THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



173 



ra;.i-SI..»LBMt. 



Fig. 3. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



The Eureka Hive. 



The Eureka hive, in its ' simplest form, and 

 perhaps its best, is constituted of six boards. 

 Two boards 24 inches long and 22 inches wide 

 form its front and back sides. One board 20 

 inches Ion? and 22 inches wide forms its top. 

 One board 23 inches long and 22 inches wide 

 forms its bottom. These lour are inch boards, 

 nailed firmly together, as shown in the plate, 

 with two shutters of half-inch stuff, 24 inches 

 long and 18^ inches wide, fitted in and button- 

 ed, (B. B , fig. 3), form the body of the hive. 

 For an entrance for the bees in trout, and for 

 ventilation in the rear of the hive, an aperture 

 2 inches hy 8, is cut out at the bottom, as shown 

 at F; and on the back side a piece of wire gauze 

 is lastened for ventilation ; and in front the 

 piece F is introduced to properly contract the 

 entrance. My other device may be introduced, 

 to catch robbers or shut out drones, &c, Here 

 we have the whole hive of about the c ipacity of 

 9,000 cubic inches. We now divide it into a 

 central apartment, for the breeding and winter- 

 ing the colony, and side and top chambers for 

 the surplus honey boxes. The central apart- 

 ment is composed of six movable comb frames, 

 the top and bottom of each § inch wide, the 

 sides | inch thick, framed into the top and 

 bottom pieces, forming a square frame, even up- 

 on its four sides, standing sixteen inches high 

 and Yl\ inches wide. That is, the top and bot- 

 tom pieces are \1\ inches long, and the side 

 pieces lfi inches. I drive a nail (B., fig. 1,) in- 

 to the under side of both ends of each bottom 

 piece, projecting half an inch, raising the tops 

 of the frames 16^ inches from the bottom-board. 

 To keep the frames adjusted with the sides of 

 the hive, drive a nail, projecting § inch into 

 both ends of the top and bottom pieces, keeping 

 every frame three-eighths of an inch from the 

 boards forming the front and back of the hive. 

 To hold their position to each other, I drive a 

 nail, projecting half an inch, inside of the top 

 and bottom of the frame E, preserving a dis- 

 tance of half an inch between the frames. Then 

 prepare the second frame in the same manner 

 in relation to the third, and so on to the last. 

 Next, to secure the outer frames from interfer- 



ence by the movable partitions or boxes, which, 

 each in their turn, form the walls of the central 

 apartment, I drive into each outer side of the 

 top and bottom pieces, a nail projecting three- 

 eighths of an inch, as shown at C and 13, fig. 1. 

 Thus it will be seen that no part of the wood 

 of the frames comes nearer than three-eighths 

 of an inch to any part of the hive, or of the 

 other frames. Nothing but the heads of the 

 nails present themselves to the wood, for the 

 bees to glue together. 



Fig. 1. 



To hold them to their position in the hive, I 

 introduce four or six pins, front and rear, five- 

 eighths of an inch in diameter, (as shown at A. 

 A, fig. 1), passing through the boards and hold- 

 ing the frames, as .shown at, G, G. I have at any 

 time only to remove the pins, to take the frames 

 out laterally, without lifting them more than 

 just enough that the nails on which they stand 

 shall not touch the bottom-board. 



To complete the central apartment prepara- 

 tory to winter, I take two boards eighteen 



