13. Now all good rules fail at times because conditions occasionally work wrong. If the honey flow is a failure in your locality it may not enable you to leave a sufficient quantity of sealed honey per hive. In that case, it is necessary to resort to feeding". There is one thing that may at all times be properly and safely fed to bees in commercial quantities, and that is a syrup made by mixing pure granulated cane sugar and water, in the proportion of two parts of sugar to one of water, by bulk. In case you are late in getting at your feeding, there is a possibility this sugar syrup may not be thoroughly evaporated down to the right consistency by the bees in which case it may result in poor wintering of the bees. If the weather is so cool that the sugar does not readily stay in solution, you may safely add one teaspoon of tartaric acid to 20 pounds of sugar syrup. We never recommend the feeding of bees in the spring of the year except in cases of extreme emergency. By all means, do your spring feeding in the fall, first, so that it really will be done, and second, so that the bees will not need to be disturbed in the early cold spring days to give them feed which they should have had in fall.

14. We do not recommend any style of feeder except one that feeds above the cluster. The beekeeper can make a safe and successful feeder of this type by taking a 5 pound friction top can and punching a dozen or two holes about the size of a common pin in the cover of the pail. It is important to have a goodly number of small holes in the pail lid so the bees can take the syrup out rapidly. Otherwise they may consume it instead of storing it. Five or ten pounds of syrup should be taken down during a night. If the holes in the lid are small and the lid is tightly on the pail the air pressure keeps the syrup in until removed by the bees. This pail filled with sugar syrup may then be inverted over the top body of the colony after all supers have been removed in the late summer. The cover of the pail may be set right over the hole in the inner cover or over a hole cut in an old sack spread over the frames and an empty hive body put on to enclose the feeder and keep out robbers, and a bee tight cover be put on over all. (See figure 11.) You will find that there is a time in late summer when you may feed too early resulting in an unnecessary production of bees to the extent that the proper quantity of honey will not be left in the hive. You will find that you can usually feed when frosts begin to kill the flowers and have the maximum quantity of syrup ripened and stored in the combs for winter food. Usually feeding too late means that the feeding will be done in weather when it is too cool for the bees to take down the syrup and properly modify it and seal it in the combs. Remember that honey is roughly 8 parts of sugar to 2 parts ot water and the syrup you feed the bees should be evaporated by them to this thickness. Therefore it must be fed early enough for them to reduce the water content of the syrup. No one can tell you exactly how to meet such conditions, and you can only follow the accepted rules and figure out their application to your own locality.

15. No surplus honey should be sold out of any apiary until the beekeeper has first determined that he is keeping enough sealed stores to supply each colony of bees properly. This is like pulling teeth when you have a light crop and need the money badly and want to sell the honey and take a chance on the bees wintering* and springing. However, if you will try leaving adequate stores with each colony in fall, you will never go back to the old out-of-date system of "robbing" the'bees too closely in the fall.

16. Many beekeepers in localities where the bees may be confined to their hives without a flight for several weeks, practice year after year not only the plan of leaving an adequate supply of honey with each colony of bees, but also feed each colony 10 to 15 pounds of sugar syrup after the bee breeding season is over in the fall of the year, regardless of whether or not the colonies need these additional stores at that time. This is done as a matter of insurance, as the bees use this food first and their honey later and it lessens the danger of dysentery. See paragraph No. 46. Where an adequate supply of honey already is left with each colony, it is the usual practice to feed this 10 or 15 pounds of sugar syrup immediately after the first killing frost in each locality. Where bees are confined to the hives tor several weeks at a time without a flight the plan pays well.

17. Now that you have replaced failing queens, united weak colonies, reduced each hive to winter proportions, and insured the proper quantity of stores, it is time to think of the further preparation that may be necessary for successfully wintering the bees.

18. Many beekeepers who use a queen excluder during the honey flow make the mistake of leaving the excluder on the hive after the supers have been removed, frequently leaving it between the two remaining hive bodies where the colony is to be wintered outdoors. This is a serious mistake. A queen excluder prevents the passage of the queen from one body to another. During cold weather bees wintered in a two story hive will usually move to the top story because the heat from their cluster rises and they winter more easily and more successfully in the top story. The presence of the queen excluder on the hive does not prevent most of the bees from moving up but it does prevent the queen from moving up with them. This will usually mean that the queen will die in the lower hive and the bees become very restless, resulting in poor wintering, and their death in early spring.