How They Were Managed
Categories: FALL MANAGEMENT.Bee Keeping: Mysteries Of Bee-keeping Explained
I had about twenty old stocks with diseased brood, and but few bees,
yet _honey enough_. Now this honey appears healthy enough for the old
bees, and fatal only to the young brood.
I transferred the bees of these new swarms to the old stocks with black
comb and diseased brood. The bees were thus wintered on honey of but
little account any way, and all that was in the others, new and
healthy, was saved. The
winter; _right end up_, to prevent much of the honey from dripping out
of the cells; some will leak then, but not as much as when the hive is
bottom up. Honey that runs out, when the hive is bottom up, will soak
into the wood at the base of the combs; this will have a tendency to
loosen the fastenings, and render them liable to fall, &c.
The next March the bees were again transferred from the old to the new
hives. My method is as follows: As the combs in the hive to receive the
bees are rather cold, I set them by the fire, or in a warm room, for
several hours previous. I take a warm room before a window, and as some
few bees fly off, they will collect there. The new hive is turned
bottom up on the floor; the old one on a bench by the side of it,
having smoked the bees to keep them quiet. One comb at a time is taken
out, and the bees brushed into the new hive; (a little smoke will keep
them there). When through, I get the few on the window, and tie over a
cloth to confine them, and keep them warm for a few hours longer.
Paralyzing with puff-ball will answer instead, but they do not always
all fall out of the combs when the hive is filled to the bottom, and it
is possible that if a few were left, the queen might be one. Also a
very few bees are worth saving at this season, and the combs might have
to be broken out at last, for this purpose.
When a good-sized family is put in a hive containing fifteen or twenty
pounds of honey, and near half full of clean new comb, they are about
as sure to fill up and cast a swarm, as another that is full and has
wintered a swarm.
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