UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE 
 
 AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION 
 
 BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 
 
 THE HOME APIARY 
 
 J. E. ECKERT 1 
 
 The purpose of this leaflet is to call atten- 
 tion to some facts that are fundamental to suc- 
 cess in keeping bees, with the information de- 
 signed primarily for the small beekeeper. At the 
 same time the experienced apiarist is urged to 
 reconsider all fundamentals of beekeeping in or- 
 der to make his colonies more efficient. 
 
 Relation of Bees to Agricultural "Production 
 
 The honeybee is an essential factor in the 
 production of seeds for our increased pastures 
 for livestock, and for victory gardens as well as 
 commercial plantings of vegetables. Bees increase 
 the actual production of most fruit and vegetable 
 crops by effecting proper pollination of the 
 blossoms. Beeswax is an essential material used 
 in war industries, and honey production adds to 
 our total supply of energy-producing foods. For 
 these reasons an increase in the total number of 
 colonies of bees as well as in the production 
 therefrom is now being urged by governmental 
 agencies. 
 
 First Considerations 
 
 The first requirement is for the prospective 
 beekeeper to determine his reaction to bee stings. 
 Those who are seriously affected by the poison of 
 bees had better not engage in beekeeping. One 
 can become immune to the swelling that follows 
 the sting of a bee by gradually acquiring addi- 
 tional stings over a period of several weeks. 
 
 Bees may be kept any place where they can se- 
 cure sufficient pollen and nectar for the colony's 
 needs throughout the year, and produce a surplus 
 of honey for their keeper. Hives should be lo- 
 cated where they receive at least partial shade 
 during the heat of summer, and where the flight 
 of bees will not interfere with the neighbors. 
 They should not be located near highways, or 
 where the passerby or gardener is likely to come 
 into the flight of the bees, or near feed lots, 
 horse corrals, or where animals are worked or 
 watered. 
 
 Bees should be kept only in movable-frame 
 equipment so that the combs can be examined at 
 will for brood diseases that are an ever present 
 danger to the life of the colony. The location 
 of every colony should be registered with the 
 county agricultural commissioner; this is re- 
 
 1 Associate Professor of Entomology and Asso- 
 ciate Apiculturist in the Experiment Station. 
 
 quired by law in California. There is no charge 
 for this registration, or for official inspection 
 of colonies for brood diseases. 
 
 Suitable equipment should be secured in advance 
 of the period of the honey flow. Every colony 
 should have the equivalent of one hive body for 
 the brood chamber and at least two supers for sur- 
 plus honey. For the home apiary, the ideal equip- 
 ment includes: two hive bodies as a brood chamber, 
 a queen excluder, and from two to four shallow 
 supers for surplus honey for each colony. A bee 
 smoker, bee veil, hive tool, and bee brush are 
 essential tools. Honey extractors are becoming 
 increasingly difficult to obtain; but for the 
 home apiary honey can be produced conveniently 
 and economically in shallow frames, and used as 
 comb honey. A queen excluder is needed when comb 
 honey is produced in sh'allow frames. 
 
 Every beekeeper, whether he has one colony or 
 a thousand, should have one or more textbooks on 
 beekeeping and should subscribe to at least one 
 bee journal. Textbooks and catalogues explain 
 how to assemble equipment and how to care for bees 
 at different seasons of the year. 
 
 Food Requirements of Bees 
 
 Bees need honey and pollen during the active 
 season in order to rear brood, and a supply of 
 honey for winter stores. For best results, a 
 colony should have a surplus of at least 30 pounds 
 of honey at all seasons when the bees are not ac- 
 tively gathering nectar. If they are short of 
 honey and nectar is not available, they should be 
 fed sugar sirup. Because of the importance of 
 bees, sugar can be secured through the sugar- 
 rationing boards, to feed starving colonies. It 
 is very poor policy, however, to rob a colony too 
 closely of its honey and then feed sirup; bees 
 thrive better on natural stores. 
 
 The Care of the Colony 
 
 Space will not permit detailed descriptions of 
 colony manipulations, or of bee behavior, and the 
 reader should consult the references listed at the 
 end of this leaflet for further information. 
 
 Wintering 
 
 A colony should be wintered in a two-story hive, 
 with one of the hive bodies filled with honey and 
 pollen. In California valley locations, bees do 
 not need any additional protection from cold. It 
 is well to contract the entrance to about 6 inches 
 
 £ 1 1 UNIVERSE [Y OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 iARY 
 
 COIXEGE OF AGRICULTURE 
 DAVIS 
 
to conserve the hive temperature, and to place 
 the queen excluder between the bottom board and 
 the lower hive to keep out mice. This should be 
 done after the bees kill their drones in the 
 fall. The bees should not be disturbed during 
 the winter period. They generally fly on warm 
 days. 
 
 Spring Care 
 
 During the first or second week of deciduous- 
 fruit bloom, the brood in each colony should be 
 carefully examined on a warm day for disease — 
 indicated by the presence of dead larvae in the 
 cells. (Symptoms of bee disease are given in 
 textbooks.) One also should note if the colony 
 has sufficient honey and if its general condition 
 is normal, as evidenced by the presence of eggs 
 and worker brood in normal quantity for the time 
 of year. If a colony is below average strength 
 in number of bees, this may be attributed to an 
 old or a poor queen, to the lack of sufficient 
 stores, or to the presence of some brood disease. 
 In all such cases, determine the cause and supply 
 the remedy as soon as the condition is discovered. 
 
 Supering for Surplus Honey and Swarm Control 
 
 A normal colony will seldom need attention un- 
 til the third or fourth week of deciduous-fruit- 
 tree bloom, if it is wintered in a two-story hive 
 with sufficient pollen and honey. By that time 
 it should have from 10 to 15 frames of brood and 
 may need additional super space to prevent swarm- 
 ing. If the bees are wintered in a one-story 
 hive, the second hive body of combs should be 
 given during the first week of bloom or when the 
 bees have brood in six or seven combs. If colo- 
 nies are kept for extracted honey, the third 
 story of combs may be placed between the first 
 and second as soon as the bees have filled the 
 first two with brood, bees, and honey, and before 
 they start building queen cells in preparation 
 for swarming. If a colony persists in building 
 swarm cells after the third story is added, the 
 queen can be confined in the lower hive body 10 
 days or 2 weeks after the third hive body is 
 given, and the frames of unsealed brood in the 
 lower hive body exchanged for frames of emerging 
 brood in the top story; this frequently forestalls 
 further swarming preparations. 
 
 Shallow supers for comb-honey production should 
 be given to the colony, above a queen excluder, a 
 week or so before the main nectar flow begins. If 
 the colony is crowded for room at that time, the 
 queen can be placed in the lower hive body, the 
 excluder added, then one or two shallow supers of 
 foundation supplied, and the second hive body of 
 brood placed above. Ten days later, any queen 
 cells present in either brood chamber should 
 be destroyed and the two brood chambers united, 
 with only the supers above the queen excluder. A 
 maximum amount of honey is produced only when the 
 colonies are never crowded for storage space. 
 
 Hiving Swarms 
 
 A swarm can be hived on frames of foundation 
 
 or on drawn combs. A frame of brood added from 
 another colony will be assurance that the swarm 
 will not desert its new home. If no hive is 
 available, any wooden box will suffice for a 
 couple of days until a hive can be obtained, and 
 into which the swarm should be transferred. A 
 swarm or colony of bees can be united to another 
 colony by placing a thickness of newspaper, per- 
 forated with a few small holes, between the hive 
 bodies to be united. Union is best made in late 
 afternoon. 
 
 Making Increase 
 
 Colonies should be increased in number without 
 swarming. Increase is most efficiently made 6 to 
 8 weeks before the main honey flow, or just prior 
 to swarming time in the spring. The simplest way 
 is to use a colony that has filled a two- or three- 
 story hive with brood, bees, and honey, and needs 
 additional room. Move the colony a few feet from 
 its location, with the entrance in the opposite 
 direction. In its former location, place a bottom 
 board and set thereon one of the hive bodies con- 
 taining mostly frames of unsealed brood and adher- 
 ing bees, and give it a super of combs or a shallow 
 super of foundation over a queen excluder. This 
 new division will contain the greater number of 
 bees the following day, as all of the field bees 
 will return to it from the parent colony. The 
 queen should be left in the parent colony with 
 most of the frames of sealed brood. While the di- 
 vision, or new colony, will rear a queen, it is 
 best to introduce a queen the day after the divi- 
 sion is made. If a colony persists in swarming, 
 it can be divided in a similar manner and the 
 "divide" left with a queen cell on one of its 
 frames of brood. 
 
 Purchase or Lease of Additional Colonies 
 
 The Government has listed the care of 25 colo- 
 nies of bees as the equivalent of one war-work 
 unit; and because of the need of increased produc- 
 tion of honey and beeswax, every person with ex- 
 perience in beekeeping should undertake to keep as 
 many colonies as his time spent in other essential 
 war work will allow. Many side-line beekeepers 
 are now engaged in defense activities and if they 
 cannot give their bees proper care, those who have 
 some extra time should acquire these bees either 
 by purchase or by lease. Other apiarists have 
 gone into military service and their bees should 
 be cared for during their absence. There should 
 be no idle beekeeping equipment. 
 
 Before one takes possession of bees, either by 
 purchase or by lease, the colonies should be in- 
 spected for brood diseases by the county apiary 
 inspector who is connected with the office of the 
 county agricultural commissioner. 
 
 Removing Surplus Honey 
 
 When honey is to be extracted, the combs of 
 honey can be removed any time after the bees have 
 sealed half of the surfaces of the combs. If comb 
 honey is produced in shallow frames for home use, 
 or for cut -comb honey, the frames should be left 
 
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until all the cells are sealed, although ripened 
 honey in unsealed cells is just as good for home 
 use. In removing honey, the hive should be 
 smoked more than usual from the top and then the 
 bees shaken and brushed off the combs to be re- 
 moved. Frames fitted with comb foundation can 
 be substituted for full frames of honey if addi- 
 tional supers are not available, and if the honey 
 flow is continuing. If a super of honey is re- 
 moved from a hive during the honey flow, a super 
 of empty combs or foundation should be given to 
 replace it. 
 
 Production of Cut -Comb Honey 
 
 Mention has been made of producing honey in 
 shallow frames as a very satisfactory form when 
 only a few colonies of bees are kept for home use 
 and no honey extractor is available. This in- 
 volves the use of thin super-comb foundation in 
 each frame at the start of each season; and the 
 honey is produced above a queen excluder so that 
 the queen cannot lay in the shallow frames. The 
 shallow frames are not wired, and the foundation 
 is fixed in place by melted beeswax, or by the 
 thin strip of the regular top-bar. It also re- 
 quires strong colonies of bees and closer atten- 
 tion to swarm-prevention measures. 
 
 When the combs are filled with sealed honey, 
 they can be removed and stored in the supers, or 
 the honey can be cut into five sections per 
 frame and placed on ^-inch-mesh wire screens over 
 a tray. The honey from the cut cells will drain 
 out within a day or two, after which the sections 
 can be wrapped in paraffined paper and put away 
 for future use. A piece of the same wire, 4 
 inches wide by 10 inches long, bent in the form 
 of a "U," is useful in handling the cut pieces of 
 comb. A thin-bladed knife, heated in boiling 
 water, serves nicely in cutting the comb into 
 chunks of suitable size. 
 
 Production of Beeswax 
 
 The honeybee produces beeswax from honey or 
 sugar sirup, by means of special glands located 
 on the underside of the abdomen. Commercial bees- 
 wax is made by melting the combs and allowing the 
 wax to separate from the waste materials in the 
 comb. Since beeswax is an essential war material 
 in many industries, all pieces of comb should be 
 saved and rendered into commercial wax. Burr 
 combs on the edges of frames, or pieces of comb, 
 should be saved and melted in boiling water, 
 strained through fine wire screen, and allowed to 
 solidify. Impurities will settle to the bottom 
 of the liquid wax and can be scraped off after 
 the wax has cooled. Wax production can be in- 
 creased when colonies are run for extracted honey 
 by spacing the super combs 8 to the 10-frame hive 
 and cutting deeply with the uncapping knife at 
 extracting time. After the cappings have drained 
 of honey, they should be converted into beeswax. 
 All drone combs or faulty combs should be replaced 
 with frames of foundation, and the combs rendered. 
 
 Care of Surplus Combs 
 
 The greater wax-moth is an ever present de- 
 structive agent to combs that are not protected 
 by bees. The wax-moth seldom destroys the combs 
 of strong colonies; therefore it is desirable 
 to leave surplus extracting combs on the hive un- 
 til late fall, after which they should be stored 
 in a cool, dry room and fumigated with burning 
 sulfur or other fumigants. One or two supers of 
 surplus combs can be left on a hive during the 
 winter if a piece of roofing paper is placed be- 
 tween the combs occupied by the bees and the 
 supers containing the surplus combs. An open 
 space of about \ inch for the entire width of the 
 hive should be left in the tar paper so that the 
 bees can have access to the combs and thus pro- 
 tect them from the wax moth. Mice will readily 
 destroy combs, so the stacks of supers in storage 
 should be made mouse-proof. 
 
 Re queening 
 
 Since the queen is the mother of all the bees 
 of her colony, her inheritance and mating control 
 such colony characteristics as temper, suscepti- 
 bility to diseases, color of bees, and their in- 
 dustriousness. The age and inheritance and mating 
 of a queen frequently determine her productivity 
 and the size of her colony. A colony headed by a 
 young, prolific queen swarms less and produces 
 more than one that is less prolific. A colony 
 should be requeened at least every second year. 
 Purebred bees, of Italian, Caucasian, or Carniolan 
 races are gentler than hybrid strains; bees of 
 cross temperament need not be tolerated in any 
 apiary. 
 
 To requeen a colony, the old queen should first 
 be found and killed; then the new queen can be in- 
 troduced in the cage in which she arrived from the 
 queen breeder. This is done by placing the cage 
 sidewise between the bottom of the frames and the 
 bottom board; or between the frames of the first 
 and second story. The colony should not be dis- 
 turbed for 10 days after the new queen has been 
 introduced, by which time she should have started 
 to lay. It is generally desirable to remove the 
 worker bees that accompany the queen in the mail- 
 ing cage before placing it in the hive. Direc- 
 tions for introducing a queen are generally printed 
 on the back of the address card fastened to the 
 mailing cage. 
 
 Colonies can be requeened any time of the year 
 that a colony can be operated; but the best re- 
 sults are obtained if the colony is actively en- 
 gaged in collecting pollen and nectar at the time 
 of introduction. 
 
 Duration of the Nectar Flow 
 
 The length of the blooming period varies great- 
 ly with the different plants, but as a general 
 rule it seldom lasts for more than 3 or 4 weeks in 
 California; alfalfa and star thistle are notable 
 exceptions. Fruit bloom seldom yields much sur- 
 plus honey although in favorable seasons some sur- 
 
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plus may be obtained from the cherry, prune, and 
 apple. Consequently the colony should not be 
 robbed too closely of its honey unless another 
 nectar flow is imminent. Many colonies in vari- 
 ous parts of California have to be moved from one 
 location to another during the year to enable the 
 colony to secure ample supplies of honey for it- 
 self and a surplus for its keeper. 
 
 Protecting Bees from Injury 
 
 In an endeavor to protect growing crops from 
 damage by destructive insects, the grower fre- 
 quently applies poisons at a time or in a manner 
 that kills bees and other beneficial insects. 
 This results in a loss to the farmer, the bee- 
 keeper, and to the community as a whole. Fruit 
 trees should not be sprayed or dusted with in- 
 secticides when they are in full bloom, but 
 rather before the blossoms open and after a ma- 
 jority of the petals have fallen. Many field 
 crops, especially cotton and the cucurbits, can 
 be dusted or sprayed during early evening or 
 early morning hours, when a majority of the 
 blossoms are closed; this will reduce the lethal 
 effects of the poisons on nectar- and pollen- 
 gathering insects. Poisonous dusts should be ap- 
 plied to tomatoes and other field crops only in 
 the early morning or late afternoon when the air 
 is cool and still, and in a manner to prevent the 
 drift of poisons from the fields treated. Bee- 
 keepers should become familiar with the insect 
 problems and spray schedules of the communities 
 in which their bees are located and cooperate 
 with the growers in protecting the bees from in- 
 jury. 
 
 Production per Colony 
 
 The question of how much honey and beeswax 
 will be produced annually by a colony of bees 
 cannot be answered satisfactorily since produc- 
 tion will depend on such factors as weather, 
 plant growth, available nectar and pollen sources, 
 soil moisture, duration of the honey flow, and on 
 how the colony is manipulated. A normal colony 
 of bees in a good location in a favorable year 
 may produce 60 to 100 or more pounds of honey, 
 from 1 to 3 pounds of beeswax, and still have 
 sufficient honey left to last until the next flow. 
 In unfavorable locations or seasons, a colony may 
 have to be fed sugar sirup to keep it alive. 
 
 How to Feed Bees Sugar Sirup 
 
 Colonies that do not have sufficient honey to 
 fill their needs until nectar is available, should 
 be fed on sugar sirup made by dissolving granulated 
 beet or cane sugar in an equal quantity of water. 
 The sirup can be placed in a friction-top or screw- 
 cap container which has had the lid perforated with 
 a number of small holes, and the container inverted 
 over the frames of the top story. An empty hive 
 body should be placed around the container, and 
 the hive covered in the usual manner. If the hive 
 is level, and the lid close fitting, the sirup 'will 
 not leak out, and will be taken down and stored in 
 the combs after the excess moisture has been re- 
 moved . 
 
 General Requisites for Success 
 
 To be successful, a beekeeper should study bee 
 behavior, become familiar with the kinds of nec- 
 tar and pollen plants and their blooming periods, 
 and know how to recognize and control bee dis- 
 eases. 
 
 Sources of Information on Beekeeping 
 
 For more detailed information the reader 
 should consult the publications given below. 
 These and other good references are often avail- 
 able in public libraries. 
 
 California Agricultural Extension Circular 
 100. Beekeeping in California , by 
 J. E. Eckert. 
 
 California Agricultural Experiment Station 
 Bulletin 517- Nectar and Pollen Plants 
 of California , by G. H. Vansell and J". E. 
 Eckert . 
 
 ABC and XTZ of Bee Culture . Published by 
 A. I. Root Company, Medina, Ohio. 
 
 The following are standard bee journals: 
 
 Gleanings in Bee Culture , Medina, Ohio. 
 The Beekeepers Item , P. 0. Box 687, San 
 
 Antonio, Texas. 
 American Bee Journal, Hamilton, Illinois. 
 
 The secretary of the California State Beekeepers 
 Association is Thomas S. Davis, Rt. 7, Box 3914, 
 Sacramento, California. 
 
 5m-6,'43(6535) 
 
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