ESSEX SOCIETY. 93 



the bees will go into the upper room and canse trouble. The 

 lower room is the principal home. To command the slits, or 

 passages into the side-boxes, a sheet of tin, of proper size, is 

 the most convenient. When the second season opens, the bees 

 may be allowed full admission to both side-boxes, and to all 

 the tumblers. Spare bits of honeycomb put into the latter, 

 will be very useful, as an inducement to the bees to commence 

 working in them. These tumblers, when full, may be taken 

 off at any time. Hold them mouth upwards, and the bees will 

 soon leave, and you may feast upon the fresh honey at your 

 own table, or send it as a comfort to a sick or needy neighbor. 

 As to the side-boxes when full, the writer has always preferred 

 to let them remain, till some cold morning in October, when it 

 will be found that the bees will be all clustered into the cen- 

 tral hive for warmth, and you may quietly unscrew the side 

 one, and take it away. No bee will be there. How vastly 

 preferable is this management to murderous assault by fire 

 and fagots, and sulphureous fumes of choking brimstone ! 



Your hives should be all made up and most thoroughly 

 painted, and the paint well dried, some weeks before needing 

 them for swarms. It will be well to keep a swarming hive or 

 two, wherewith to stock your " non-swarnier-hives,'''' such as 

 are described above. We apply no such laudatory phrases as 

 "best," "most perfect," "surest," "incomparably superior," 

 to this hive. We merely say it has always done good service. 



We will now point out the means by which the bee-keeper 

 may stupefy his bees, without killing or hurting them ; how 

 he may, while they are thus stupefied, transfer them all from 

 their own hive, leaving him the honey, and unite them to 

 another stock, with which they will pass the winter, and by 

 the opening of the spring, give the owner a strong and vigorous 

 colony, which will either throw off strong and vigorous swarms, 

 or, if the bee-keeper prefers, will keep at work in the thus 

 doubled hive, and greatly increase the make of honey. It 

 must be borne in mind, that the hive we have recommended 

 and described, is, if the bee-keeper choose so to manage it, a 

 non-swarmiiig hive, though he may let it swarm or not swarm, 

 at his pleasure. 



There grows in the old damp meadows, horse pastures, and 



