FARMERS' REGISTER— MANAGEMENT OF BEES. 



69 



CHAPTER IX. 



On Hives. 



Each author has maintained that the hive Avhich 

 he has adopted is the best ; that in it the bees col- 

 lect abuudaut stores and furnish large swarms : in 

 this all have reasoned falsely ; the activity of the 

 bees and the magnitude of the swarms depend upon 

 nature, and not upon us. On the one side, it is 

 certain that bees work in vessels of any mate- 

 rial, and of all forms ; and on the other, that the 

 greater or less activity of the working bees de- 

 pends solely on the fecundity of their queen. This 

 activity is very great if the queen is very fruitful; 

 but if her fecundity is diminished, the labors are 

 also diminished, and they cease entirely if the queen 

 dies at a time when the working bees have not in 

 the hive the means of procuring a new queen, in 

 the manner mentioned in the fifth chapter. 



The true point in this matter is to choose a hive 

 easy to rob, with the least injury to the bees. The 

 good management of bees consists in this, and to 

 neglect it is to manage them badly. 



The most common hive is an undivided, or sin- 

 gle one, in the shape of a bell. This hive being 

 very small, has the_ inconvenience of being too sud- 

 denly heated and cooled; and if made of^ osier, is 

 subject to a Avorm called the ariizon, which gets 

 into the wood and reduces it to dust. With a liive 

 of this sort we cannot get at the purest honey, 



which the bees always place in the fop of the hive. 

 The difiiculty of robbing it is the reason that a 

 vast number of bees are destroyed every yeai-, and 

 therefore its form ought to be altered. 



Within the last century there have been invent- 

 ed liives of various forms, such as the hoisting hive, 

 the box hive, the drawer hive, &c. &c. The most 

 of these hives being made of plank, are expensive; 

 they lose their shape from exposure to the sun and 

 rain ; they require too frequent and too minute at- 

 tention, and they are not and never will be gene- 

 rally used. Among these hives the first mentioned 

 is the most common among amateurs for amuse- 

 ment; it has, however, one great hiconvenience, 

 that of having the top flat, while to render a hive 

 as wholesome as possible the top should be convex. 

 Eees never void any excrement in their hives un- 

 less they are sick ; and, as during the winter they 

 li^ e on honey and never go out,"they must throw 

 ofTwhat they make by a considerable perspiration, 

 which rises in vapour to the top of the hives. If the 

 top is fiat the vapours which are collected there, 

 finding no slope fall back continually on the bees, 

 which are always at the centre of the hive, and 

 cause a collection of moisture which moulds their 

 works and perhaps causes the dysentery, as that 

 disease prevailed particularly in the cold, and at 

 the same time wet winter of 1808. The vapours 

 rise also in the same manner in the hives with con- 

 vex tops, but the water follow s the natural incli- 

 nation of tlie figure, and the greater part descends 

 along the sides on the circumference. If it sliould 

 be very cold, the vapours freeze and hang in ice 

 from the tops of the flat topped hives; these vapours 

 fi-eeze also in the hives with convex tops; but they 

 freeze against the sides of the hives, far from the 

 bees, which are at the centre. On this subject I 

 might appeal to the testimony of two owners of 

 bees; first, of M. Guerrapain, who is believed to 

 be the greatest proprietor of bees in all France; I 

 have seen at his place more than nine hundred 

 hives; and of M. Dubost, an officer of the gen- 

 darmerie, and author of a work upon bees, in 

 which he has established tlie fact of icicles hanging 

 from the inside of the tops of the flat topped hives. 



It will sutfice, I think, to give here the descrip- 

 tion of two kinds of hives: namely, that of M. 

 Huber, which is good for the observation of the 

 habits of bees ; and that of which I make use, as 

 believing it the most convenient for taking the 

 honey, and with the least injury to the bees. 



[The leaf, or book hive, is the name given to M. 

 Huber's. It consists of twelve hollow frames, 

 twelve inches high, nine or ten in breadth, and 

 fifteen lines in width, as it is intended each shall 

 receive only a single comb. These twelve frames, 

 laterally applied to each other, form the whole 

 hive. All are connected by means of hinges at 

 the back, so that they divide asunder in opening, 

 like turning over the leaves of a book. The ten 

 intermediate frames between the first and twelfth 

 are hollow ; the outside of these two are covered ; 

 in them also, is an entrance for the bees; there 

 should be one in all the rest, to open at pleasure. 

 On first lodging a swarm in one of these hives, a 

 small piece of comb should be fixed in a division, 

 to guide the direction of those built by the bees, 

 which will be parallel to it; and as each frame con- 

 tains but a single comb, it is extremely well adapt- 

 ed for observation, and it also admits the i-emoval 

 of that comb, without affecting or deranging the 



