THE APIARY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3522, 13 September 1921, Page 7

THE APIARY.

By

J. A.

SEPTEMBER WORK IN THE APIARY. This is the month when the new season’s activity in the apiary begins. After the long wa.it of autumn and winter, the beekeeper, also, noting- that t-lie bees are active, wants to have a hand in it and do something. It is not, however, wise to interfere very much with the colonies. To go looking through them and handling the combs, just to try and find something to do, or, what is more often the case, just to satisfy curiosity, is foolish. It is necessary to go through them at stated intervals to mark their condition as to stores, disease, and queen; and it is particularly desirable that the first run through should be as early as possible after line weather has set in, but after that probably from three weeks to a month, varied by weather conditions, will be ample. There will, of course, be a certain number of colonies marked at each visit as requiring closer attention. Where the satisfaction of oui own curiosity and not the particular requirements of the bees is our motive, it is not usually the hives requiring attention that appeal to us, but the stronger and more forward ones. The ideal of September work is to have our colonies working normally, with as liule interference from the beekeeper as may be. If the colony is queen right and clean and has plenty of stores, then we can safely leave them to their own instinct to do wliat is best. To us they may seem to spread slowly, but they usually know best. (J a r ideas of spreading the brood or changing the order of the combs in order to hasten the work of the queen does more harm than good. There is, however, one very decided check to a colony’s increase in the early season, and that is too much drorio comb in the brood-nest. Sometimes a comb all drone size will prove as complete a barrier to the extention of the brood-nest as if it had been a division board. Sometimes the bees will get over the difficulty by filling up drone comb with worker brood. Tho bees have a wonderful instinct at this early season to keep their brood-ncst compact. If the bro-od portion of each comb were to bo cut out and then placed side by side in the same order they had when in the hive it would form, in our Langstroth hive, very much the shape of an oval; in a deeper hive it would be rounder. The position is that, just as in the hexagonal ceils of which the combs are composed there is a wonderful economy of space, so in the form of the brood-nest there is economy shown, to allow the bees at the smallest cost to form round it the living curtain that keeps up the temperature within. Tlic beekeeper’s part, then, is to provide for the brood-ncst only good worker combs. Neither the bees nor the beekeeper want drones in September, nor do we want the brood-nest curtailed by drone comb. Of late years comb foundation has been very expensive to buy. There is, however, a way out of the difficulty. If, instead of selling our wax, we get it made into foundation (and there is ample opportunity to do this now), we can lessen very considerably the cost. Of this wo are certain, that it pays to get all our combs made from full sheets of foundation, and to make a good work of wiring the frames and embedding it in the foundation. If much feeding has to be done in September it is well to use every precaution to prevent robbing. Usually, with sugar feeding, all that is necessary is to feed warm at sundown, and generally all will he quiet in the morning. In this connection it is ■well to remember that if honey is used, unless it is sealed in the comb, it will result in greater activity in the bees. In feeding honey we should put as much hot water into it as we would use to molt •sugar. Honey feeding is, however, not generally adopted, for fear of its containing germs of foulbrood. Where disease is present, the only tiling we would advise in September is to remove the worst combs and destroy them, and later on in the season to “M‘Evoy” them. Where it is a quite recent infection, sometimes tne removal of the combs on which it appears will effect a cure. The “M’Evoy” treatment should only be carried out when there is a good flow of nectar and when the weather promises fair. Where there is a good apiary and only a few colonies are affected the treatment in whatever way it is carried out should be sudden.