THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



175 



are closed, and the trip made in the night. 

 The home-hives, containing from 16 to 20 

 frames, are large enough to winter two 

 colonies apiece. When the colonies from 

 the out-apiary are brought home in the 

 fall, each is domiciled in one half of a 

 home-hive, with a division board between. 

 The next spring, when the flow opens at 

 the home-yard, the colonies may either 

 be run on the Wells system, or united to 

 make strong colonies. This manage- 

 ment, of course, presupposes an early 

 flow at home and a later one elsewhere. 



A correspondent notes that the part of 

 the bottom-board opposite the entrance 

 of a hive which has just cast a swarm is 

 always tinted a smok}' black. 



De Layens believed that stinuilative 

 feeding in the fall, for the purpose of ex- 

 citing the queen to la}- so as to produce 

 more young bees for wintering, is per- 

 fectly useless. In taking off the surplus 

 of 20 colonies at the end of September, 

 after they had been getting some honey 

 every day for several weeks from plants 

 stimulated by August rains, he found 

 sealed brood in two or three colonies only, 

 and no young brood in any of them. On 

 another occasion, out of fifteen colonies 

 which had been favored with a late flow, 

 for a fortnight, but one contained sealed 

 brood, and young brood was entirely 

 absent, though new unsealed honey was 

 still present in all the hives. 



Young queens lay later in the fall than 

 old ones, says M. Devauchelle. A queen 

 beginning to lay even in the middle of 

 September will produce enough young 

 bees for safe wintering. But young 

 queens begin later in the spring. 



Abbe Pincot, after six year's ex- 

 perience with an apiary (now 47 colonies) 

 in cubical hives with frames 13 by 13 in- 

 ches, inside measure, has found it to be 

 an invariable rule, without an exception, 

 that worker brood will be found in the 

 extracting supers when their frames 

 run in the same direction as the frames be- 

 low but no worker brood will be found 

 in them when their frames are at right 

 angles to those below. The rule does 



not apply to drone brood. On comparing 

 this experience withthose of others which 

 have resulted differently, he infers that it 

 is necessary, in order to succeed, to put 

 the supers on earh- enough to catch any 

 early flow, thus relieving the brood nest 

 of honey; and to use as deep brood-frames 

 as he himself has, since in Dadant hives 

 the queen will lay worker eggs above, 

 when the supers are placed crossways. 



A. Bassaler reports an "evaporation" 

 that at first thought seems traceable to a 

 local cause. One hundred colonies in 

 straw hives were in good condition 

 in March. Finding many bottom 

 boards moist, he replaced these with 

 others which had been painted with 

 •' carbonyle "( a preparation for preserv- 

 ing the wood ) five or six months before. 

 On the 2oth of April only twenty-nine 

 coloines were left, and they were on the 

 ^old bottom-boards, and in good condition. 

 In the rest of the hives not a bee was 

 left, dead or living. As he was constant- 

 ly in the apiary, but saw no swanns de- 

 camping, he supposes the bees left one 

 by one, never to return. In a later issue, 

 three correspondents state that they have 

 freely employed carbonyle on the insides 

 of hives and supers without repugnance 

 being manifested l)y the bees. 



The same writer, on another occasion, 

 observed a (jueen of a small colony enter- 

 ing her hive evidently returning from 

 a promenade. The colony was flying 

 freely at the time. 



Once a day is not often enough to get 

 exact information of the influence 

 of different seasons and different hours 

 of the same day, says Leon Dufour. 

 Often two days furnish the same 

 total increase in weight, while the 

 variations during such days have been 

 entirely dissimilar. By weighing three 

 hives eight times a day, oh an average, 

 for five months, he reached the conclusion 

 that during a slight flow the variations 

 are almost entirely due to the exit and 

 return of flight bees. In the morning the 

 weight steadily diminishes, owing to the 

 departure of bees. When the tempera- 



