[Illustration: SECTION THROUGH COMB CONTAINING BROOD (ENLARGED).]
This paper will close with a few hints that may now come in useful to the beginner.
In the first place don’t meddle with your bees more than is absolutely necessary. It tends to make them bad-tempered, and if they are once thoroughly roused they may be difficult to manage for months, and become the terrors, not the pets, of their owner. When you have decided that an operation is necessary, have everything ready at hand before you begin, such as frames ready fitted with foundation, the smoker well charged and burning, an extra roll or two of brown paper, matches, etc. If possible, have an assistant to help you, and so avoid trouble and delay at a critical moment.
Though swarms, especially “first” ones, usually come off only in settled fine weather, it sometimes happens that they are unfortunate enough to commence life as a separate colony during a spell of bad weather when they cannot obtain food. In such a case, having no stores to fall back upon, they would starve and die if not fed by the bee-keeper, and syrup must be given to them through the feeder. Syrup suitable for feeding bees at this time of the year may be made by the following recipe:—
Ten pounds of pure cane sugar, seven pints of water, a teaspoonful of vinegar, and a pinch of salt. Keep stirring over a brisk fire, and allow to boil for a few minutes.
[2] The “first” or “prime” swarm is the first swarm of the season that issues out of the hive; it is headed by the old queen. Second swarms or casts, which come off about eight days after the first swarm has left the hive, are headed by young newly-emerged queens. They are not so valuable as the first swarm.
[3] Best worn with a straw hat. This examination is not necessary.
“To everything there is a season.”—“A time to love.”—Eccles. iii. 1, 8.
If I were, this evening, to ask each of you, my dear girl friends, what subject occupies your thoughts most in regard to your future life, I wonder how many of you would even whisper the truth in my ear—if, indeed, you cared to trust me so far. You have trusted me in many things, and your confidences have been very precious to me; but they have caused me sorrow as well as joy: sorrow, since no human being can do more than lay bare the workings of one heart, the spiritual experience of one soul, the sensations, painful or otherwise, of one body, in order to help or advise others. We may all make guesses about our neighbours, but we can be sure of nothing outside ourselves.