THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



99 



AN ESSAY. 



IJY E. L. PKATT, 

 KOinil liKVKRLV, MASS. 



Rend at a ineftinrr of New England 

 Bcckeipers liekl in Boston in January, 

 1891. 



There are a hundred and one diff-rent styles of 

 bee hives on the New England Market, all claim- 

 ing to be the best. One u obliged to use his wits 

 in selecting a hive best adapted to his needs. A 

 perfect b:e hive should be cheap li;ht in weight, 

 and durable. Easy of manipulation, and should 

 hold moveable frames of standard Lingstroth 

 size. It should not be too large or too small, but 

 of a size best adapted for securing all of the 

 honey in neat, salable shape. 



For either box or extracted honey, the 8-frame 

 size is a'lout right, though we have been very 

 successful with sevjn Langstroth frames to the 

 Live. It is natural for bees to store honey over 

 the brood, therefore all honey receptacles should 

 be adjustible to the top and directly over the 

 frames, so arranged that two or more can be 

 tiered up according to the amount of honey being 

 gathered. 



The standard box is of one piece and four and 

 one-quarter inches square. Any other size is a 

 drng on the market in the majority of cases. 

 The boxes should be so arranged as to be inter- 

 changeable, either singly or in rows, as many times 

 bees are loath to work in the outside boxes or 

 those coming close to the ends. By jumping the 

 unfilled boxes to the centre all are worked out at 

 once, allowing us to remove the honey in cases 

 rather than by the single box. If the hive sets 

 perfectly level from side to side and wide boxes 

 are used, separators are not really necessary. 

 But hives are apt to settle, or we may wish to use 

 narrow boxes. Sepsrators afiFjrd the safest method 

 of securing perfectly flat combs inside each box 

 80 necessary in long shipment to distant markets, 

 or the carting about in a retail trade. Tin, glass, 

 wire and such materials are nuisances about any 

 hive. 



There should be some simple means of clamp- 

 ing the sections tightly together to avoid the de- 

 posit of Lirge quantities of glae, gathered by the 

 bees for the purpose of stopping cracks. By com- 

 pressing the sections there are no cracks for the 

 bees tostop, and we do not need to spend valuable 

 time in scraping off an unnecessary deposit of 

 useless matter. The cover should be a simple, 

 flat, well cleated board of light weight and should 

 Iw kept well painted. All the joints should be 



square; beveled joints, cither at the edges or 

 corners, are decidedly pass6. 



By using top bars of g lod width and thickness, 

 there is no need of honey-boards. In fact, we 

 never could see the use of them any way, unless 

 they were queen-excluding, and for a queen- 

 excluder there is nothing so k,ood as a solid sheet 

 of metal well bound. AH appendages in the 

 shape of porticoe?, doors, sliding blocks, Looks, 

 buttons and the like are left of a perfect hive. 



Here in New Eagland a hive is not fit to winter 

 out of doors unless it has an outside or winter 

 case to admit of packing with some absorbent 

 material, such as cut hay, straw or chaff. A good 

 sized cushion should be made of this material to 

 spread over the frames and entirely cover the top 

 of the hive. There should be no packing at the 

 sides until breeding commences in spring, as the 

 heat is n:>t suffl;ient to throw off the moisture 

 uuiil then. Ventilating holes should b3 provided 

 at the ends of the winter case near the lop to 

 carry off all moisture as fast as taken from the 

 cluster. In this lies the secret of succtSsiul out- 

 door wintering of b.es. Over all comes a light, 

 well-paiated winter roof, which can be screwed 

 down and left until lue fl>wers bloom in the 

 sprmg. There should be Due one entrance and 

 thdt low down so that tlie bees enter under the 

 comos Turee- cornered blocks for contracting 

 the entrance have never been improved upon. 



There are several minor points that are neces- 

 sary to a perfect beehive. Tne space under the 

 frames should be one-half of an lucb, and those 

 at the ends of hanging frames are three-sixteenths, 

 not over one-quarter. One-fourin inch scant is 

 considered to be the correct space between the 

 top bars and boxes to avoid the deposit of bnrr 

 comb. Brood combs spaced 1 3 8 inches from 

 centre to centre will do away with all brace 

 comb.-. If closed end frames are used, they 

 should be compressed the same as the boxes to 

 avoid glueing. 



Top bars to frames give better satisfaction when 

 three quarters of an inch thick and one and one- 

 eighth wide. Each bar can De split through the 

 middle for convenience in fixing foundation. If 

 good foundation is used there is no need of wiring 

 frames. There should be a bee space below the 

 combs as well as above for convenience in tiering 

 up bodies for extracted honey. Extracted honey 

 can be best secured in the ordinary sized frame. 

 Therefore, our hives can be converted into hives 

 for extracted honey by simply placing one body 

 above another with an excluder between. 



The great object in successful bee-keeping is to 

 do away with useless furniture. All parts should 

 be interchangeable and adaptea to as many uses 

 as possible. For instance : The ordinary super- 

 shell can be made deep enough to accommodate 

 half-depth frames for the purpose of hiving 

 swarms and securing large quantities of box 

 honey, or, as some prefer, for extractins. 



The hive I have explained is decidedly an all 

 purpose hive and is reauily adapted to the needs 

 of any beekeeper. If you prefer hanging frames 

 and a single wall hive, the one I have been talk- 

 ing about is the hive to select. 



If you decide to change from hanging frame to 

 closed end, a new set of brood frames is all that 

 is necessary. If you think you will have better 

 success la wintering in a double hive, an outeidt 



