THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



nround, so that no bees may escape. At the 

 same instant rap smartly on the top of the hive 

 with the palm of your hand, to dislodge and 

 throw down any bees that may be adhering in- 

 side. Now lift the hive quickly, set it aside, 

 and substitute for it the one containing the 

 swarm to which the bees stricken down 

 are to be united. Set this gently over the hole. 

 The entrance must be closed, of course, and the 

 bees must be prevented from crawling out from 

 under it, either by surrounding its edges with a 

 strip of muslin, or by heaping up ground around 

 it below. The bees will then unite peacefully, 

 and when all have become quiet, the hive may 

 be placed on its stand ; — though I prefer open- 

 ing the entrance an hour or two after the union, 

 and letting the hive remain over the hole till the 

 next morning, so that any casual stragglers may 

 have an opportunity to join the main body 

 during the night. It need not be feared that 

 both queens will be killed or mutilated in this 

 operation. The queen of the lower party will, 

 on ascending, be seized as a stranger by the 

 bees of the upper hive, and immediately de- 

 stroyed. 



A beginner might suppose it preferable to 

 invert the hive containing the swarm to be 

 united, and set thereon the one that is to receive 

 them. But this process' would generally result 

 in a murderous conflict between the workers of 

 the two swarms ; if, indeed, the swarm in the 

 lower hive do not refuse to ascend, because its 

 queen, scenting a rival in the upper hive, obsti- 

 nately adheres to the quarters in which she feels 

 herself safe. 



Again, an afterswarm may sometimes be 

 used with great advantage to reinforce a colony 

 which has become greatly depopulated by re- 

 peated or excessive swarming. If a colony 

 in a movable comb hive is to be thus strength- 

 ened, the bees of the afterswarm should pre- 

 viously be stupefied with tobacco smoke or the 

 fumes of nitrated rags, and the queens then re- 

 moved. Next, sprinkle the bees with di- 

 luted honey, pour them into the vacant part of 

 the hive, and replace the honey-board. They 

 will soon revive, and be kindly accepted by the 

 colony to which they are thus summarily intro- 

 duced. It is best to employ this process in the 

 evening, when the bees have ceased to work. 



Finally, an afterswarm may be returned to its 

 parent stock, and this is probably the best dis- 

 position that can be made of it. But this should 

 not be done immediately, or another swarm 

 would commonly issue on the third day. Hive 

 the swarm, and place it either at the side, in 

 the rear, or on the top of its parent hive ; wait 

 till the supernumerary queens and queen cells 

 have been destroyed, and the disposition to 

 swarm has subsided. Then search for and re- 

 move the queen, and let the bees rejoin the 

 parent stock. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Novice Once More. 



Neither queens or drones ever consume raw 

 pollen. Whatever they receive of that sub- 

 stance, is derived from the chyme or jelly with 

 which they are fed by the workers ; and it is 

 thus that they are furnished with a nitrogenous 

 pabulum. 



Mr. Editor, and Readers of the Bee Jour- 

 nal, we trust that you have not come to the 

 conclusion that Novice's enthusiasm had all 

 abated, and that he had decided to remain a 

 novice, with no aspiration for a higher title. 

 Far from it, be assured! 



To commence where we left off. Our bees 

 wintered finely until the first of March, only 

 having lost one stock, and that was on account 

 of a piece of carelessness, which we would not 

 have believed we could be guilty of, viz: leaving 

 an empty frame in the middle of the hive. The 

 bees consumed all the honey on one side, and 

 were unable to get over. The frame was so 

 placed, to induce them to fill it late in the sea- 

 son, and was forgotten. 



The first week in March we had a sudden 

 cold spell, the thermometer being ten or twelve 

 degrees below zero. Thereupon we found three 

 of last year's swarms dead, with plenty of honey 

 and good upward ventilation, but not very 

 plenty of bees, as many had been lost by clus- 

 tering apart during the winter, as Mr. Lang- 

 strotii said was sometimes the case, in an article 

 sometime ago. 



In the December number, we mentioneda light 

 stock that was put in the cellar, because they 

 made such a loud humming when the mercury 

 went down below zero; and that they were quiet 

 after that. Well, our cellar is so arranged as to 



lioop an ovon tomperature of about 40 degrees 



and as we only gave them one frame of sealed 

 honey early in December, (at which time they 

 were almost entirely destitute), we had been 

 in the habit of striking the hive nearly every 

 day, expecting them to be out of honey long 

 before spring. But to our surprise, they an- 

 swered promptly every time until the middle of 

 March, when we set them out, and were agree- 

 ably surprised to find not more than twenty 

 dead bees on the bottom-board, though some 

 others left out had lost two or three quarts ; and 

 still further, on taking out the frame of honey 

 given them, we found what we would before 

 have supposed to be an impossibility, viz: near- 

 ly all of it remaining. They must have lived 

 more than three months on less than three pounds 

 of honey. Is it not so that bees remain partial- 

 ly dormant, at about 40 degrees ? By placing 

 the ear against the hive in the cellar, scarcely 

 a sound could be heard, unless the hive was 

 jarred in some way. 



We should like to add that they did corres- 



fondingly well since then ; but they have not. 

 n a few days alter setting them out, we found 

 them very few in numbers, and they are now 

 the weakest swarm we have. They were quite 

 light in the fall. 



About the rye and oats this spring. Mr. 

 Editor, it would have done you good to have 

 seen them, in case you have never seen a simi- 

 lar sight. We had provided about a bushel and 

 a-half, supposing that to be a plenty. But, as 

 if remembering their last year's education, they 

 opened up on it with astonishing vigor, and 

 consumed nearly all of it on the first two or 



