Volume 2 — Hints to Beginners in Bee Culture. BY H. M. DEWITT.

This is the month that we should begin to feed and build up our bees, especially our weak colonies, and to get them ready for the honey harvest. Commence by giving them one half pint thin sugar syrup each day; do not feed them in the daytime, feed them at night and they will have all the feed taken down before the next morning. This will start them to rearing brood rapidly and by the time the honey harvest arrives they will be strong and overflowing with bees ready for it. Make but a limited number of swarms and make them strong and early. Late natural swarms should be returned to the parent hive, about twenty-four hours after hiving them. The colonies that work freely on red clover should be used as breeders in preference to others as the tongues of these bees are evidently longer.

The old queen always goes with the first swarm unless she is unable to fly. When making artificial swarms raise your queens and drones from the best colonies. A queenless colony will raise queens at once if it has larvae less than three days old and these queens will hatch within 10 to 12 days. If you give your bees a good supply of empty combs before the beginning of the honey crop and keep them at work they will rarely swarm. But if they once find themselves crowded and get the swarming fever, nothing will keep them from swarming. The honey harvest lasts but a few weeks, so you must be ready for it. “Make hay while the sun shines.” When hiving a swarm give them a hive full of worker comb, or comb foundation if possible, or else give them narrow stripes for guides, but do not give them a hive partly filled with comb, as they would be sure to build a great deal of drone comb in the remaining space.

BEE DIARRHEA, FOUL BROOD, ETC.

Bee diarrhea in the latter part of winter and early spring is a malady that effects some apiaries. The bees discharge their excrements over the hives and combs, producing a dark appearance and offensive odor. The cause is either fermented honey, improper food, long confinement, or too warm and poorly ventilated quarters. Give them good capped honey and a cleansing flight. If too cold for this out-of-doors take them into a warm room, make a box, with the front and top made of wire cloth, or mosquito netting, adjust it to the entrance, so that the bees must enter it on leaving the hive. This will usually prove an effectual remedy.

FOUL BROOD.

Foul brood is the rotting of brood in a hive; the caps of the sealed brood appear indented and shriveled and the larvae and young bees in unsealed cells become putrid, emitting a disgusting stench or smell. When the disease has a firm hold, even though it may be possible to cure it, I would advise the total destruction by fire of the bees, combs, frames and hives, with everything which might harbor the disease. In its primary stages it can be cured in this way: With an atomizer spray the hives, bees, brood, honey and combs with a solution of salicylic acid, borax and rain water, repeated on the sixth day. Remove the diseased brood from the hive and give them capped honey, if not too far advanced this may give relief.

There is another plan, which is as follows: Take a clean new hive with new, clean frames, fill it with comb foundation, take and run all the bees out of the diseased hive into the clean one, do this in the evening and as soon as the bees are all in close the entrance with wire cloth, keep them confined for forty-eight hours until they have consumed all the honey in their sacks in building comb. At the end of forty-eight hours open the entrance and let them fly if they wish, feed them a little sugar syrup every night for about a week, and if the honey season is over, or, if this is done during a dearth of honey you should feed them regularly so as not to let them starve. I had the disease in my apiary the past season and this is the plan I used to cure it. My bees are as healthy now as as if they had never had it.

Sunny Side, Md.

[The instructions which friend Dewitt gives in the first part of the foregoing article will apply this month only to the more southern localities. Here in the North the hives in many places are still covered with snow and the bees should not be disturbed until spring has unmistakably arrived.—Ed.]