The Florida agriculturist., 1889-01-02
THE FLORh

bees OF course mostly went back to.
old stand, butplenty of young bees woun
be left to take care of the brood and real
queens in the new hives Icharged th,
owner to be sure and raise his queens
from the colony that had the best Italian
queen Ca very fine one), and to give eacI
new colony frame Of brood and eggs
every eight or ten days till thenew queens
got to laying. In order to raise his
queens as directed he would have to de
stroy all the queencells in the hybrid
colony on the ninth day from the division
and then give them a queencell from the
other hive. Calling again about two
weeks later. to see how the new queens
were getting along, found one of the old
hives SO crowded with bees and honey
that we divided it again. | never saw
bees doing any better on white clover OF
buckwheat. The seasons experience has
given me a much higher opinion of the
orange blossom as a bee-forage than
had before
Another FRIEND hod q 9no colony Of
bees in neighborhood where there were
orange groves on every side. l examined
his bees during the early part of the or
ange flow of honey, and found the body
of the hive well filled with bees storing
honey in the cover of the hive. took
some nice comb honey from thecOver and
told the owner that his bees would prob
ably swarm as soon as they had filled
the top of the hive again, unless they con-
cluded not to wait so long. [ did not see
chem again, but the owner told me that
not having time to attend to them he let
them care for themselves. Three SWarmS
came out and went off to the woods, and
What bees were left finally died, and left
him without any beeS,-a common result
where bees are allowed to swarm ad
hbitum. ! have no doubt that with
proper handling he. might have had two
good colDHles; am. from twenty-five to
forty IoNHds OF honey. Seasons vary as
TO honey production here as well as in
other places, and we shall not get so
good yield Of orange honey every year
as we did last season, but with the in
creasing number of orange trees coming
into Gearing througho out this part of the
State, think we can safely calculate that
the orange growers of the State, supple
lnented by such other bee-forage as can
be found within reach of the settlements,
are ca apable of producing all the honey
that viii be needed for home consump-
ton and leave some for shipment This
estimate presupposes that there be
skilled apiarists to take the honey. 1t is
not every one that has the requisite time
and tact to make a success of agriculture
The most serious obstacle here, as in the
North, is wintering the bees. | know
that it is a common saying that bees
can gather honey here every month in the
Year, h,v't ,Al4 o.@ Ss4rea,that bees
gather honey or raise brood to any extent
here in the months of October, November
and December, he is telling OF something
that [ have never seen. My bees often
have brood left in October, but | gener-
ally find the honey beginning to run low
in the hives during that month, and
weak colonies often starve out in Novem-
Der and December. If the weather is
warm they begin to make a decided inn
provement in January, butafter the mid
die of June no more surplus is gathered,
and colonies should then be strong and
combs pretty well filed with sealed honey
A man told me few days ago that he
found bees in the woods one season till
he had dozen colonies, but that they
all died the next winter. | am satisfied
that the loss in wintering comes largely
from loss of queens in sWarming time or
from overswarming and consequent weak
colonies and lack OF stores. There GER
tainly cannot be much success without
queens, strong colonies and plenty OF
honey. u. w. WEBSTER.
Lake Helen, Fla.
For THE FLORIDA AGRICULTURIsT
Chickens in the Oranges Grove.