In the profitable production of comb-honey, considerable skill, and favorable conditions of climate and flora, are essential.
That a larger amount of honey in the comb is not consumed in Australia is often attributed to lack of enterprise of the apiarists, or to the absence of consumers willing to pay the extra price for honey in the comb, as compared with extracted.
Well filled sections of comb-honey with perfectly clean white cappings can only be obtained in localities which have a heavy honey flow lasting sufficiently long to insure uninterrupted work in the sections from start to finish. The profitable production of comb-honey is only possible under a combination of favorable conditions not present in every locality, and not every season. Comb-honey may, as a matter of fact, be produced whenever bees store more than is needed for their own immediate requirements, but very few beeepers are aware at what cost, through loss in yield, this is done when attempted under unfavorable conditions. There are seasons when bees will produce a fair amount of honey when given ready-built combs for extracted honey, but if compelled to work in sections, a very small yield of inferior comb-honey will result.
The true causes of the small production are, however, the climatic conditions of our country and the vagaries of blossoming and nectar secretion of our native flora. The yields of honey are equal to those obtained in any part of the world, when taken on an average for several years, but our high average is made up of a glut one season and a comparative dearth in the following. We have '' on '' and '' off '' years; and, while it is comparatively easy to produce good sections in the '' on '' year, it would be quite unprofitable to attempt it in the '' off '' year.
In the case of extracted honey, much of it is held over from one season to another without any deterioration in quality. Comb-honey, however, cannot be kept in perfect condition for any length of time, except with a considerable amount of trouble in providing dry warm storage. Thus, 1 lb. sections may be rather plentiful one season and almost unobtainable the following, and the prices proportionately high. Under these conditions, neither production nor consumption can be expected to increase.
Some ten to fifteen years ago, several apiarists produced comb-honey on a large scale, but abandoned its production for that of extracted honey. Much of the section honey which finds its way on to the market now is produced by bee-keepers in a small way; and in appearance leaves much room for improvement.
As already stated, skill is required to produce comb-honey profitably. The conditions necessary to make comb-honey production profitable are--1. A sufficient amount of the right kind of honey-producing flora within reach of the bees. 2. Atmospheric conditions favorable to the secretion of nectar and the flight of bees. 3. Strong colonies in which the maximum number of the workers are field bees. The factors 1 and 2 depend upon the locality, while the third is one depending upon the skill and energy of the bee-keeper; this should from the very commencement of the season be directed towards securing the greatest possible number of field bees in each hive at the beginning of the main honey flow, and to maintain the strength of the colonies while the honey flow lasts. Under Australian conditions, such as the irregular blooming of some of the honey-producing trees and the periodical scarcity of pollen, it is in some localities practically impossible to bring colonies to that condition which is necessary to the profitable production of first-class 1 lb. sections of comb-honey. In districts where the main honey flow begins shortly after the blooming of that valuable pollen plant, Cape Weed, there is little difficulty in having colonies in the right condition for comb-honey, provided that they had wintered well, and that each colony has a vigorous queen. Cape Weed is now so widely distributed over Victoria that there are few localities where it is not plentiful on any open spaces, for it does not thrive in close forest or scrub country, and is, therefore, absent in the vicinity of some of the best apiary sites in the State. In such localities the hives are often not in a condition to produce comb-honey at a profit, and the colonies had better be kept in a locality with a plentiful early pollen supply and shifted on to the honey site when the flow begins.
There are many other localities where Cape Weed and other pollen producers are plentiful, but too long an interval occurs before the honey flow commences, and the bees are then often in a backward condition, more so when, as is usually the case in such districts, there has been much swarming. Swarming is a factor that has to be reckonedwith in the production of comb-honey. It is a well known fact that when extracted honey is produced there is much less swarming and no difficulty in keeping the colonies strong, particularly when the queen is given free access to the upper story or stories up to the time of the first extracting, or where the honey flow is very heavy throughout the season. When sections are placed on the hives, instead of extracting combs, the bees will be much slower going up into the super, and will become so crowded in the brood chamber that swarming results. Thus the worker-force is divided, neither the swarm nor the parent colony is in a condition to store surplus honey for two to four weeks, or longer, if the stock was only of medium strength before it swarmed.
Often before either of the two colonies is ready for storing in sections the best of the honey flow is over, and what usually occurs, particularly in the districts near Melbourne, is that the number of colonies is doubled, a few highly coloured and stained sections are produced, a number of swarms abscond, and some of the later casts die of starvation before spring.
To deal successfully with the swarming problem in connexion with comb-honey it should, first of all, be understood that destroying the queen cells which are raised by a colony prepariug to swarm does not prevent swarming, it only delays it, except when conditions unfavorable to the bees, such as bad weather or a stoppage of the honey flow. follow immediately after the destruction of the queen cells.
Although the production of comb-honey in 1-lb, sections encourages the swarming impulse, yet there will usually be found in an apiary of any size a few colonies wii:\(\alpha\)h, while equal to the best in population and yield of honey, go through one or two entre seasons without swarming. Such stocks give a maximum return for a minimum of labour and attention, and their number should be increased by rearing the young queens required from the queens of these non-swarmers.
To obtain the best results, the manipulation of the colonies should come under two different headings: 1. Preventive measures. 2. Control of the swarming impulse.
1. Preventive measures should commence long before there are indications of swarming. The brood chamber should never be allowed to become too crowded with bees, nor should it have any great quantity of honey in combs not occupied by brood; further, the less honey there is between the brood and the top bars of the frames, the sooner will the bees work in sections when the latter are put on. There are different ways of getting a colony into the right condition for work in sections, such as uneapping combs of sealed honey and inserting them, one at a time, between the brood at intervals of four or five days, or doing the same with extracted combs if honey is plentiful in the hive or coming in freely. Operations such as these, however, require an amount of time and labour which few Australian bee-keepers are prepared to give, neither is the artificial stimulation thus produced always an advantage. We cannot predict to a week or so when a particular honey flow will start, and it is therefore better to let the development of the colonies proceed on natural lines. The simplest way of getting a colony in the right condition will be found to be to allow an expansion of the brood nest upwards into a set of drawn combs, and then at the right time for putting the sections on, to put the combs containing the most brood, especially the sealed, into the lower body, shaking the bees off the surplus combs in with the others and using the combs to help on weaker stocks. When a two-story colony has thus been reduced to one set of brood combs and one or two section supers, the bees are forced to enter the sections at once. A few bait sections, that is, unfinished previous season's sections, put amongst the empty ones will be a great inducement for the bees to commence work at once. During hot weather the preventive measures should include enlarging the hive entrances and shading the hives during the hottest part of the day.
2. Controlling the swarming impulse. Even after everything possible has been done in the way of prevention, there will still be swarms, few or many, according to the strain or race of bees kept and the character of the locality. The swarming impulse may be controlled in two ways--by anticipating it, or by allowing natural swarming to take place and reuniting some time after. The principle which underlies all methods for the control of the swarming impulse is an interruption in the hatching of young bees; this is what takes place in natural swarming. From the time a swarm commences work in the new hive at least 21 days elapse before young bees again emerge, by this time the swarm will have lost many of its former numbers, and is therefore not in a condition to give the best results. When swarming is anticipated, this interruption in the generations of hatching bees is brought about by the removal of the combs containing brood and the substitution of empty drawn combs or frames of foundation. This is usually done when a colony starts raising queen cells. If the colony, although preparing to swarm, is then not yet strong enough, the cell cups may be destroyed and the brood removed a week or a. fortnight later. Under certain conditions of season, colonies deprived of all brood may be inclined to swarm out. This may be prevented by taking away half the brood combs, and when, five or six days later, young brood is found in the combs which were substituted for the brood, the remaining combs of adult brood may then be removed. The brood thus removed in antieipating swarming, may be given to backward colonies after shaking most of the bees off. Before any combs are taken from a hive, the whereabouts of the queen should be ascertained lest she may be injured in the shaking of the bees. Too many combs of brood should not be given to any very weak stocks, or much of it will be wasted on account of the inability of a small colony to take care of it.
This above method of swarm control involves a considerable amount of work and attention, and most bee-keepers find it more convenient to allow natural swarming to take place and, after a time, to reunite the swarm and the parent stock, thus getting the same force to work in one hive as if the colony had not swarmed at all. When the swarm issues it is hived on the same stand, while the parent stock is placed alongside, but with the entrance facing at right angles from the old position. Nearly all the flying bees which remained when the swarm came out will return to the accustomed place, and thus join the swarm, weakening the parent stock sufficiently to prevent after-swarms. If the bees are of a desirable strain, one of the queen cells in the swarmed stock may be allowed to hatch. This should be the most perfect and forward one, the others are destroyed. If the colony is not one of the best, cells raised from one of the best non-swarming stoeks may be given. In from fourteen to twenty days, according to the maturity of the cell on day of swarming, the young queen should be laying. Twenty-one days after swarming all the worker brood will have hatched out, and the bees may be united with the swarm after removing the queen of the latter (the old queen) and the combs of the parent stock, if section honey is to be raised. (The method of uniting is described under Swarming, Chapter IX.) The colony is now in the best condition, with a young queen and new combs in the brood chamber. These are very desirable when clean, white sections are to be raised. From a colony manipulated in this way the writer, some years ago, obtained 312 beautifully finished 1-lb, sections in what is by no means a first-class locality.
Much of the faulty appearance of sections seen in shop windows, as well as most of the damage comb-honey suffers in transit on the railways is due to false economy on the part of the producer, who provides the section boxes with only a small starter of foundation, as shown in the first section of the top row in the illustration. This section stands on one supplied with a full sheet of the thinnest foundation (12 to 13 square feet to the lb.) and a bottom starter.
The progress of the work of the bees may be seen in the second and third pair of boxes. The third one of the top row, although almost ready for sealing by the bees, is not fastened to the bottom of the section; while, in the lower tier, the comb is already fastened to the wood all round in No. 2 and completely fills the box in No. 3.
Apart from the quality of the produce, which would be the same in either case, there are two things to be considered in section honey, viz., appearance and weight. A section built from a starter will be partly sealed before comb-building is finished, and the e their virgin whiteness before the sections are ready for removal from the live. Drone comb is also usually resorted to by the bees; and the finished section has not an even surface, nor is it fastened to the wood all round, and whatever spaces are left open increase the liability to break down in transit and to deduct from the weight.
When a section is built from a full sheet of the thinnest foundation and bottom starter the bees first of all join sheet and starter, as in No. 2 of the bottom tier. They then raise the comb simultaneously over the whole face and seal or cap it all over at one time, so that, when ready for removal, the capping is snow-white, the section full weight (15 to 16 oz.), and being a solid block of comb completely filling the box will not break down and leak in transit.
It is, however, important that only thin surplus foundation should be used, as stout foundation is objectionable when eating the comb. It should not be less than 12 square feet to the 1 lb. This grade costs 2s, 8d. per 1 lb., which will cut 100 full sheets and bottom starters, or 400 top starters as shown in first section of the top tier. The cost per dozen for foundation would thus be 4d. for full sheets and 1d. for top starters; but as well-filled snow-white sections, such as can only be obtained from full sheets, are worth from 1s. to 2s. per dozen more, there is an actual gain of 1s. to 1s. 9d. per dozen in using full sheets and bottom starters.
There is yet another advantage in the use of full sheets; that is, brood and pollen are not so likely to find their way into the section boxes. When the brood-chamber consists, as it should do, of worker-comb, bees will often build drone comb and raise drones in the section boxes, when given the opportunity afforded by the use of small starters.
What has been said here should not be understood to mean that first-class sections cannot be obtained from small starters. Under the favorable conditions of a good honey flow and strength of colonies, first-class sections, fastened to the wood all round, may be produced without the use of full sheets and bottom starters in the sections, but what is saved in labour and cost of extra foundation is lost many times over in the smaller number of sections.
Pollen.
Pollen is the male element or fertilizing dust of the flowers of plants. It consists of minute grains mostly less than 1-1,000 inch in diameter, of varied, often beautiful, forms; in colour, innumerable shades of yellow, orange, cream, red, purple, brown, blue, and green--the last-named two being somewhat rare. Each pollen grain consists of an outer comparatively hard, and an inner elastic shell enclosing a jelly-like nucleus of protoplasm.
Before the production of fertile seeds can take place, it is necessary for the pollen grains, which are produced in the anther of the male organ, to be transferred to the female organ of the flower. In most plants, male and female organs occur in the same flower; in many others, in separate flowers on the same plant; while in still others, male and female blossoms are each produced on separate plants. As plants are incapable of voluntary motion, nature employs various agents, such as wind, water, birds, and insects, to convey the pollen from the male to the female organ. The pollen grains of the flowers of different plants vary considerably in shape and character, and in numbers. Thus, while wind-fertil plants, such as pines and grasses, produce enormous numbers of pollen grains, which have little or no means of cohesion, are carried away and scattered by air currents like dust, the pollen grains of insect-fertil flowers are sticky, as in the case of Eucalyptus, connected with each other by viscid threads, as in some plants of the health family; cr are covered with spines, as in many composite flowers--Cape Weed, Dandelion, &c. By these means, the pollen grains become attached to insects visiting the flowers, and are thus conveyed from the antiler to the pistil of the same flower, or of another flower of the same species on a different plant, thus effecting fertilization and cross-pollination.
In the fertilization of most cultivated economic plants, the loney lee is the most important of the insect agents, on account of its habits, its structure, and its continuous need of nitrogen. Pollen is the only source of nitrogen available to the bee; without pollen, no reproduction can take place, not a single bee larva can be reared without pollen, or a substitute of it. The nitrogen cf pollen is, in the form of protein, present in quantities of 17 to 27 per cent.
In the economy of the bee hive, pollen is equal in importance with nectar; for while honey is a complete food for the adult bee during inactivity, nitrogenus food is required, not only for the rearing of young bees, but for the conversion of the nectar into honey. The larval food and the enzyme, which causes the inversion of the sugars of nectar, are both animal secretions of the bee, with nitrogen as their base.
Owing to the climatic conditions of many parts of Australia, pollen fanines occur periodically with detrimental and sometimes serious results to the bee-keeping industry. Unfortunately, no substitute for pollen, satisfactory under our peculiar climatic conditions, is so far known. Some measure of success has been obtained by the feeding of powdered skim milk, but it amounts to little more than saving the colonies from extinction, or tiding them over a short period of dearth, much in the way that farm animals are kept alive by the feeding of straw.
When the detrimental influence of pollen famines is more fully realized by honey-producrs, steps will perhaps be taken to inaugurate systematic, scientific researches and experiments to investigate the inter-relation between abnormal bee mortality and dearth of pollen, and to find suitable substitutes for pollen.
The natural honey resources of Australia are so good, and the normal climatic conditions so favorable to bee culture, that the solution of the problems due to abnormal periodical climatic conditions would, from a national point of view, be highly reproductive.
## XIII.--The Rearing of Queen Bees.
The selection of a queen from which to breed for the purpose of superseding old or inferior queens, or the queens of colonies showing a predisposition to disease, viciousness or some other undesirable trait, is not only of the greatest importance but also a most difficult problem.
It is upon the prolificness of the queen and the longevity and vigour of her worker progeny that the larger or smaller amount of surplus honey depends; but the most prolific queen is not necessarily the best to breed from. Experience has shown that the queen progeny of an exceedingly prolific queen rarely equal their mother; when they do, they produce workers which are constitutionally delicate, and these never yield the amount of surplus which one should expect from the great number of bees raised. A prolific queen producing vigorous long-lived workers is very soon restricted in egg production by the relatively large number of old field bees, the honey gatherers filling much of the comb with honey once the colony has attained normal strength. In the case of a colony having a queen producing short-lived workers the position is reversed. Many of the bees in: such a colony die soon after reaching field bee age; therefore the young, the nurse bees, predominate. It is the work of the young bees to feed larvae, prepare cells for egg-laying, and attend the queen. As the number cf field bees bringing in honey is little more than sufficient to supply what is needed for immediate consumption, the colony will show a very large amount of brood in all stages right through the season but will store less honey for the apiarist than colonies which, with a smaller amount of brood, have far more old field bees.
As a breeder, I prefer the queen of a colony which has the maximum number of bees from a moderate amount of brood during a season. This results naturally in a good yield of honey, and indicates longevity of the bees. There are, however, other desirable characteristics, such as purity of race, gentleness, and absence of excessive swarming, which are needed. The number of queens which conform to all these requirements is, even in a large apiary, usually rather limited.
Important as the selection of the queen mother is, the raising of the young queens by the best possible method, and under the most favourable conditions, is not less so. Poor queens may result when queens are raised under unfavourable conditions, no matter how suitable the mother queen is. There are many different methods of raising queens and good queens may be obtained by any one of them if everything is just right. The difficulty is, that many bee-keepers fail to observe when conditions are suitable and when not. A prosperous condition of colonies, an income of pollen and honey, and a warm moist atmosphere, are essential. A heavy honey flow is not the best time for queen rearing, particularly when it occurs during hot dry weather. There may be both pollen and honey coming in, and yet the right conditions may not exist, even though atmospheric conditions appear favourable. This is probably owing to some deficiency in quality of the stores gathered. It may, however, be taken as an indication that conditions are favourable when the young larvae are surrounded by a plentiful supply of pure white food. The colony selected for raising cells from the eggs or larvae of the chosen breeding queen should be strong, particularly in nurse bees.