THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 225 



The tent is four feet wide and about seven feet long. It will 

 set down over two hives and leave ample room for work. The ends 

 being hinged at one side form the doors which allow each worker 

 to get in and out without interfering with the other. The frame- 

 work is so light that it is easily moved. Three feet wide is better 

 than four, because if one is working alone he can pick it right up 

 with one hand in the center of each side and carry it. The four- 

 foot width is a little too wide to reach. 



One bolt of white mosquito bar was tacked around the frame- 

 work with lath and a muslin strip one foot wide Avas sewed on at 

 the bottom to make it reach to the ground. The cost of the mos- 

 quito bar was sixty cents and the hinges, hooks and eyes ten cents 

 more. A half day's time and seventy cents did the trick. When 

 the flow lulls and bees try to rob. use it. There is hardly a month 

 in the working season when such a tent will not come in as a great 

 help. The bees do not find their way in over the top. but they do 

 find their way out in a gratifying way. 



Large and Small Entrances and Swarming 



By D. STAD MENHALL, Luling, I.a., St. Charles Parish. 



^^^ O a certain extent large entrances do prevent swarming, but 

 \J^ at a cost of surplus, in a few cases as much as twenty per 

 cent. A large entrance — excess of ventilation — does not prevent 

 swarming, but it is the condition that this excess ventilation pro- 

 duces. As a result of this condition there is a loss of surplus, as 

 I will show. All have noticed during the surplus season, with an 

 entrance the width of the hive and one or more inches deep, a 

 cluster of bees on the bottom bars. The deeper the entrance the 

 larger this cluster which is forced there, not only as guards and 

 to hold the proper temperature of the brood nest, but to exclude 

 the outside air — oxygen. This is a fact that any one can prove by 

 placing a colony that is in the above condition on a deep bottom 

 board. It matters little how deep so it is over two inches. Use 

 an empty super with a small entrance and this cluster breaks, in- 

 creasing the field force, which means more surplus. If there is 

 plenty of room above there will be practically no comb building to 

 the bottom bars or they will swarm — that is the rub — which forces 

 each one to decide whether it is more profitable to have a large 

 entrance and the colony in a semi-divided condition with a known 

 loss of more or less surplus and the expectation of the colony 

 swarming at any time, or to treat the colony with one of the known 

 plans to prevent swarming, there and then, and be done with it 

 for the season. 



