434 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
old hive in its new location? Nearly all its working force has been 
drained away to the new swarm. In a day or two the new queen 
hatches; she has few bees to hamper her actions, she makes a tour 
of the hive and murders her sleeping sister queens yet unborn; she 
is monarch of all she surveys, and there is none her right to dis- 
pute. You will not be troubled with second swarms. No time has 
been lost since white honey began to flow, and now we have the 
whole working force concentrated on comparatively few sections. 
If there is any white honey we get it. After a week or two we can 
put sections on the old hive, and all our bees will be in shape for 
dark, or fall, honey. 
THE HIVE I USE. 
C. THEILMANN, THEILMANTON. 
Much has been said and written about hives. Some beekeepers 
advocate small hives; others, large ones; some use shallow, double 
hives, and others high, narrow hives; and each claim that his hive 
is the best. It is no wonder that beginners get confused and hardly 
know what hive to adopt. I kept my first colony in a gum, or a part 
of a tree, my second ina store boxand my third inanail keg. The 
first one I found in the woods, in a tree; the other two were swarms 
which I found on some wild plum trees near my residence. Two of 
these three swarmed the same season, for which I made common 
boxes. This made me five colonies the first year of my beekeeping, 
without any outlay for bees and but little expense otherwise. I got 
some surplus honey from them, though I don’t recollect just ex- 
actly how much—but the hives were all full of nice honey. 
I never kept bees before and did not know anything about bee- 
keeping, but learned enough during the season to know that gums, 
nail kegs and boxes were not the things to keep bees in and have 
any good from them; so I went and saw a number of other beekeep- 
ers, who were scattered around the country, and saw how they 
kept their bees. 
I did not know of any bee papers then or books on bee culture. 
After a number of investigations, I saw a hive which, in my judg- 
ment, was best adapted to this latitude and climate, I ordered and 
filled with bees twenty-four of these hives the next season, including 
the five I transferred from tlieir old homes to the new. This wasin 
the summer of 1870. In 1871 I tried the regular Langstroth ten-frame 
hive for an experiment, also some other patents, but none of them 
suited me as well as the first ones I purchased. Since then I have 
adopted and kept it in use exclusively, to this day, and will do so 
hereafter unless I can be convinced of a better hive for Minnesota. 
I'am free to say that my success in beekeeping is partly due to 
this hive. The hiveis called the Minnesota Langstroth. It has a 
portico and a cap over the supers, or section cases; the bottom board 
is nailed tight to the brood chamber, so it can be used as a feeder 
when needed, by tilting up the front three or four inches. This is 
the only perfect feeder I have ever tried. It is always emptied by 
the bees in a very short time, anda ton of honey or syrup can be 
