. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. 524 AMERICAN BEE CONDUCTED BY Hit®. JeMEif^ MteMey, Greenville, Texas. Having' Divided Colonies as Good as Natural Swarms. This question was asked in Query 849. As none of those replying had space to tell the "hows" and "wherefores" per- taining '0 the question, each one gave a brief answer that was applicable to his own locality ; so all the answers we may say, are correct. The reason that a divided colony is just as good as any in the South, is this : Our main honey harvest never comes earlier than May, and in some por
. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. 524 AMERICAN BEE CONDUCTED BY Hit®. JeMEif^ MteMey, Greenville, Texas. Having' Divided Colonies as Good as Natural Swarms. This question was asked in Query 849. As none of those replying had space to tell the "hows" and "wherefores" per- taining '0 the question, each one gave a brief answer that was applicable to his own locality ; so all the answers we may say, are correct. The reason that a divided colony is just as good as any in the South, is this : Our main honey harvest never comes earlier than May, and in some portions of the South it does not come until July ; so we may divide our bees in March or April, and long before the honey harvest comes, we can have the divisions or divided colonies just as strong as any natural swarm, or as strong as one that did not swarm at all. So they are bound to be just as good for storing honey, or for any other purpose, as the natural swiirms, and for me I will take them first, as the portion that forms one of the divided colonoies has a young, vigor- ous queen (or ought to have, if the api- arist knows his business) that will have her colony boiling over in bees at the right time ; when, if they had swarmed naturally, the swarm is most likely to have an old queen that will persist in swarming again just at the time they should begin to work in the boxes, thus almost rendering them useless for stor- ing comb honey that season. Or if they do not swarm, the queen in many instances is beginning to give way, and as natural ^rst swarms usually build nearly one-third drone-comb, the conse- quence is at the time they should begin in the supers their population is about one-third drones, which is a great loss to the owner. Nearly twice as many bees could have been reared on the same food, and the hive chock-full of bees in- stead of drones. Or the queens of nat- ural swarms may be so nearly " played out "at the time of swarming that her colony may be
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjectbees, bookyear1861
