Don't miss the pleasure of seeing these developments at this stage; look in the hive every day and show all of this to your wife and children to get them interested as you will need their help later on in assembling equipment, packing and selling honey, etc., as your hobby grows into a thriving part or full time occupation.

About 3 weeks after installing your bees you should have combs of brood like this with pollen stored just outside the circle of brood and the honey sealed in the upper corners of the frame. Continue to feed your colony until all of the frames in the hive body are drawn out and filled with brood, pollen and honey.

About 3 weeks after installing your bees you should have combs of brood like this with pollen stored just outside the circle of brood and the honey sealed in the upper corners of the frame. Continue to feed your colony until all of the frames in the hive body are drawn out and filled with brood, pollen and honey.

Here is the hive with the feeder filled, the guard bees protecting the small entrance and the field bees gathering pollen and nectar. This colony has a good start but it requires continuous feeding until it is a strong colony with a reserve of honey to carry it over the periods when no nectar is coming in.

Here is the hive with the feeder filled, the guard bees protecting the small entrance and the field bees gathering pollen and nectar. This colony has a good start but it requires continuous feeding until it is a strong colony with a reserve of honey to carry it over the periods when no nectar is coming in.

Feeding Bees

You would not expect to raise a calf without giving it plenty of good feed nor can you expect a grown cow to get a living out of a bare field, yet many people expect bees to make a living under all conditions without help. Many flowers yield little if any nectar and sometimes, due to unfavorable climatic and soil conditions, nectar producing plants and trees often produce little or no honey.

A simple method of feeding bees is punching several small holes with a 4 to 7 penny nail in the lid of a friction top pail and inverting it over the brood nest.

A simple method of feeding bees is punching several small holes with a 4 to 7 penny nail in the lid of a friction top pail and inverting it over the brood nest.

A weak colony is similar to a young or a sick animal; it is not fully able to take care of itself and requires help whether it is a new swarm or an old one. Colonies become weakened due to starvation, disease or the presence of a poor queen. Sometimes the bees replace a failing queen and sometimes they do not. When there are not enough bees in a hive to take care of the combs the wax worms will take over. Whenever a colony is found in a weakened condition it should be fed sulfa treated sugar syrup until it is back in shape and has at least 25 pounds of surplus honey. It is important to get all colonies up to full strength as quickly as possible and then if there is a honey flow available they may be able to store a worth-while surplus for you, while if they remain weak they may only be able to barely make a living.

Granulated sugar mixed with water is by far the best feed for bees. It has no odor as do many syrups which may attract robbers, it is cheap and dissolves quickly in cold water. For regular stimulative feeding dissolve 10 pounds of sugar in 1 gallon of water. Cold water is as good as hot water in warm weather but in cold weather use warm water so that the bees will take it faster. For feeding the bees for winter stores in the late fall use warm water and fifteen pounds of sugar to one gallon of water. Always add one sulfa tablet for each gallon of syrup as a disease preventative

An Ounce Of Prevention Is Worth A Pound Of Cure.

The guard bees of each colony normally cover the landing board and fan their wings to force air currents in and out of the hive by which process the nectar is evaporated and processed into honey.

The guard bees of each colony normally cover the landing board and fan their wings to force air currents in and out of the hive by which process the nectar is evaporated and processed into honey.