HONEY FARMING by R. O. B. MANLEY FABER AND FABER LTD 24 Russell Square London First published in mcmxlvi by Faber and Faber Limited 24 Russell Square London W.C. 1 Second Impression September mcmxlvi Third impression September mcmxlviii Printed in Great Britain by Latimer Trend & Co Ltd Plymouth All rights reserved PREFACE he writing of this little book about bee-farming and honey Tproduction was suggested by the many letters I have received during the past ten years, since the book Honey Production in the British Isles was published. I have tried to make it as useful and interesting as I can, but I am very well aware of its imperfections. To write an interesting account of technical operations and methods of working is not always easy. Honey Farming is not written for the novice, and in writing it I have assumed some considerable experience on the part of the reader; but I am now working on another book intended expressly for the beginner who wishes to take up the business of beekeeping as distinct from making a hobby of it, a rather difficult thing to do. I have to thank those friends who have assisted me with the photographs used in this book, especially Mr. C. P. Abbott who did most of them. The drawings were made by Mr. R. W. Ford of Reading. R. O. B. MANLEY CONTENTS Preface page 5 I. Retrospect 11 II. Essentials 28 III. Climate, Pasturage, and Apiaries 42 IV. Apiary Equipment 57 V. Breeding Bees 83 VI. The Passing Seasons 124 VII. Swarm Control and Summer Work 155 VIII. The Introduction of Queen Bees 192 IX. Moving Bees 212 X. Heather 219 XI. Harvest 230 XII. Diseases and Pests 247 XIII. For Beginners 274 Index 289 ILLUSTRATIONS PHOTOGRAPHS 1. Comb showing brood in all stages frontispiece 2. A near thing facing page 14 3. Under the cherry trees 14 4. May blossom in April 15 5. A pair of 'M.D.' Hives in Spring 15 6. Apiaries in Winter 80 7. A useful wind-break 80 8. Wood-and-wire and home-made zinc queen excluders 81 9. Home-made 'Miller' feeder 81 10. Pouring syrup into a Miller feeder 96 11. A graft dummy with sealed queen cells 96 12. A four-section mating hive 97 13. Bees hanging out at the entrance of a mating hive 97 14. Placing an entrance guard in position 144 15. Stapling brood chamber to floor 144 16. Using a 'Signode' strapping machine 145 17. Heather honey 145 18. How we arrange the wooden strip 160 19. Scooping heather honey off the septum of a comb 160 20. Heather honey press 161 21. Methyl salicylate bottles in a notched dummy 161 22. Stale foundation 208 23. One way of transferring British standard to 'M.D.' frames 208 24. Introducing cage 209 25. Home-made travelling box 209 26. Loading bees 224 27. How we load bees 224 28. American Foul Brood 225 29. European Foul Brood 225 LINE DRAWINGS 1. Hoffmann Frames, Modified Dadant size page 65 2. The Special Extracting Frames we use in our Supers 68 3(a). Single-Compartment Feeder as made and used by myself 79 3(b). Two-Compartment 'Miller' Feeder 79 4. Nursery Cage suitable for use in an Incubator 105 5. Cage for Catching and Carrying Queens 117 6. Semi-Direct Cage as used by the Rev. Bro. Adam 199 7. Original Queen-Cage 202 8. The Cage used by me as described 206 CHAPTER I RETROSPECT t will soon be forty years ago that I first became really interested in Ibees. Before that, at the age of about five years, I remember being given honey for tea at my grandfather's house in Exeter and being horribly sick after it. It is still a vivid memory and since that day I have never eaten my own special product if I could avoid it, for I never did like honey much. I also have an early recollection of seeing an old lady who lived in the lodge of Newnham Manor, Wallingford, place a skep over a swarm that had alighted on the ground in one of my father's fields, and of her placing an umbrella over it—to my surprise, the day being fine and warm with no sign of rain. Later on I saw the 'county expert' doing signs and wonders with bees in a frame hive belonging to that same old lady: he actually took bees up in his hands, and even allowed them to sit on his face, and still lived to 'tell the tale'! I don't know what that expert was supposed to be doing with the bees, but the owner told me some time afterwards that she was not 'a-going to have no more experts a-messing about with my bees'. They never seemed to do much good after these visitations, she said, and appeared to entertain a foul mistrust that the queen was removed; a most unlikely thing, I should imagine. When I was about sixteen my father left this neighbourhood and I had to exchange our beautiful Thames Valley for the wilds of South Northants; and it was not very long after we had settled into our new home that one of our neighbours showed me his bees. How well I remember that day! A row of filbert trees, and under them a number of hives made out of Tate sugar boxes to hold standard frames. There may have been about fifteen of them, not painted, I think, and rather roughly made. Since the day of the expert I had hardly cast a thought to bees, and had never seen a hive, much less combs of honey; but I saw them then. It must have been a very good season, that year of 1906, for I can clearly remember that supers of extracting combs were fully sealed over, all white with new wax. My friend said he sometimes got as much as thirty or even forty pounds of honey from a single hive! This seemed to me almost incredible at the time; the idea that a colony of small insects could in a few weeks accumulate such a weight of honey as that seemed so marvellous; as indeed it is, though we become used to the idea after a time and cease to marvel. This sight made a beekeeper of me. I immediately became quite fascinated by the bees and the possibilities I dimly understood, even at that early stage, must somehow or other be inherent in them. This interest has lasted to the present time, and will last, I feel sure, as long as I am able to take any interest in anything. But my beekeeper friend was not one of those who take delight in opening hives and handling bees; his beekeeping was of the more prosaic kind. He put supers on in spring, hived such swarms as there were, extracted the honey in the autumn and put the combs away ready for next year; so I did not see the brood combs at that time. I saw something else, however. Seeing my interest my friend took me to a cottage where he kept his extractor and all the other appliances, which was of course very interesting. Later on in the following winter I again saw the interior of this store where all the extracting combs were put away, and I had a lesson. On entering the room I noticed a strange rustling noise; on further investigation it was found that the stored combs were infested by the large wax moth caterpillars and that the whole had been almost completely destroyed. There was a matter of two hundred or more, I should think. So I was introduced to the sorrows as well as the joys of beekeeping at a very early stage. My interest soon amounted to enthusiasm: I must keep bees, and at once. I borrowed an old magazine of some kind, I forget what it was, but it was not a regular bee magazine, I know. It had in it diagrams and measurements of the hive known in those days as the 'Cottager's Hive'. I made two of these and then another with a different sort of roof and also, after I had read the matter up a little, a fourth with glass panels on three sides. But I had no bees. This was, I believe, July. I tried to get some 'late swarms' without success, and eventually was recommended to try a man named Bubb, signalman, who proved a good friend in need. He showed me how to wire frames and embed foundation—by means of a cobbler's awl with a groove filed lengthways on its convex side. Many a sheet have I embedded that way. He had a method of wiring, too, that I have never seen elsewhere; a horizontal wire top and bottom, and a crossed pair of wires between. This good man showed me his two apiaries and his honey. He had whole supers chock full of it, and this made me more excited still. I MUST have bees; but how? He said, 'Too late for swarms; why not have some "druv" bees?' Not knowing what 'druv' bees were, I could not say; but on explanation I immediately decided to have some to start with. Mr. Bubb was a fine man, not one to take advantage of ignorance or give bad advice or poor value. He loved bees as few of us do. His driven swarms were really fine, for he drove three skeps together for each swarm, and he brought them to my hives on his motor-bike, hived them himself, showed me the queens running in, and placed feeders in position, telling me just what should be done about the feeding.