AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



447 



length, and all have been kept from 

 snow and ice. I leave the conclusions 

 to be drawn from the facts, to the wise 

 men of the profession. 

 Hall's Corners, N. Y. 



Bee-Hlyes and WliiteM. 



D. CHALlVrERS. 



Mr. President and Fellow Bee-Keepers : 

 — In presenting an essay on this subject, 

 it is not my intention to try to determine 

 any particular style of hives, but I will 

 dwell more particularly on the requisites 

 in and about a properly constructed bee- 

 domicile. 



The first thing then to be considered 

 is the capacity of a hive. It is very 

 generally conceded that that has been 

 carefully tested and properly demon- 

 strated years ago, by such men as 

 Father Langstroth, the lamented Moses 

 Quinby and others, when they placed 

 the area of the brood-chamber at about 

 2,000 cubic inches. This estimate, 

 however, allowed the bees passage-ways 

 between the ends of the frames and the 

 interior of the hive — a feature which 

 weighs heavily against open-end frames. 



Take, for instance, a hive with closed- 

 end frames, which will give you as much 

 comb space as an open-end frame would 

 do, and what do we find ? We find that 

 a hive 12 inches wide, and 12 inches 

 deep, made for the former, would not 

 require to be as large by fully 100 cubic 

 inches as a hive made for the latter. 



Although I do not use closed-end 

 frames myself, yet I have a strong in- 

 clination to believe that better results 

 could be obtained from them than from 

 open-end frames. 



Those blank 100 cubic inches before 

 specified, may well be classed among the 

 leakages of the hive, and who can dis- 

 pute the fact that the greater the leak- 

 ages the more will breeding be retarded? 

 In the use of open-end frames, the loss 

 in this way will be less in a long frame 

 than a short one. But another evil here 

 comes up, that is, the sagging of such 

 when filled, if not made of heavier ma- 

 terial, and if sagging takes place, you 

 all know that passage-ways under the 

 frames will be contracted, while those 

 above will be widened — the latter evil 

 inducing the bees to build comb just 

 where not wanted, while in the former 

 the comb frames will be glued down 

 solid. 



To my mind, a hive of proportionate 

 dimensions would be 13% inches long, 



by 123^ inches wide, and 12 inches 

 deep. This gives a hive containing 

 2,000 cubic inches ; but a shorter hive 

 by % of an inch to suit closed-end 

 frames with equal comb space, gives us 

 a hive which we might term " Anno 

 Domini 1892," as that is the number of 

 cubic inches it would contain. 



But while many besides myself favor 

 a hive of this description, others again 

 advocate a much longer, and consider- 

 ably shallower hive. However, we 

 should all aim at getting a hive of just 

 the right capacity, and, taking it for 

 granted that the previous figures are 

 correct, or nearly so, for a hive for breed- 

 ing and wintering purposes, yet we have 

 to admit that there is not room enough 

 in it for a strong colony of bees during 

 the honey harvest. 



We then have to resort to "tiering 

 up," as bee-men term it, or, in other 

 words, place another hive above, or a 

 case of sections. This is where we get 

 our surplus. The former is used if we 

 purpose extracting, but if honey is 

 wanted in the comb, then the latter is 

 more convenient. In either case, the 

 top of the lower frames must be at some 

 distance from the bottom of the upper 

 frames, or sections, otherwise the bees 

 would glue the one to the other. 



We should aim, too, at bringing such 

 parts of the interior as closely together 

 as circumstances will permit. Where- 

 ever passage-ways must of necessity be 

 left between any two parts of a hive, 

 they should not be less than >^ of an 

 inch, nor exceed 5/16 in depth, or we 

 should have to contend with evils before 

 pictured. Such passage-ways we term 

 "bee-spaces" Between the lower and 

 upper frames or supers, we find a double 

 and sometimes triple bee-space. 



The apiarist has had to do battle in 

 trying to confine the queen or mother- 

 bee to the brood-chamber, and yet allow 

 the honey-gatherers to pass to the combs 

 above. This fight, however, has been 

 reduced to a mere minimum since Mr. 

 D. A. Jones, of Beeton, Ont., applied 

 zinc so accurately punched with oblong 

 holes, that the queen is put at defiance, 

 her shoulder being of somewhat larger 

 proportions than that of the workers. 



The use of this zinc over the brood- 

 chamber is wherein it becomes necessary 

 to have a double bee-space, and any 

 contrivance there which causes the 

 queen to halt, is termed an " excluder." 



During the past Summer I devised a 

 method of using this zinc, which I con- 

 sider the most practical form yet intro- 

 duced, which is to cut it into narrow 

 strips not exceeding four inches, and 



