Bee-Keeping Practice

By F. S. Stuart

The author of this book sets out to show how a fascinating hobby can become a profit making pursuit. He does not attempt to encourage new apiarists to take up the hobby primarily to make money, but he demonstrates from much experience that careful bee-keeping inevitably means good results. He is an enthusiast who describes with relish the various phases of the bee-keeper's year. He imparts hints to others as gleaned from his own hives and points out the many pitfalls that beset both the amateur and even the apiarist of some experience. The scope of this carefully detailed work can be estimated from the following selection from its contents list: Hives, Purchase and Construction; Apparatus and Protective Clothing; Purchase of Bees; Manipulation; Supers and Sections; Swarms; Queen Bees and Queen Cells; Heather Honey; Robbing and It's Prevention; Extraction of Honey; Bottling and Storing; Marketing of Honey; Bee Diseases; The Year's Work Month by Month. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Jan 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781447486619

Book preview

CHAPTER I

BEE-KEEPING AS A HOBBY AND COMMERCIALLY

MANY non-commercial bee-keepers are satisfied with lower honey yields, more stings, harder work, and less pleasure than would fall to their lot if they studied bee-keeping as a science. Most beginners, whether amateur or commercial, buy a lot of apparatus they could do without, and yet, subsequently, sometimes find themselves short of essential materials or equipment which should have been purchased in advance of its necessity.

Among many bee-keeping books published in recent years I have not read one which deals with the subject from the viewpoint of the novice who wishes, whether as a hobby or as a business, to get the maximum possible yield of honey at the minimum cost of money and time. It is to try to fill this gap that this manual is written.

I have kept bees for nearly twenty years, as an amateur. In the last few years I have kept them commercially. Single-handed, except for odd-time hired help, I have produced heavy weights of honey and kept four shops supplied all the year round.

In a year when an official analysis of 2041 stocks in Gloucestershire showed an average yield of 30 lb. per stock, and when an extra Government bee-feeding ration was issued to compensate for a wet summer, the average over my four fairly large apiaries (included in the County analysis) was 63 lb. per stock.

These facts are given as qualifications for my writing a book on bee-keeping. I am proud of them, but conscious also that my experience is much less extensive than that of many real old hands who will read—and perhaps disagree with—some of my findings. For many matters in bee-keeping to-day are highly controversial, even among experts; so that I shall keep to what I have seen and done in my own hives.

I have seen it stated that bee-keeping is an excellent pastime for the man with spare time, but can never be profitably run as a full-time business. Facts dispute this, but not sufficiently to make bee-keeping a full-time employment for everyone. Great energy is needed to make a decent living out of bees. I believe 100 colonies should generally pay £200 per annum net profit in a good district; twice that number can fairly easily be run single-handed. An average surplus yield is up to 50 lb. per colony, so from 100 hives it is possible in a good season to get 5000 lb. or more of honey. In U.S.A., one colony sometimes gives 200 lb. surplus in a season; in Australia up to 800 lb. in flowering-tree districts; but in this country, anything over 100 lb. is rare.

In England, not all summers are good bee-keeping weather. It is possible to get so bad a summer that profits may be sharply cut. But bee-keeping is an industry in which almost all the expense is initial outlay. After stocking the apiaries, the only outstanding expenses are bottles, three or four brood foundations per hive per year, a few dozen new flat frames each year, paint, honey labels, and very little else. One hive can give £3’s or £4’s worth of surplus honey in a good season, though of course not all hives do so; but some colonies each year, no matter how well handled, give little or no profit.

Apart from honey, there is profit in selling nuclei and swarms, in queen-rearing for sale, in consultant work, in acting as agent for apparatus, and in other side-lines.

Bee-keeping can be carried out well as a part-time job because most of the winter is free time, and even in summer a man can manage up to forty or fifty colonies by devoting all Saturdays and Sundays to them, and spending evenings and an occasional day on them during the week. His honey-yields are not quite so high in such a case as if he made a full-time work of bee-keeping, but most of each working week is thus freed for him to carry out other work.

There is, at times, fairly heavy lifting, when boxes weighing 40 lb. each have to be handled, very quietly and smoothly, so as not to annoy the bees. It is convenient to be able to move two of these at once, or to move a brood box and base which may weigh up to 50 or 60 lb. together. But no other strains are involved; and many women, and indeed numbers of schoolboys, keep bees most successfully, doing all necessary manipulations themselves. The outdoor work is very healthy and pleasant.

I used to suffer from acute blepharitis, an eye and eyelid condition causing constant inflammation, eye weakness, most painful ulcers, and necessitating two or three visits each year to a nursing home. Plenty of sweating over beehives in boiling sunshine has (I am told) taken from my system much of the excess acidity that caused the inflammation. I can testify to this, that since starting big-scale bee-keeping, I have only once been to a nursing home, and latterly have had several years without any sort of eye breakdown. I would not be surprised if the hard sweating every summer is not the real reason why bee-keepers are usually free from rheumatism. Bee stings may have something to do with it, but as the best bee-masters get so few stings, I am not so sure of that!

The first thing a would-be bee-keeper wishes to know is where to place his hives, both those actually in use and spares. It is important that apparatus such as spare hives, boxes, frames, and so on should be kept as near as possible to the colonies, because manipulating frequently necessitates carrying things to and from the hives.

In the case of the amateur who wishes to keep only a few hives, they should be as near the house as convenient, on the assumption that spares are kept in a room in the house, or in a shed attached to or near it. It is inconvenient to have to walk a long way carrying 40-lb supers, perhaps with indignant bees in attendance, or to leave a hive open and in parts while one goes several hundred yards to fetch something the bees need.

The room where the spares are kept should be bee-proof. They will penetrate the tiniest cranny round an ill-fitting door or window or under a loose board when wet combs are about, and, as they usually cannot get out again, they become a nuisance.

Commercial bee-keepers usually erect a wooden shed in which to keep their many spares. Roughly speaking, the bee-keeper has in his storeroom in winter at least half as much stuff as he has out of doors. Supers, spare brood boxes, spare outer lifts, and so on, are bulky things. So, if you have five colonies, you should have store space for the equivalent of about three hives, as well as room to stand upright, and a table or bench to work upon. If you keep two hundred colonies commercially, you need a shed to store perhaps the equivalent of seventy or more hives. Amateurs usually use a bicycle shed, a corner of a garage, or an attic or other spare room. It pays to make such a place bee-proof at the start, if it can be done.

To come now to the siting of hives. It must first be noted that an apiary should not be set up unless there are good supplies of most of the following forage within a mile: fruit trees (bush or tree), limes, hawthorns, sainfoin, white clover, blackberry, charlock, willow-herb, dandelions, heather. Not more than a hundred colonies in all (including those owned by other bee-keepers) should be placed within a two-mile radius. In most of Britain the principal forage for honey is white clover. Bees cannot usually reach nectar in red clover, though grey Caucasians are said to do so.

The coast is usually most unfavourable for bees, owing to high winds. Bees seldom gather much honey in a wind exceeding about 15 m.p.h., or when temperature is below 50 degrees; a surplus rarely accumulates in the hive till the temperature is nearly 70 degrees.

A site for hives should be well drained, protected from prevailing winds, and, if possible, with space for the hives to face south-east, so that the morning sun shall tempt the bees out to work early. Aspect is not, however, very important, though south-west should be avoided because of wind and rain.

Hives can be placed very near a house. I have seen them with their backs to the house, not six feet from it. The drawback of having them too close is that, on a day when they resent manipulation, as they occasionally do for reasons not always apparent, they may cruise round for twenty yards or so afterwards, for a short time, looking for victims. If possible, therefore, it is more comfortable to have the hives not less than twenty yards from any house, and not facing immediately on to a public road or path. Bees fly straight out and into the front of the hive, and resent any obstacle too close there, though one may stand at the sides or behind a hive and they normally take no notice at all.

Hives should not be much less than six feet apart. I have seen them arranged so as to touch each other, but this plan is unwise, and results in bees drifting to the end hives in the line. Bees locate their homes by directional sense, not by appearance. If a hive be moved a few feet to one side, workers returning from the fields will fly round and round till they die, never realising that their hive is beside them. A young queen, emerging for a marriage flight, should not, on her return, be puzzled where to enter because hives are too close together. If she enters the wrong hive, she will be killed, and a lost queen means great delay or even disaster to a colony. Also, hives placed too close make robbing easier and increase difficulty in manipulating.

Some people keep bees in an attic with a window exit. Others use flat roofs. I know one man who keeps observation hives in his London drawing-room.

Commercial bee-keepers, or amateurs who have no garden space of their own, often use other people’s gardens or big orchards. The latter give the advantage of an extra 5 to 20 lb. of honey per colony per season, as a rule.

Bees are a great asset to a gardener or fruit-grower. Improvement of fruit crops up to £50 an acre has been registered as a direct result of the presence of bee colonies, and the value of British bees in pollinating fruit crops has been estimated by experts at £4,000,000 a year. Near-by cider orchards with and without bees have provided amazingly different fruit crops.

I have bumper crops of all fruits in my garden, even in bad years, because my bees pollinate trees and bushes thoroughly. Even in wet weather they will fly a few yards for spring honey and pollen, whereas flowers as little as a hundred yards away may be unvisited. This is an argument for siting your apiary close to your fruit.

Cider-apple growers often pay £1 per colony per season to bee-keepers who will put stocks in their orchards. Farmers with orchards or bean-fields sometimes do the same. The arrangement is often a friendly one, with no payment on either side. Keen gardeners who grow such early flowering fruit trees as peach and apricot are usually delighted to have colonies placed in their gardens; they get heavier crops, and will sometimes divert part of them as a thank-offering to the bee-keeper.

Many bee-keepers pay 1/2 lb. of honey per month to each landlord (not for each colony!); the landlords are then usually most helpful in notifying the bee-keeper of swarms or robbing, and in sweeping off snow in winter from alighting-boards and roofs. It is advisable to have a written note of an annual agreement, as a sudden demand to move may be awkward.

A young orchard is an ideal place, but hives should be kept clear of trees so that raindrips will not fall on roofs, making them damp and perhaps tempting inquisitive bees out in winter when it may be too cold for them to return. If young trees throw a light shade over the hive during midday heat, that is an advantage, as bees sometimes swarm through getting overheated in the hive.

An apiary on a hilltop is undesirable, as the bees have to fly home heavily loaded and climb at the same time. In honey-flows, bees usually only live six or eight weeks, and this period may be shortened by overstrain in flying, thus obviously reducing profits.

Some attention must be paid to the immediate surroundings of the colony. Vegetation in front of the hive should be kept cut, to allow bees easy passage. Sometimes they come in so loaded that a collision with a stem of grass may overpower them, and if exhausted or cold, they may not recover. Also, a cleared space should be kept round the hive and at the back, partly for dryness and partly to give the bee-keeper room to set down parts of the hive level when manipulating.

The legs of the hive should be set on bricks or flat stones to prevent rotting. The hive should stand absolutely level from side to side, and with a drop of about half an inch from back to front to allow condensed moisture to run out. It should be far enough from any wall to allow comfort when working behind it—the beekeeper manipulates usually from the back of the hive.

There should be at least ten feet from the front of one row of hives to the back of the row in front of it.

If an out-apiary be established in an orchard, on farm land or in a garden, a wire-strand fence may be required to prevent cows or pigs, always inquisitive animals, from nosing against and perhaps knocking over hives; and some protection may be advisable to keep children at a distance, though bees rarely attack children even when angry with adults.

When my son was two years old he put his eye to the entrance of a hive and tried to shake it to make them make a nice noise. They did. So did he, because a lot got in his hair. He was too petrified to move. I went and picked him up, with hundreds of bees all over him, and carried him yelling indoors. He was only stung twice, by bees I accidentally crushed in picking him up.

Nowadays, at eleven, he manipulates colonies without veil or gloves, and sometimes persuades his young sister to do the same. On a day when, perhaps because of thundery weather which they fear, the bees have caused me to shut down operations rather than continue to dispute with them in that mood, he will proceed nonchalantly into the buzzing apiary, wearing shorts and an open shirt, brush them off apparatus I have left behind, and bring it back to me. The bees fly hard in protest into his face and against his hands and knees, but rarely indeed do they take advantage of his trust.

This brings me to the discussion of stings, for one of the first questions all would-be bee-keepers ask is how much bees sting, whether it hurts much, and what remedy there is against stinging.

What I have just said about bees’ dislike of stinging children is one of the guides to the answer. For a bee, unless much provoked, will hardly ever sting anyone who has confidence that he or she will not be stung. There is a reason for this.

Scientists say that the human body exudes an acid odour when fear is felt, and that this odour frightens and angers not only bees but horses, dogs, and other animals. It is common knowledge that a man accustomed to animals can fearlessly stroke a bad-tempered dog, whereas a timid person gets bitten. So it is with bees. Children and experienced bee-keepers are confident, and are seldom stung, unless in accidentally crushing a bee, or on one of those rather rare days when, with or without an apparent reason, the colony is cross.

Bees dread to sting, because almost always the sting (being barbed) stays in the wound, tears out part of the attacker’s body, and kills it within ten minutes or so. They dislike stinging, therefore, more than the most sensitive person dislikes being stung, and they try not to do it.

If crushed or deliberately struck at, they will sting in self-defence. If they fear that their queen will be hurt or chilled, they may try to sting; or if a frame of young brood is exposed to a chill wind which may kill it. If the hive is bumped or badly shaken or mishandled, naturally they try to protect it.

They are terrified of thunder, and will tend to sting if the hive is opened in thundery weather. Perhaps two or three times in a season, a hive will demonstrate from the moment it is opened that its occupants wish to be left alone. This is probably because some process is going on which is better left undisturbed; for example, I have found bees aggressive when a queen cell is just hatching.

I always leave a hive alone if it makes its demand clear. To insist on handling it then produces bad temper among the bees that may last two or three weeks, whereas, if the same hive is tackled a day or two later, the bees are usually sweet-tempered again, often, indeed, almost apologetically so. The beginner, however, must discriminate, and not abandon every hive every time!

In my first bee-keeping season, I worked without veil or gloves and was stung only twice, each time through crushing a bee. During the following season I was foolish enough to handle a neighbour’s hive during a thunder-storm, and, being quite unprotected, I received over a hundred stings in about three minutes; and