CHAPTER XXIV

MANAGEMENT OF AN ISOLATED Apiary

When the beginner, having become a beekeeper, wishes to increase the number of his hives, he is obliged to have several apiaries, because placing too many colonies on the same point necessarily brings the ruin of the apiary in bad years, unless that the farmer imposes great sacrifices on himself to feed his bees in the fall. If, in these bad years, this same number of hives had been distributed among five or six apiaries a few kilometers apart, the bees, fewer in number on the same point, would have been able to harvest at least their winter supplies.

I propose to describe in detail the operations to be carried out throughout the season in an isolated apiary to which we want to devote as little time as possible. I will take as an example my apiary, located in the Beaupuits woods, which is 3 kilometers from my home.

General considerations. — When one wants to establish an apiary, it is very difficult to determine the honey value of the region other than by experience, and beekeepers who obtain extraordinary yields from their apiaries must attribute their success more to the terrain, climate and flora than to any other cause. This is how, for a long time, in my apiary and in those of my neighbors, I transferred, in the spring, a large number of common hives into frame hives. However, never, in the fall, have these colonies provided more than a few pounds of surplus honey, while in Savoie, an extremely honey-rich region, the hives transferred the year before have often given in the fall over 50 pounds of surplus honey. I could also cite the following example: the lime tree, which in certain regions provides a lot of honey, on the contrary gives almost none in my surroundings. I have never seen hives on scales in my apiary gain a lot of weight at the time of their flowering.

Long experience has taught me that we must never deviate from the following three principles, which are the basis of all good culture:

1° Large hives;

2° Large executives;

3° Sufficient space in the hive, so that the queen's egg laying is never interrupted.

We will thus obtain: 1° few natural swarms; 2° as much honey as the region will allow; 3° a high population in the fall, the most important points for the future of the apiary.

The farmers, my neighbors, have long applied the simple method to their apiaries, which consist of horizontal hives. In my apiary, these processes were applied for twenty years, and in theirs for fifteen years. Moreover, the simple method is now tending to become widespread in the various regions of France.

The apiary. — My hives are in a wood 3 kilometers from my home. They are placed in two lines, in an alley shaded by large trees. The hives are placed two by two on the benches, 40 centimeters from the ground. I find it more convenient for them to be at eye level for working; moreover, being less close to the ground, they are less afraid of humidity during the winter.

The apiary is surrounded by wooden stakes linked together by four rows of artificial bramble; this fence is the most economical. Near the apiary there runs a stream where there is never a shortage of water, and the bees, to get to the plain, only have to cross about a hundred meters.

Different comparative observations make me assume that the bees in an apiary placed in the shade in a wood swarm less than those in full sun.

I have recognized for several years, following observations made with other beekeepers, that it is important that the hives are not placed in a line, but as irregularly as possible. By this arrangement, the bees go to the wrong hive less often when returning from the fields, and, with the queens finding their home more easily when they return to the hive after being fertilized, orphan colonies are rarer.

The tools. — My tools are very simple and can be transported entirely in a car, which includes the following objects:

1° A wheelbarrow, on which is placed a frame box, capable of containing around twenty. This wheelbarrow and its box are used to contain the frames that are removed from the hives, or vice versa;

2° Two frame boxes which can each contain 50 frames and which are used to transport full or empty frames, from the apiary to the house, or vice versa;

3° A bellows which produces a lot of smoke;

4° A bucket with a tightly closing lid and a long kitchen knife; this is used to cut and collect the parts of rays that are removed when straightening some irregularly constructed rays;

5° A carpenter's chisel used to easily detach the spokes. To use it, simply slide this scissor between two spokes and lever to easily detach the most propolished frame;

6° A small broom, made of a few goose feathers, to brush the bees from the combs.

Consideration for visiting the hives. — We must get used to visiting the hives without taking into account the mood of the bees, because if we had to wait each time for the most favorable day, we would lose precious time. One day bees may be quite easy to deal with and the next much more difficult. Anyway, with a little practice and a lot of smoke, you can always overcome it. I happened to harvest the big harvest in October, without my help or I having received any injections.

When opening a hive, the most important point is not to remove any frame before having first smoked heavily for some time, from above, between the combs. We can then operate quickly.

To drive the bees out of the frames, I never brush them outside the hive on the board, but always inside the hive. They then fall to the bottom; A small number of them fly away, but they will soon join the other bees.

To operate, I always use an assistant, who smokes the bees while I work; I recognized that two people can easily do the work of three or four who would operate in isolation.

At the end of winter, novice beekeepers are too often in a hurry to visit their colonies. This is a mistake, and we must not disturb the bees as long as they are at rest; you must wait until the bees have worked actively for around eight days. If hives are inspected too soon after a long, harsh winter, some colonies may be found without brood, and the novice beekeeper may believe that they are orphans, when it is the queen who has not yet hatched. started laying eggs. However, if the beekeeper has not left enough honey for wintering (18 to 20 kilograms), some colonies could run out of supplies; in this case, it is necessary to feed.

To feed a colony in spring, here is the simplest method. Using a saw, we cut a few slices from a loaf of sugar; we uncover a few rays and, after lightly soaking the slice of sugar with water, we place it on top of the frames, then we cover the sugar with a thick blanket, so that the heat is lost as little as possible.

We can also feed the bees in the following very simple way: melt 10 kilograms of sugar in 5 liters of water hot; when the syrup has cooled, using a cruet with a tapered spout, the syrup is poured from a certain height, into the cells of a straight comb placed flat on a table; we then cover the shelf with a sheet of paper, and turn the shelf over to fill it on the opposite side.

It is not useless that, at the time of the big harvest, there remains a little old honey in the hives, which, when passed through the extractor with the new, greatly helps its good and rapid crystallization.

General visit to the hives. — Before going any further, I must remember that my horizontal hives are arranged differently than they were originally. The hive has two entrances, one at each end, and the brood nest, instead of being in the middle, is always at one end of the hive, either to the right or to the left, opposite an entrance, the other still remaining jermée. As for the partition boards, as I find them useless, I deleted them a long time ago. However, I have kept a few which I still use when I transfer a colony or place a swarm in a hive, in order to force the bees to only build in the space that I give them.

Fig. 1. — Hive in winter.

I stand behind each hive with my wheelbarrow, on which the box filled with combs is placed, and I organize each of them in the following way.

Here, for example, is a colony which overwintered on 18 combs (fig. 1); I start the visit with comb A which is located against the wall of the hive near the entrance of the bees; I remove it and the following ones and stop when I encounter the first comb D containing brood. I thus, for example, removed three frames A, B, C, containing more or less honey; I place them with their bees at the other end of the hive (fig. 2); these three frames will be replaced by three empty worker combs U, T, S (fig. 2 on the right), which I will take from the hive or from the reserve box. If there are no shelves available, embossed wax frames can be placed in their place.

But, before putting the empty combs U, T, S in their place, I inspect the condition of the brood on the combs D, E, F, G, H (fig. 1). I leave these rays in place; I subsequently remove, for example, combs I, J, which have no brood, but a lot of honey; I place them further against the frames A, B, C (fig. 2) and I replace them with two worker spokes P, R (fig. 2). The other combs K, L, M, N, 0, are left in place or I add new ones to fill the hive completely.

Fig. 2. — The same hive as fig. 1, after the spring visit.

In summary, after this operation, the hive contains (fig. 2):

Three empty rays S, T, U.

Five combs of brood and honey D, E, F, G, H.

Two combs empty or having honey.. P, R.

Five empty rays K, L, M, N, O.

Five combs containing more or less honey J, I, C, B, A.

It is of course understood that all these indications are in no way absolute as to the number and nature of the executives changed places; it depends on the strength of the colony and the amount of honey found in the hive; but the procedure to follow is always the same and is summarized as follows:

In spring, the brood combs should be surrounded by combs that are empty or contain little or no honey so that the queen does not lack room to lay eggs until the time of the big harvest, and combs containing plenty of Honey must be transferred to the end of the hive opposite to that where the brood is located (1).

(1) We must also take advantage of the first visit of spring to put in the hives a few frames simply primed using old pieces of comb glued to the top of the frames with strong glue. These frames will be placed at the end of the hive opposite that where the brood is located and inserted between already constructed frames; we put two or three per hive. This way the bees will always build straight into the frames.

I organize all the hives like this every spring; In this way, the queen has plenty of room to lay eggs and most of the old honey, if any still remains in the hive during the big harvest, is passed with the new to the extractor.

Between the time of the first visit and that of the harvest, it is enough to go around the apiary from time to time to ensure that the work of the colonies is working regularly.

As for pillaging, there is no fear in remote apiaries when there are no foreign bees. The only case where one must particularly monitor the colonies occurs when one is obliged to feed them. This case never arises when enough honey is left in the fall.

In the case where, when examining the external work of a colony, we see bees coming out of the hive with pollen on their legs and thus walking around as if worried on the plateau, and if at the same time the work of the bees seems languid and irregular, one can be almost certain that the colony is orphaned or buzzing. The colony is then given a comb of brood of any age, a queen or a swarm.

A crucial point in spring is to carefully examine the condition of the brood. Whether the colony is strong or weak, whether there is a lot or little brood, when the latter forms tight patches on the combs, the colony is in good condition, the queen is very probably fertile and the hive has health. future.

If, on the contrary, we see the brood scattered, the queen is more or less bad; most generally, the hive will replace its queen and become good for wintering and for the following season.

A colony may also be found orphaned or buzzing. In this case, which occurs sometimes (and even every year if the apiary is large enough), we get rid of this worthless colony in the following way, which is the simplest; but we must wait to do this operation on a beautiful day when the bees are very active, which proves that there is honey in the flowers.

We transport the hive to the end of the apiary, we dismantle all the frames and we brush all the bees onto a tray placed on the ground in the sun. The bees fly away and, no longer finding their home, will ask for hospitality from the colonies neighboring their former place. The honey contained in this hive will contribute to the purchase of a replacement colony.

If we cannot operate the same day, we must in the meantime greatly narrow the flight hole of this hive, in order to avoid pillaging.

To replace orphan colonies, the best method is to take from the sale of honey the money necessary to purchase replacement colonies, because, in this way, these colonies purchased from afar constantly bring new blood into the apiary; but, when you have several apiaries distant from each other, you can also have near your home a small apiary of colonies in common hives or hives containing only a small number of frames: this apiary will be intended to give natural swarms, all of which will be collected; we will thus have at our disposal a nursery which will serve to constantly fill the gaps occurring in the apiaries.

Harvest. — To obtain good quality honey with a long shelf life, it is necessary to extract it from the combs only when the latter are almost completely capped; As a result, I only harvest late, in September. I know that my sainfoin honey is mixed with that of some autumn flowers; but, in order to easily find a sale for it, I am obliged to sell it at almost the same price as that of the honey manufacturers in the surrounding area and as the extractor's honey is infinitely superior to theirs, this mixture of honey of different flowers offer no inconvenience. In any case, there is also an advantage to harvesting at the end of the season, because at this time of the year there are already fewer bees in the colonies, which makes it possible to operate more quickly.

When harvest time arrives, I go to the apiary as in spring with the necessary equipment. It is around four or five o'clock in the afternoon that I harvest and I finish my operations at dusk. I can thus harvest a dozen hives in two hours.

Each hive is opened and I successively remove the frames, starting with the one furthest from the brood nest. If this first comb contains a lot of honey, it is a sure sign that there is a lot of honey in the hive. From a hive containing 20 frames and which is heavy, I usually remove 8 or 10 combs; moreover, if a colony has less honey, it will still be necessary to remove the same number of combs, with this difference that these combs, instead of being full of honey, will only contain a third or a quarter of it. of their surface. Moreover, with a little practice, I can recognize by comparison and by lifting the hives from behind whether it is necessary to leave or remove one or two more or less combs. Anyway, I keep at least 17 to 18 kilograms of honey for wintering.

The excess combs removed, those remaining are, as usual, closed using metal blades folded in a V (or covered with small boards), and I finish closing the hive in succession with boards, having take care to leave an interval of half a centimeter between them, so that during the winter the vapors given off by the bees can escape through these intervals. The top of the frames and boards is finally covered with a wool blanket or straw.

Wintering. — We see from the above that wintering takes place at the same time as the harvest, which means that we do not return to the apiary until next spring.

The day I finish the operations, I place a winter grille at the entrance to the hive facing the combs, the other entrance always being closed. As for the combs passed through the extractor, it is not in this apiary that I give them to be cleaned, but in another located near my sharecropper's home.

But, in the event that there is not enough space to store the combs during the winter, we can without inconvenience put the greatest number of these frames back into the hives. So, for example, in a hive of 20 frames, we can leave 18 and we will be content, as shown in Figure 1, to cover the last frame with the blanket of wool or straw; in this way, the humidity which is so harmful to bees during the winter will be able to escape under the roof through the empty space which remains outside the frames.

I have sometimes been obliged to harvest earlier and at a time when the honey was only partially sealed; then I passed the combs through the extractor without uncapping them, in order to remove the uncapped honey; I used this honey to make mead. Then I uncapped the combs and removed the honey as usual.

To uncapped the shelves, I tried all the knives in succession, but none gave me as many advantages combined as the next one. This knife looks quite similar to a carpenter's plane; it is a curved knife, less than a centimeter long than the width of the frames and which has a handle at each end; in this way you uncapping easily and without fatigue, the knife being held by both hands. Heat the knife before using it.

In summary, the management of the apiary throughout the beekeeping season is reduced to the following two main operations: 1° the spring visit, the filling of the hives with frames; 2° the autumn harvest and the wintering of the colonies.

I hope to have shown in these few pages how one can simply manage to obtain over the years, however variously favorable, an average remunerative product; how an owner of many hives will know how to manage them safely while spending the minimum of time.

I said at the beginning, this advice is not aimed at those who are starting to take care of the cultivation of bees; but it does not take long for an intelligent beginner to learn the handling of hives and bees. I would like to remind you that it is this beginner who has become a beekeeper that I am addressing.

How many rural farmers, priests, teachers and even industrialists would ask for nothing better than to exploit bees on a fairly large scale, and who are stopped from this path by their other occupations! Many of them have a few colonies near their house, but shy away from the establishment of larger apiaries, when they see the multiple complicated operations which must be carried out constantly throughout the season, and this daily surveillance which is given to them as indispensable by beekeeping books.

If those who want to have a product from their apiary without removing anything, so to speak, from their other work follow the above advice, they will increase their income prudently, gradually, almost without risk, and, thanks to them, we will be able to harvest in our country this enormous mass of honey produced by the French flora so rich in honey-producing plants and which is lost every year.