. The American bee keeper. Bee culture; Honey. 197 THE AMERICAN the slowest but best of all plans. If a colony comes out in the spring with a poor queen I set them down as a total failure. There is no time to make amends then. It is like sending aged and infirm men into the army. If they are not sorted out somewhere they would become an encumbrance, just as a poor colony is an encumbrance to the apiary. It takes twice as long to man- age a poor colony as a good one. And about as long, yes, even longer, to manipulate the poor colony once than it takes to rear a fine queen. Most of the bee-keepe
. The American bee keeper. Bee culture; Honey. 197 THE AMERICAN the slowest but best of all plans. If a colony comes out in the spring with a poor queen I set them down as a total failure. There is no time to make amends then. It is like sending aged and infirm men into the army. If they are not sorted out somewhere they would become an encumbrance, just as a poor colony is an encumbrance to the apiary. It takes twice as long to man- age a poor colony as a good one. And about as long, yes, even longer, to manipulate the poor colony once than it takes to rear a fine queen. Most of the bee-keepers consider the harvesting of the crop as the hard "tug of war," bnt in reality it is not; merely the accepting of the surrendered sword. In the previous August or September it is easy to add a dollar or two per col- ony to a crop of honey, by this correc- tion of a few colonies. It may consti- tute the only clear profit. When a busi- ness falls only a little behind expenses it is conducive to "the ; It is not easy to build hopes on failures. But even by the caging plan of intro- duction, who can say that success is not more dependent upon the disposition of the bees than scent? When we bring a strange horse or cow into the barnyard the others look askance and fretful, but after awhile they accept the strangers and become very friendly. Could it not BEE-KEEPER September be the same with bees? Would the bees not get accustomed to the presence of the queen and finally their animosity wear ofi:" or exhaust itself? It needs a pumpkin-eating horse to teach another to eat pumpkins. Would not the friend- ly bees which are constantly trying to feed the queen through the wires of the cage exert some influence upon the angry ones? I have known queens to be caged in colonies ten to fifteen days and not be accepted. Other queens were put in and were accepted in thirty-six hours. The rejected queens were accepted by other colonies. I have seen the same conditi
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectbeeculture, bookyear1
