. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. March, igii. American 'Bee JonrnaTj nies that would more than double the amount of honey each year that others would gather. At the close of one of the best honey seasons I found that some of my colonies had given me nearly 300 pounds of section honey, while' others had given less than 50 pounds. On thinking the matter over while lying awake one night, I resolved to bring those less-than-50-pound col- onies up to the average of the apiary, at least; so, the next day I struck an average of the number of pounds of surplus honey produced in the whole api
. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. March, igii. American 'Bee JonrnaTj nies that would more than double the amount of honey each year that others would gather. At the close of one of the best honey seasons I found that some of my colonies had given me nearly 300 pounds of section honey, while' others had given less than 50 pounds. On thinking the matter over while lying awake one night, I resolved to bring those less-than-50-pound col- onies up to the average of the apiary, at least; so, the next day I struck an average of the number of pounds of surplus honey produced in the whole apiary, and then all colonies which did not come up to this average were marked. These marked colonies, where it could be done at a profit, were united (after killing their queens, either in the fall or spring) with others which had produced an average amount, or above. Where all were not disposed of in this way, I superseded the inferior queens with those reared from the colonies which had given the highest amount. This required the keeping of a record of each colony, but the keeping of such a record was of much value in several ways besides the desire for the im- provement of stock. One thing is very certain, and that is, that no great gain can be made along any line of improvement unless a rec- ord is kept which gives some data to work from, and the breeders of all im- proved stock learned this long, long ago. And this record-keeping is not so great a job, after all. I have a piece of section for each hive, and on this is jotted down the number of pounds of honey taken each time (as well as other matters) from the colony occu- pying the same, and at the end of the season an adding of the amounts gives the yield from that colony. Then when the season is through, and the long winter evenings come on, these pieces of sections, each bearing the number of the hive they account for are gotten together, and the matter which is on them in a condensed form is trans- ferred to a book. An
Size: 1951px × 1281px
Photo credit: © Library Book Collection / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjectbees, bookyear1861
