. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. diforiaf ^otes and fommenfs. Bees Building Up in Spite of Weather The following was written June 11, at Marengo, III.: Mr. Editor:—On page 430 is a note from me, written May 16, in whiich I mentioned the deplorable weather, and said, "No matter how good the season, it will hardly be possi- ble for colonies to build up in time to do good work on ; Well, I didn't know as much as I thought I did. At that date I had not opened a hive for a number of days, but I thought I knew enough about bees on general principles to know that when the w
. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. diforiaf ^otes and fommenfs. Bees Building Up in Spite of Weather The following was written June 11, at Marengo, III.: Mr. Editor:—On page 430 is a note from me, written May 16, in whiich I mentioned the deplorable weather, and said, "No matter how good the season, it will hardly be possi- ble for colonies to build up in time to do good work on ; Well, I didn't know as much as I thought I did. At that date I had not opened a hive for a number of days, but I thought I knew enough about bees on general principles to know that when the weather was so cold right along that seldom a bee could leave the hive, increase would be very slow if it did not cease altogether. But when I opened the hives a few days later I was agreeably surprised to find that to all appearance matters had been progressing just as if the bees had been hard at work on the flowers every day. 8o my humble apologies are hereby tendered the bees for underesti- mating their ability to withstand adversity. Surprise No. 2 came when 1 found at this later opening that some colonies were about destitute of honey, although they had gone into winter quarters heavy—very heavy—and I had counted them safe till clover. Assuredly they would have starved before that time if I had not come to their assistance with solid combs of honey, of which I had a good store. C. C. Miller. The moral of all this is that bees will build up under quite adverse conditions, if they 7iave tut abundant amount of stores in sight. Something like this seems to be the case: Take 3 colonies of equal strength in early spring, the first with enough stores to last, if economically used, till clover bloom, and the second with 10 pounds more honey than the first. At the opening of the clover harvest, the one may be found just as much reduced in stores as the other. But while alike in the amount of stores, they are greatly different in strength. The one has turned its extra 10 pound
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjectbees, bookyear1861
