CHAPTER VII.SPRING MANIPULATION.
The first examination in the spring should be mainly for the purpose of ascertaining whether or not the honey stores have been exhausted. It should be early, and hence not so extended as to risk the loss of much warmth from the brood apartment. Merely lifting one edge of the quilt or, if the bottom board is a loose one, tipping the hive back so as to get a view in between the combs will often suffice. Should there not be at least the equivalent of two full frames of honey it is best to supply the deficiency at once. Without disturbing the brood full combs may be substituted at each side for the empty ones. If combs stored with honey and sealed over are not in reserve liquid honey or sugar sirup may be poured into empty ones and placed in the hives at night. A less dauby plan is to use one or more feeders directly over the brood nest, supplying several pounds of food at once. An excellent way is to give at one time all they need in the shape of a cake of bee candy, made by mixing fine sugar with just enough honey to produce a stiff dough. This cake of candy should be wrapped in heavy paper (half parchment, or such as is used for wrapping butter is good) and laid on top of the frames, after having punctured the paper in several places with a pencil or sharp stick to give the bees ready access. Two or three twigs or strips of wood laid across the frames before the cake is placed on them will also give the bees a better opportunity to reach the food.
If the food be given in small quantities brood rearing will be encouraged and still greater supplies of food will be called for, rendering it absolutely necessary to give a large amount at once or continue the feeding until natural sources fully supply the needs of the bees and brood, otherwise both may starve. Three pounds of sugar dissolved in one quart of water will make a suitable sirup for spring feeding. Dry sugar may be used instead of sirup. The bees will liquefy it themselves if they have access to water. For stimulative purposes honey; s better than sugar, "strained honey" being better than extracted. This is because of the greater amount of pollen which the strained product contains, the pollen being highly nitrogenous, hence capable of building up muscular tissue. But if the liquid honey is one-half more in price per pound than sugar the latter would doubtless be the more economical, certainly so if a plentiful supply of good pollen in the combs or fresh from the fields can be had. Eye flour put in sunny places and sprinkled with honey to attract the bees will be collected until new pollen comes.
When the weather has become sufficiently settled to render safe the inspection of the brood combs, or, in general, when the bees flythe greater part of each clear day, the work of the queen may be inspected. Should the comb having the largest area of brood in it be toward one side of the hive it is best to locate it as near the center as may be, placing on either side successively those combs having smaller circles of brood and on each side of these the combs containing no brood, but well stored with pollen, while those having honey only will come still outside of these. The brood nest will then have an opportunity to develop equally in all directions. Empty combs are of little use at this time outside of the brood nest as thus arranged, and should be replaced by combs of honey if the latter is needed, or removed altogether. If the combs are well crowded with bees and the queen shows by her regular and compact placing of the brood, as well as by the quantity she seems to have, that she is vigorous and thus capable of accomplishing more than any ordinary brood nest will require of her at this time of the year, a frame filled with worker comb may be slipped into the center of the brood nest. This will be taken possession of immediately by the bees, cleaned and warmed up, whereupon the queen will soon have it filled with eggs. From time to time other combs may be added in the same manner. If cautiously and judiciously followed this plan, supplemented by liberal stores, will increase the brood area and eventually the population of the hive. But the utmost caution is needed, for if done too early cool weather may cause the bees to cluster more closely and result in the chilling of some part of the brood which has thus been spread. The very object sought is not only missed, but the loss of brood will prove a serious setback to the colony. The escape of any of the warmth generated by the bees, as also sudden changes in the weather, should be guarded against. Warm covering above and outer protection are therefore absolute necessities if the best results are to be attained. With favorable weather for the development of brood it is certain that stimulative feeding, if made necessary by the fact that the natural honey resources of the country will not alone bring the strength of the colony fairly up to the desired standard by the opening of the harvest, is to be begun six to seven weeks before the opening of the honey flow from which surplus is to be expected.
If, however, this honey flow comes so early that it is likely to be preceded by weather unfavorable to the development of brood, it will be necessary to allow for this by beginning the stimulation even earlier, so that it may be done more gradually, and the greatest care will have to be taken to retain all the heat of the brood nest. Should the main flow be preceded by a lighter one, especially if the latter comes some weeks before the chief harvest, it may be important to watch the brood nest closely lest it becomes clogged with honey to the exclusion of brood, inclining the bees not to enter surplus receptacles placed above and causing the colony to be weak in numbers later in the season. This state of affairs can be easily avoided by the timely use of the honey extractor, since the brood combs, emptied of the honey which theworkers in an emergency have stored wherever they found vacant cells, are made available for the queen. Before the main harvest opens it may even be necessary in order to keep the combs filled with brood to feed back gradually this extracted honey or its equivalent; but by taking it away and returning it gradually the object sought will have been accomplished, namely, keeping the combs stocked with brood until the harvest is well under way, or as long as the larger population thus gained in the hive can be made available.
It is in this getting workers ready for the early harvest—hives over flowing, as it were, with bees—that the skill of the apiarist is taxed to its utmost. The work properly begins with the close of the summer preceding the harvest, for the first steps toward successful wintering should be taken then, and unless wintered successfully the colony can not be put in shape to take full advantage of an early honey harvest.
Good judgment in the application of the hints given in this chapter, with careful and frequent attention, will bring colonies to the chief spring or early summer flow of honey in good condition, with plenty of bees and with combs well stocked with brood, provided they have wintered well and have good queens.
If colonies have been purchased in box hives, it is advisable at the first favorable opportunity to get them into frame hives.
Fig. 53.—Transferring—drumming the bees from a box hive into a frame hire. (Original.)
Fig. 53.—Transferring—drumming the bees from a box hive into a frame hire. (Original.)
Early in the season—that is, in April or May in middle latitudes, before the brood nest has reached its greatest extension and while the hive contains the least honey—it is not a difficult matter to drive thebees from their combs, cut out the latter, and fit them into frames. If the combs thus fitted in are held temporarily in place in the frames, the bees, under whose care they should be placed at once, will fasten them securely in a few hours or days at most. To drive the bees from the box hive proceed as follows: Toward the middle of a pleasant day blow smoke into the hive to be transferred, and after the bees have been given a few minutes in which to lap up their fill of honey, invert the hive and place over the open end an empty box, or the frame hive itself, making whichever is used fit closely on the hive (fig. 53). By rapping continuously for some minutes on the hive the bees will be impelled to leave it and cluster in the upper box. A loud humming will denote that they are moving. The hive thus vacated may then be taken into a closed room and one side pried off to facilitate the removal of the combs. The box containing the bees is to be placed meanwhile on the spot originally occupied by the box hive, the bees being allowed to go in and out without restraint, only two precautions being necessary, namely, to shade the box well and provide for ventilation by propping it up from the bottom, leaving also, if possible, an opening at the top. When the combs have been fitted into frames, the hive containing them is placed on the original stand and the bees shaken from the box in front of it.
In filling the frames with combs cut from a box hive, the largest and straightest sheets having the most sealed worker brood in them should be selected first and so cut that the frame will slip over them snugly, taking pains, as far as possible, to have the comb placed in the frame in the same position in which it was built, since most of the cells, instead of being horizontal, are inclined upward, the inclination of the deeper store cells being greatest. The comb, if not heavy, can be held in place temporarily by slender wire nails pushed through holes punched in the side and top bars. Before the introduction of wire nails the writer used long thorns pulled from thorn-apple trees, which served the purpose very well. In the case of combs heavy with honey or brood or pieced more or less it will be safer to use, in addition to a few wire nails, a pair or two of transferring sticks. These are simply slender strips of wood slightly longer than the depth of the frame and notched at each end. By placing such a stick on either side of the comb and winding annealed wire around the top and bottom ends so as to draw the sticks firmly against the surface of the combs the latter will be held securely in the frames. The midrib between the rows of cells should be pressed neither to one side nor the other; thus, if cells on one side are deeper than those on the other, they should be shaved down, unless the honey will be cut into too much, in which case the comb maybe allowed to project on one side until it has been fastened in the frame and the hive has been generally put in order by the bees, the point being not to force them to try to manage too much running honey at one time, lest robbing be induced. In many instances the comb when pressed into the frame will seem tobe so firm as not to need nails or sticks, but in the heat of the hive, and with the weight of the bees that will cluster on it to repair the cut edges and fasten them to the bars of the frame, unsupported combs are very apt to give way, creating disastrous confusion. Thus the sticks, nails, or their equivalent should always be used (fig. 54). All frames should be filled with perfectly straight combs so as to be interchangeable. With care in fitting in and some trimming and pressing into shape afterwards, fully three-fourths of the worker combs cut from box hives can be made into good, serviceable combs in frame hives. The process is much facilitated if such combs are used in the extractor during the first season or two after transferring.
Fig. 54.—Transferred comb and inserted queen cell. (Original.)
Fig. 54.—Transferred comb and inserted queen cell. (Original.)
Should the time be near the swarming season the combs will be so filled with brood and honey that the task will be much greater, and the transfer should be postponed until three weeks after the first swarm issues. The brood left by the old queen will have matured and issued from the cells by that time, and the young queen, if no accident has happened to her, will have begun laying; yet there will usually be only eggs, with perhaps a few very young larvæ, present in the combs at this time, so that the cutting out and fitting of the latter into frames will not be as troublesome nor attended with so much waste as just before the swarm issued.
Still another plan—one which it would not be best to employ before fairly warm weather has set in, but which will render the work of transferring the lightest—is to turn the box hive bottom upward and place on it the brood apartment of a frame hive, having in it frames filled with worker combs or with comb foundation, arranging at the same time to give the bees ready access from their combs to those above and no entrance to their hive except through the frame hive above. This can easily be done by making a temporary bottom board for the frame hive, with several holes through it, or with one large one about the size of the open end of the box hive. As soon as it is perceived that the queen has taken possession of the new combs—as she will bealmost certain to do, especially if one of the combs placed above contains some brood—a piece of queen-excluding zinc placed over the opening between the two hives will keep her above, and three weeks later, when all the brood in the combs below has matured, the box hive may be removed and the combs transferred to frames, if worth using in this way; but if old or composed of drone cells or very irregular in shape these combs may be rendered into wax, after extracting any honey that may happen to be in them. Inverting the box hive will generally cause the bees to remove what honey they have stored in the combs. This honey will be utilized in building out the foundation placed in the added story, or, having these combs completed, the bees will store in them whatever remains. Should the queen fail to enter the superposed hive, the plan may be adopted of driving her with her workers into the added story, as described on page 72. When the lower combs have been nearly deserted it will be safe to assume that the queen has gone into the upper hive with the main force of workers, and the excluder zinc may be inserted.
The loss of a queen during winter or early spring can generally be discovered by noticing just at nightfall, after the first or second general flight, which colonies are restless and continue to buzz excitedly when the others are humming in a contented manner or have quieted down for the night. The workers of the queenless colony run in and out excitedly, searching over the front of the hive. Should it be opened they will not resent the intrusion, but, remaining on the combs, will at once set up a loud and prolonged buzzing. These symptoms become less pronounced from day to day. If a comb containing brood be inserted during this period it will be hailed with evident delight, manifested by the eager crowding of the bees from all sides toward it. A contented hum replaces the sound of mourning, and if young worker-larvæ are present preparations, as described on pages 88-89, are begun at once to rear a queen. However, if much reduced in numbers the colony should be joined to one with a queen, or several queenless ones united. The latter may be smoked and simply shaken or brushed together. But bees that have been queenless long when added to those that have not yet missed their own queen will frequently be killed at once. The queen should therefore be taken from her own bees and caged for thirty-six to forty-eight hours in the hive which has previously been queenless, and her own bees added when she is released. (See page 94.) A board leaned against the front of the hive will cause the bees to note their change in location when they fly out and they will then easily find their new quarters when returning from their flight.