JUNE APIARY NOTES

Taranaki Daily News, 22 June 1935, Page 24 (Supplement)

JUNE APIARY NOTES

WINTER FEEDING OF BEES. • i ■ ' ’■ 1 ' ■ . I CARE IN WET WEATHER. D. S. Robinson, Apiary Instructor, Department of Agriculture, Palmerston North. Work in the apiary for this month consists chiefly of making an occasional visit amongst the bees to ascertain if everything is in good order. During the winter the bees should be disturbed as little as possible. If there is any doubt regarding the amount of stores required by the bees for winter feed it may be necessary to open the hives, but it is a better practice to try to estimate the quantity of stores on hand by lifting the back of the hives. Experienced beekeepers can thus guage by weight the stores present. Beekeepers lacking in experience will, of course, have to open the hives to examine the combs, and in the doing of this the hives should remain open as short' a while as possible to avoid chilling the bees and to conserve the heat of the hive. Should a colony of bees be found short of stores a few combs of honey from a hive known to be free from disease and eight or ten pounds of sugar made up into syrup and fed as advised in previous notes will help considerably and supply the feed required by the bees for a few weeks, when another examination should be made.

In the event of frames of honey being given to the bees these frames should be placed on each side of the cluster of bees so as not to divide the cluster, which, if broken up, will probably cause the death of a large number of bees, to the detriment of the colony. After heavy rains it is good practice to examine the mats over the frames, and any found to be damp should be replaced with dry ones; likewise detective roofs should be replaced with watertight ones.

All top boxes that have been removed should now be taken off and the bees confined to the brood chambers. This moriths’s honey recipes are:—

Honey and baked apples: Cut out cores of apples three-quarters of the way down and fill the cavity with honey and a little cinnamon or cloves. Bake in the usual way. Rolled oats biscuits: Ingredients: Jib flour, Rb rolled oats, 1 egg, Jib buttei, l teacup of honey and J teaspoonful baking powder. Method: Cream together,

butter, eggs and honey; add rolled oats; sift flour, with baking powder, work into a firm dough, adding liberal sprink-

lings of rolled oats. For working out, place biscuits on greased tins; bake in a very moderate oven.