THOUSAND ANSWERS 15 



trouble before the combs are needed for swarms. Of course, if 

 the weather is warm their work will be earlier than when there 

 is a cool spring. Moths cannot winter in a house where it 

 freezes hard. • . 



Q. Do bees carry moths while swarming? 



A. I don't believe that bees ever carry with them the moth, 

 its larvse, or its eggs. 



Q. (a) I had two weak colonies which I was going to unite, 

 but found a weavy web on the combs and in them a handful of 

 small worms. Those on the comb were about three to the inch in 

 length, and not a live bee to be found, and no honey. The worms 

 resembled cut worms. 



(b) Is that comb of any use to put in other hives? 



(c) How did the worms get in the hive without the bees de- 

 stroying them? 



A. (a) The worms were the larvse of the beemoth. 



(b) Yes, unless too much of it is destroyed. 



(c) Eggs were laid in the hive by the moth, and from these 

 eggs worms were hatched. The colony must have been weak and 

 like enough queenless. 



Q. I have a lot of honeycombs that I will have to keep 

 through the summer months. What is the best remedy to keep 

 the moths out of them? I have them packed closely in a chest. 

 Will fumigating them with sulphur do, or is bi-sulphide of carbon 

 the best? 



A. Sulphur will do, but it takes a gread deal of it to finish the 

 big worms, and it does not kill the eggs, so that it must be used 

 again two weeks later to kill the worms that have hatched out 

 from the eggs that were left. Carbon disulfide (which is the 

 later name of bisulphide of carbon) acts more vigorously, and at 

 one operation cleans up big and little, eggs and all. After you 

 have the worms all killed you must keep the combs where the 

 moth cannot get at them. 



On the whole, it is nicer to give such combs to the bees. They 

 will clean them up and keep them in nice condition. You can fill 

 a hive-body with them and put it under a colony, so that the bees 

 must pass through in going out or in. 



Q. I have 'a number of frames which look very ragged on ac- 

 count of moth ravages, some in which more than half of the comb 

 is gone. Will the bees repair this and fill out the frames again 

 if I give them to the bees next spring? Or would I better cut 

 out all this comb and put in new foundation? 



A. If the comb is in good condition except for the ravages 



