Good Stock Seldom Without Brood
Categories:
BREEDING.
Bee Keeping:
Mysteries Of Bee-keeping Explained
I once removed the bees from a hive on the tenth of January, and found
brood amounting to about five hundred, sealed over, and others in every
stage of growth down to the egg.
This hive had been in the house, and kept warm; it will doubtless be
supposed that being kept warm was the cause; but this is not a solitary
instance. A neighbor lost a hive the fourteenth February, in weather
cold enough to seal th
entrance with ice, and smother the bees. I
assisted to remove the combs, and found young brood in abundance, from
the perfect bee, through all stages of growth. This stock had been in
the cold all winter. I have further noticed, when sweeping out the
litter under the hives early in spring, say the first of March, that
young bees would often be found under the best stocks. Hence it appears
there is but little time, and perhaps none, when our best stocks have
no broods. Yet stocks, when very weak, do not commence till warm
weather. It seems that a certain degree of warmth is necessary to
perfect the brood, which a small family cannot generate.