THE BEEKEEPERS' REVIEW 171 



opened and also because I had promised to relieve a brother drug- 

 gist for two weeks while he was on his honeymoon, we moved bees 

 and all rather sooner than we would have otherwise done, and after 

 everything was ready it turned intensely warm. The bees were 

 very strong, in fact, as strong as any colonies I ever remember 

 having. While we were loading the car with our household goods, 

 Mrs. Townsend sent down a dray load of extracting supers which 

 I had intentionally NOT let the bees clean out as I suspected Euro- 

 pean foul brood and I desired to render up these combs. Of course, 

 Mrs. Townsend did not remember my intention to melt up these 

 combs and her sending them to the car was merely an oversight. 

 However, the trouble had started as the bees had not been doing 

 much and were glad of just such a chance and shortly thereafter 

 were coming to the car in clouds to get what little honey was in 

 these combs and I judged the out yard also soon found these combs, 

 as when I went there early the next morning to close them up there 

 were any number of them flying in the direction of the car. 



I had previously had good success, or possibly I ought to call 

 it luck, in moving bees without loss so did not fully consult the 

 authorities as to the best methods of proceeding, so tacked wire 

 cloth over the entrances and top of the hives. After we had begun 

 to load and there was nothing else to do BUT load I began to realize 

 that I should have raised the wire cloth over the tops of the hives 

 by means of wooden frames at least two inches or more high to 

 give space for the bees to cluster and move about, away from the 

 combs. We also discovered that two of the alighting boards of 

 the Danz bottoms had slipped out a short distance, far enough 

 anyway to allow quite a few bees to escape into the car and these 

 with those that were already in there from the ones that had come 

 to clean out the supers made things quite lively for the men who 

 were helping me move, although they did not try to sting; but 

 it doesn't seem to matter to some persons whether a bee is good 

 natured or not they always expect them to sting and keep waving 

 their hands whenever one comes near them and naturally get stung 

 occasionally. 



The result of sending the supers to the car before I had closed 

 up the bees was that we left thousands of bees behind and in the 

 light of my present view of the matter, this was probably the 

 best thing that could have happened, as the colonies were so strong 

 and the weather so intensely hot that we lost twelve colonies out 

 of thirty-eight and it was the strongest colonies that were lost. 



Leaving Trenton at 3 P. M. I sat in the car with the bees, the 

 car doors being wide open and the many bees which were loose 



