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The Swarm: Wildman

In the old-fashioned box-hive, where the bees were smoked to death, thirty or forty pounds of mixed honey- Honey comb, brood-comb, bee-bread and dead bees were considered a good yield for one season, while the following is quoted as being extraordinary even in the best constructed hives at the time it occurred, "Mr. Wildman states that in the year 1789 he purchased a glass filled with exceedingly fine honey-combs weighing sixty-three pounds, which had collected within a month, and that the hive which it had surmounted still contained a full supply for the winter's consumption of the bees. This, however, was a very unusual product; an ordinary hive or box may be considered well stocked when it yields from thirty to thirty-five pounds of honey." There is a different story to tell to day when the bees are cared for with scientific knowledge; provided with hives that seem to put them on their honor to fill the prepared chambers with honey; encouraged to devote their time and strength wholly to honey-gathering by being given empty combs to fill, or wax foundation to build quickly into new combs; and supplied with abundance of nectar-flowing flowers. No wonder they are stimulated to feats of honeymaking that would have taxed the credulity of Mr. Wildman with his sixty-three pounds of surplus honey. That amount is now the average in a prosperous apiary and even in the northern part of the United States a hundred pounds of pure surplus honey is not uncommon and two and three hundred pounds is sometimes obtained.

In Texas one hive is reported as having yielded the amazing amount of seven hundred pounds of honey in one season from the horse-mint, that grows there in abundance.

Seven hundred pounds of honey means over three hundred and fifty gallons of nectar brought drop by drop in the little "bottles" of the bees from the horsemint to the hive. It is owing to the invention of the ingenious instrument known as the honey-extractor that a colony of bees is at present able to store such vast amounts of honey. By use of this instrument the combs can be emptied without being broken and can be restored to the hive, for the bees to fill again. Nothing appeals to a bee's love of work like an empty comb, and the little creatures will continue to fill them as long as they can get a drop of honey to carry home.