BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
the brood " by inserting a frame of empty comb in the centre of the brood nest, or, failing this, a frame fitted with a full sheet of foundation.
The 1st of April will be quite early enough for the tyro to commence spreading brood, because there is danger with an inexperienced person of spreading the brood too early, when the bees are unable to keep up the warmth of the hive, and "\(\,\)chilled brood " is the result, which means that a large quantity of the brood dies ; instead, therefore, of the hive being strengthened it is greatly weakened, so as often to be rendered quite useless for that season by the untimely spreading of the brood. Supposing, however, that we begin spreading brood about the 1st of April, if all goes on well, the stoek should be ready for another frame of comb or foundation in a week or ten days, and another a week after that, and so on until it occupies eight or at most nine frames : the reason for restricting the bees to eight or nine frames is that they swarm much earlier than they do when given more room. Unless the season is very bad or the district an extremely poor one, the bees will be able to gather enough for themselves after the beginning--or at latest the middle--of May, without any further feeding. Of course in districts where there is fruit blossom the bees will be independent of artificial food somewhat earlier in the season. Each hive should be allowed to have about half a frame of drone comb.
In the latter half of May or early in June the stock will probably throw a strong swarm, which should be hired on six or seven frames of comb or foundation. If the weather is bad they will be greatly assisted by a little feeding at first. As they draw out the foundation or store the combs with honey more frames may be added in the centre of the brood nest until the desired number has been attained. It should be mentioned that a strong _early_ swarm, hired on six frames of drawn-out comb, and restricted to this number, often throws another swarm later in the season, such a swarm being known as a "\(\,\)maiden swarm "; these swarms usually require feeding up before the winter, because they seldom gather enough for themselves.
Eight or nine days after the first swarm came off a second is almost sure to issue from the old stock. As soon as we have lived it we can go to the old stock and remove three frames of brood and bees, taking care that one of the frames contains a queen cell : this frame should be placed in the centre of an empty hive and the other two on each side of it. It is needless to say that at least one queen cell must be left in the old hive. The bees from two more frames from the old hive must be shaken into the hive containing the newly formed division or "nucleus." The next day this nucleus should be examined, and if too many bees have gone back to the old hive, we must shake in the bees off one or two more combs out of the parent colony. When all the brood in the nucleus has hatched, there will probably be enough bees to cover two or three more frames. It often happens that two or three virgin queens, having hatched out at the same time, go off together with a second swarm, so when living it we should look out for them, and if it is found that there are two queens, one may be taken away and given to the nucleus ; in this case there is little fear of too many bees leaving it. Where it is found that three queens have gone off with the second swarm, we shall of course give one to the nucleus and another to the old stock. If the swarm is hived with all the virgin queens, the bees will select one and kill the rest before the next day.
**Truant Swarms.**
**It sometimes happens that after a swarm has been hived it refuses to stay and comes out again, occasionally flying off without alighting ; in such cases it is probable that the bees have already selected some home, which they consider more suitable than the one with which they have been provided, and in order to make them stay in their new hive it is necessary to give them a frame of unsealed brood from the parent or some other hive (taking care, if it is taken from the parent hive or from any that has lately swarmed, to cut out any queen cells which there may be in it). It has been found that the bees thus provided with young brood will not desert it, and so a frame containing some may always be placed in a hive before putting the swarm in, so as to prevent it from leaving the hive.**
**Building up the Stocks before Winter.**
**About ten days or a fortnight after the second swarm came off, the queen in the old stock and also the one in the nucleus should have mated and be commencing to lay ; it is just at this time that a little judicious assistance is needed to build the stocks up into strong colonies. The nucleus (specially, being weaker than the old stock, will be benefited by a little feeding. Not more than a quarter of a pint of syrup every evening will be required, but it is wonderful how this will stimulate the bees to breed if given regularly. In a good season, when honey is abundant, the bees in the old hive and also those in the second swarm will gather sufficient honey to stimulate them to rear plenty of brood, but in a poor season or in a locality where honey is scarce they should be fed with a quarter of a pint of syrup, regularly every day, in the bottle feeder used for spring stimulation. When the frames in the centre of the hive are filld with brood, those at the sides which contain none may be placed in the centre, while those which contain brood are removed to the sides of the hive ; the queen will then lay in the empty combs which have been placed in the centre of the hive. The frames must only be moved about in this way if the bees are strong enough to cover all the combs, otherwise there is fear of the brood being chilled.
Six frames will have been quite sufficient to hive the second swarm upon, and this number should not be increased till five weeks after the swarm came off, by which time sufficient brood should have hatched out to justify the apiarist in placing another frame in the centre of the brood nest ; more frames may be added every six or seven days until there are from ten to twelve in the hive, and if the swarm is worked up by stimulation to cover all these frames well by September 15th, it will make a very fair stock next spring.
With regard to the old stock and the nucleus, it will often be six weeks from the time when the second swarm issued before they are strong enough to have another frame put in the centre of the hive, because the queens frequently do not hatch out till some days after the second swarm went off, consequently they are later in mating and in commencing to lay than the queen which accompanied the second swarm, and so these hives do not get strengthened from brood hatching out as soon as the second swarm does.
The parent colony and the nucleus should, like the second swarm, be worked up to cover ten or twelve frames by the middle of September ; and if any one of these three hive appear much weaker than the other two, it may soon be strengthened by giving it a frame full of brood which is just about to batch out from one of the other hives; such combs of brood are technically termed "hatching brood."
Before the winter all the four stocks (viz., the parent hive, the nucleus, and the first and second swarms) must be crowded on to not more than seven frames each (six being the best number usually) and fed rapidly, so that they have 20 lbs. of stores each ; this will last them till towards the end of March at least. In feeding up for the winter the bees should take the food rapidly--not less than two pints a day--or much of it will be employed in raising brood. The syrup used for feeding up bees in autumn should be made with 5 lbs. of refined cane sugar to every quart of water; it is made in the same way as the thin syrup used for stimulation in spring. If a stock has seven frames (spaced not less than 1\(
rac{1}{2}\) inch from centre to centre) full of sealed stores to within 3\(
rac{1}{2}\) inches of the bottom of the frame, it may be considered safe to stand the winter. Stocks should be fed up for the winter not later than October lst, whenever possible, as this gives them time to seal over their stores before the cold weather comes. In no case can they be fed up after the end of October, and during the latter half of this month even it is often difficult to get them to take down the syrup, owing to the cold weather. When a stock is fed up early, if it is weak it may be stimulated to continue breeding up to the middle of October, after which all feeding should cease, as if bees breed late into the winter dysenter is usually the result. Syrian, Cyprian or Palestine bees should not be stimulated after October lst, as they are inclined to continue raising brood for some time after the feeding has been stopped; probably this tendency on their part to breed in winter is to be accounted for by the fact that in their native lands they have been accustomed to breed all through the winter months for many hundreds of years past, as Mr. Blow, in his interesting little work "A Bee-keeper's Experience in the East," p. 14, mentions the fact that he found large patches of brood at mid-winter in the native hives in Cyprus.
There are many kinds of feeders designed for rapid autumn feeding, of which the best are perhaps those of the "Canadian Bee-feeder " type (fig. 35), which fit on the top of the hive like a crate of sections. The bees walk up from the frames and get into the feeder by a; they pass down to the syrup by the
increase and the profitable production of bees. 59 so few bees that, when a good many of them have left, there will not be sufficient remaining to hatch out the brood; or else he will go to the other extreme and so depopulate the old hive that there will not be enough bees in it to hatch out the brood; for these and many other reasons **I** therefore again say experience is a _sine qua non_.
**Give the Bees Plenty of Room.**
Instead of confining the bees to eight or nine frames, as I have advised for natural increase, they should be gradually worked up till they occupy the whole hive, which they should certainly do by the end of May or even before; a doubling-box full of frames of empty comb or foundation must then be placed on the hive, and a couple of frames of brood should be placed in it from the lower hive. If necessary the bees may be gently fed to make them draw out the foundation more rapidly; the queen will quickly fill the combs in the doubling-box with eggs, and as soon as the brood from these is hatching out freely and the hive crammed full with bees is the time to think of dividing it. We will suppose that the hive contains twenty-four frames, twelve in the stock hive and twelve in the doubling-box.
**Queen-raising.**
As soon as all is ready, and drones are becoming plentiful in the apiary, a frame of new clean comb (or if this cannot be had a frame of foundation will do) should be inserted in the centre of the hive: after forty-eight hours examine it; if it contains no eggs, then return it to the hive for another forty-eight hours; but if it is full of them, remove the queen with from six to twelve (say twelve) of the frames which contain young unsealed brood or eggs, with the adherent bees, and place them in an empty hive in a new position, taking care to leave in the old hive the frame of comb which was inserted forty-eight hours previously and which is now full of eggs, for it is from these eggs that we intend the bees to rear queens. Circular holes should be cut in the comb about \(1
rac{2}{2}\) inch in diameter, and round these the bees will form the queen cells. In seven days' time the hive should be again examined, and any queen cells which the bees may have made in any other frame but the one selected must be cut out.
When holes are cut in the comb, as just described, the bees usually build two or three queen cells in a cluster in each hole, placing them so close together that it is impossible to divide them without injuring them in some way; therefore many advanced apiarists practise a more scientific mode of raising queens. The comb containing the eggs is cut into narrow strips, and the eggs in every other one of the cells in the bottom row on both sides of the comb are removed with the point of a sharp penknife. This should be done in a warm room; the strip of comb is next fastened to the top bar of a frame with a mixture of melted beeswax and resin, and is then returned to the hive: the bees will then build a queen cell round each egg in the bottom row of cells, and these will be at such a distance apart that they may easily be cut out separately with a sharp knife without fear of injury.
### Forming Nuclei.
Twelve days after the queen was removed with the twelve frames of young brood, we may go to the hive in which we placed her (which, for convenience, we will call No. 2), and, having prepared two empty hives, we may remove four frames of brood from this hive--No. 2--and place two in each hive, shaking the bees off two more frames from No. 2 into each of the two nuclei just formed: all should then be made snug with dummies and quilts. This should be done at about ten o'clock in the morning, and care must be taken that the queen is left in the hive and is not in either of the nuclei. In about two hours' time--that is, at midday--the bees in the nuclei will have found out that they are queenless, and they may then each be given a queen cell from the old stock ; if given sooner there is danger of the bees destroying them.
It is just at this time--midday--when the bees are flying freely that the old original stock should be divided up into nuclei. The bees, having been queenless for some time, are not likely to leave the nuclei in nearly such great numbers as they would supposing that the nuclei had been made up from a stock which possessed a queen. The stock may be divided into six two-frame nuclei (the novice may perhaps prefer to divide it into four three-frame nuc'ei at first), each of which should be placed in an empty hive and made snug with a division-board on each side of it. We next go to No. 2--thehive which contains the queen--and having shaken the bess off three or four frames of brood, we place these in the hive occupied by the old original stock (which is now empty, all the frames having been removed to form nuclei). The bees which were flying at the time will return here, and hatch out the brood with which we have supplied them.
**Fixing the Queen Cells.**
Into each of the divisions which we have thus formed we must fix a queen cell. This requires considerable care and is done in the following manner :--
Having taken the frame which contains them into a warm room, the cells are cut out separately with a very sharp pen-knife, the utmost care being taken not to press the walls or bases of the cells, lest the embryo queens inside should be injured. Two pins are next passed through the comb to which the cell is attached, well up above the cell itself, at a and b. We then take the cell to the nucleus, and drawing the frames a little way apart, pin it on to the side of one of the combs. As considerable heat is lost by this method of keeping the frames a greater distance apart than would otherwise be necessary, a better plan is to cut a hole in the middle of one of the combs and pin the queen cell into this : whichever method is adopted great care must be taken not to press the cell at all, or the queen may not hatch ; and even if she does, she may be injured or deformed in some way. A sharp look-out must be kept that too many bees do not leave the nuclei ; and if there should appear to be any fear of this happening, a piece of perforated zinc may be placed over the entrance for a day or two
Figure 86: Qaeen Cell with Pins, ready forfixing in Nucleus
until the queen has hatched out, to prevent the bees leaving the hive. It is necessary to watch that none of the nuclei run at all short of stores, and they must be gently fed whenever this is the case. Indeed it is almost always well to do this until the young "queens are mated and have commenced laying.
Hive No. \(\div\), which contains the old queen, may be provided with two or three more frames of empty conb or foundation if it is strong enough. It is likely to require feeding like all the other nuclei.
**Do not Shake a Queen Cell**.
Never shake a comb or frame containing queen cells if you can possibly avoid doing so. It is apt to injure or destroy the embryo queens inside the cells. If you wish to remove the bees it is best to drive them off with smoke, and afterwards brush off any that remain with a goose wing or soft brush, taking great care not to touch the cells themselves with the brush.
**The "Edwards" Divisible Frames and Nucleus Hive**.
Mr. Edwards has invented a very ingenious divisible frame (fig. 36) and nucleus hive (fig. 36a) which those who are in the habit of forming nuclei constantly on a large scale will find very convenient.
Two of the frames, joined together, form one frame of standard size, for use in the ordinary way in standard frame lives. When, however, it is desired to form nuclei, each frame can be divided into two, as shown in the illustration.
The hive is arranged to accommodate two half-frame nuclei, one at either end, the frames hanging across the hive (as in the illustration), or one half-frame nucleus up to a nine half-frame capacity, whilst when the frames are again joined together the hive provides hanging capacity, lengthwise, for five frames of standard size. Being double-walled, a small colony, provided with sufficient food, will winter safely in this hive in any ordinary English winter.
The hive is manufactured by Mr. Edward J. Burt, of Stroud Road, Gloucester.
It is quite impossible to exaggerate the importance of regular gentle feeding in the case of nuclei, more especially in the case of small nuclei. The amount given may be quite small--from 2 to 8 or 10 tablespoonfuls per day, according to the size of the nucleus--but it must be given regularly. Without it a nucleus often loses heart and the queen either fails to mate, or if mated she may fail to commence laying.
The most convenient method of feeding nuclei in small nucleus hives similar to that just described, is to use a solid division board feeder (fig. 36c) made of wood \(1
rac{1}{4}\) inches thick,in which a deep hollow (as indicated by the dotted lines) has been scooped. It is easy to form this hollow by boring a number of holes side by side in the top of the division board with a brace and bit, using a 3-inch bit for the purpose, and smoothing the inside off roughly with a sharp chisel. The hollow serves to contain the syrup (which may be poured into it at feeding time through an ordinary tin funnel so as to avoid spilling any syrup) and the bees obtain access to the syrup by means of the little round hole a, bored in one side of the feeder.
**Breed Queens from the Best Stock in the Apiary.**
All queens should be bred from the eggs laid by the very best queen in the apiary ; so if the stock which we intend to divide has not got such a good queen as another stock in the apiary, we can put a frame of comb into the stock with the best queen, and forty-eight hours afterwards, when it has been filled with eggs, we can remove it, and place it in the other hive for the bees to rear queens from. During the time that the young queens are flying to mate, a piece of queen and drone-excluding zinc may be placed over the entrances of any inferior stocks which contain drones which we do not desire to mate with the young queens, as the choice of drones in breeding fine prolific stock is almost as important as the choice of the queens themselves. Neither queens nor drones should be bred from a queen whose progeny of worker bees is vicious and ill-tempered ; but a queen heading a stock remarkable for strength, docility, and good honey gathering qualities should be selected as the mother from which to breed queens or drones. Never breed the drones with which the young queens are to mate from the same mother as the queens themselves, as such in and-in breeding is sure in time to weaken the breed and cause deterioration.
**Building up the Nuclei.**
The nuclei should be built up in the same way as advised in " Natural Increase " on page 55 ; and if any appear weaker than the others, they may be strengthened with a frame of hatching brood from No. 2 hive--the stock containing the old queen.
By this method of forming six nuclei from the original stock and two more from No. 3 hive it will be seen that we
**Economy.**
In concluding this chapter I can only repeat to the reader how essential the strictest economy is when the apiarist desires to make money by breeding bees for sale. Unforeseen misfortunes occur, which reduce the profits and increase the expenses, so that I advise every one to try working only one stock for increase at first, till he gains experience.
**Books on Queen-Rearing**.
The method of queen-rearing detailed in this chapter is undoubtedly the best for the tyro. When he has become an adept at it by repeated experience, he should, if he desires to raise queens on a very large scale--let us say by the hundred --study such works as "Queen Rearing in England," by F. W. L. Sladen (price 1\(s\). 6\(d\). ; published by Madgwick, Houlston, & Co.); and Doolittle's "Scientific Queen Rearing " (price 3\(s\). 6\(d\). post free)--the latter book being published in America, and obtainable from Messrs. Steele & Brodie, Wormit, Fife, Scotland, and also, at present, from the _British Bee Journal_ Office.
The experienced bee-master will find Mr. Doolittle's book of great value. Amongst other things it explains a method--highly convenient for those who possess only a few hives--by which two young queens may be raised and mated in a colony, _during a heavy honey flow_, without either removing the old queen or splitting up the colony into nuclei.
I cannot, however, too strongly point out that beginners who embark on such methods before they have had considerable practical experience of bees, and have thoroughly mastered the far simpler methods of queen raising already detailed in this chapter, are almost sure to meet with disappointment and failure.
The beginner will do well to bear in mind Henry Geary's useful adage that "There is no royal road to success in beecraft. What is required is perseverance and a commencement at the bottom of the ladder--not an initial fall from the top rung."
andy--it should be stirred into the syrup while it is still quite hot in the saucepan, and the stirring must be continued briskly till the flour-cake candy begins to cool, otherwise it will be lumpy. When flour is mixed with it, the candy does not require to be so thick--it can be made with a little more water and a little less sugar.
In the middle of February the entrances of all hives must be narrowed to 1 inch wide in order to conserve the heat : weak stocks may have their entrances reduced to \(
rac{1}{2}\) inch. There is no need to make the entrances wider again before the beginning of April.
**Robbing.**
Beware of robbing ; and remember that prevention is better than cure. When syrup is spilt about the hives or on the ground near to them in spring or autumn, it is very likely to induce robbing. It is quite easy to tell when one hive is robbing another ; in fact, there cannot possibly be any mistaking the signs of it. The weakest hive is the one generally attacked ; and if the bees from two or three other lives attack it all at once, it will have a hard time of it unless the apiarist comes to its aid.
When the bees are seen around the entrance of a hive in large numbers, and when they are constantly engaging in fights with other bees, robbing is either being attempted or is actually taking place. The hive which is attacked should have its entrance narrowd so that not more than two bees can pass at a time (in very bad cases of robbing it should be made so narrow that only one bee can pass through it at a time). Towards the evening, when all is quiet, the entrance should be widened again to enable the bees to carry out their dead, otherwise it may get blocked up.
**Hive Roofs Blowing Off.**