TEE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



173 



issues or the queen comes along and sticks 

 her head into one and then another of the 

 perforations, its sloping feature leads her up 

 against the bottom bar of the empty comb 

 or else she makes a failure of getting back 

 into the hive and the bees tind her outside on 

 returning. This top cover is loose and may 

 be raised and the inside of the box easily and 

 quickly seen. When the drones are trapped 

 this sloping floor may lie removed by un- 

 hooking it from below the hive and the 

 drones emptied into a pan and carried out. 



This forms a sort of combination of the 

 inventions of Pratt, Alley. Langdon, Taylor, 

 Dayton, etc., and I can run this house apiary 

 by visiting it about once a week. A building 

 not only protects the bees and admits cheap- 

 er and more lasting hives, but suffices for a 

 honey house and extracting room. 



Pasadena, Calif. May 10, 189.^,. 



Since mailing my communication on the 

 hive I have adopted, I have had some farther 

 experience with my hiving contrivance by 

 its hiving two swarms that were not in the 

 bee house. Some time ago I made fifty new 

 hives and of these six were provided with my 

 swarmiiig arrangement. I have been in the 

 habit of making the front and rear boards 

 of my hives of % inch lumber and the sides 

 of }-2 inch and the sides were nailed on to the 

 ends of the fronts and backs. You under- 

 stand my hive is 14J4 inches long and 14V 

 wide inside. In making the six above men- 

 tioned hives the sides were enough longer to 

 project 7I4 inches forward of the front board 

 of the brood chamber like a Langstroth por- 

 tico, and an additional front board put in 

 making a sort of ante room before entering 

 the brood chamber proper. The sides were 

 also increased to % inch in thickness so as 

 to bear rabbeting % inch back on the part of 

 the board opposite the ante room. This &y^ 

 inches space was to ac ommodate five brood 

 frames. An entrance was provided under 

 both of these front boards and a strip of 

 perforated zinc tacked over each on the out- 

 side. To permit the drones and queen to 

 pass the inside zinc a boring 3^ inch deep 

 was made with a two inch bit directly under 

 it in the bottom board. Then another hole 

 still farther into the ante room was made 

 with a one inch bit. Another of %, and still 

 another of % which last was located about 

 three inches from the perforated zinc. All 

 the holes cut into each other to allow the 

 passage of bees. Over all these holes except 

 the % and the half of the two inch hole in- 



side the brood nest was tacked wire cloth. 

 This was a substitute for a cone which came 

 in the way of the brood frames hanging in 

 the ante-room. Besides it seemed to possess 

 an advantage over a cone as it caused the 

 queen to travel on foot all the way through 

 and across the aute-room. When the bees 

 swarm and return on account of the reten- 

 tion of the queen, they don't rush quickly 

 into the hive, but stand on their heads and 

 fan before the entrance and all the way along 

 into the brood nest, in which case they will 

 be quite sure to find the scent of the queen 

 and track her up like hounds after a fox, so 

 I endeavored to have the tracks close by 

 their noses. The upper stories go on the 

 same as the portico Langstroth, and the ante- 

 room has a small cover for itself and which 

 may be ra sed about as we raise the falling 

 door when we drop a letter in a street mail 

 box. I do not think my contrivance can be • 

 adapted to any hive that is not square, be- 

 cause in the brood chamber proper the 

 frames run from front to rear and in the 

 ante-room the other direction. While others 

 have studied to hive colonies on full sets of 

 combs, and Mr. R. L. Taylor uses the drone 

 and queen traps with no combs at all, so, 

 also, some have experimented with reversi- 

 ble frames and others with reversible hives, 

 I use the ^medium number of five combs in 

 the " queen restrictor " and also use a me- 

 dium of five in a hiver. Like Mr. B. Taylor 

 I claim a moral right to my square hive and 

 hiver. For me a hiver can be provided for 

 less than fifteen cents per hive, and my hive 

 is perfectly adapted to the one pound sec- 

 tion in all its various manipulations. 

 Pasadena, Calif. May 18, 1893. 



The Bee and Honey Exhibits at the World's 

 Fair and how they are Progressing. 



ALLEN PBINGLE. 



I DITOR Review ; Dear Sir— In re- 

 sponse to your favor of 20th inst., 

 I may say the apiarian department of 

 the World's Fair, like almost every other de- 

 partment, is in a very backward condition. 

 The honey cases, which were constructed 

 under contract from the Agricultural De- 

 partment of the Fair, were only completed 

 the other day, and as some of them required 

 much inside work of shelving etc. after, 

 they came from the contractor's hands, it 



