Fruit Flowers Important In Good Weather
Categories:
BEE PASTURAGE.
Bee Keeping:
Mysteries Of Bee-keeping Explained
In good weather, sometimes a gain of twenty lbs. is added to their
stores, during this period of apple-tree blossoms. But we are seldom
fortunate enough to have good weather all through this period, it being
rainy, cloudy, cool, or windy, which is very detrimental. Sometimes a
frost at this time destroys all, and the gain of our bees is reversed,
that is, they are lighter at the end than at the beginning of these
flowe
s. Yet this is the season that decides their prosperity for the
summer, whether they do _first rate_ or otherwise. If good weather now,
we expect our first swarms about the first of June; if not, no
subsequent yield of honey will make up for this deficiency. We now have
a time of several days, from ten to fourteen, in which but few flowers
exist. If our hives are poorly supplied when this scarcity occurs, it
will so disarrange their plans for swarming, that no preparations are
again made much before July, and sometimes not at all. In sections
where the wild cherry (_Cerasus Seratina_) abounds, the flowers of this
will appear and fill this time of scarcity, which this section annually
presents.