THOUSAND ANSWERS 119 



Q. Kindly give the manipulations of divisible brood-chamber 

 hives. 



A. Perhaps no two who use divisible hives manage them ex- 

 actly alike. In a general way, I may say that advantage of di- 

 visible hives is taken by reducing to a single story at time of 

 giving supers, although some make the first and second stories 

 exchange places. This last, you will see, throws the honey that 

 was above the brood-nest right into the middle, and the bees are 

 supposed to get busy carrying it up into the supers for the sake 

 of getting brood in its place. 



Q. I have decided that a divisible hive consisting of shallow 

 frames and supers, one, two or three, according to the strength 

 of the queen, is about what I want. Is it a practical combination? 

 It looks to me like this hive will be extremely easy of manipula- 

 tion and that the job of queen and queen-cell finding will be min- 

 imized. I wish to winter out of doors, and think I can make a 

 warm hive of the shallow frames and supers by contracting the 

 brood-nest horizontally with a tight division-board on each side 

 and packing between them and the outside; the ends being 

 closed. 



A. I doubt the advisability of your trying shallow or divisible- 

 chamber hives. To be sure, some good beekeepers use them, 

 but the majority of beekeepers prefer a frame not less than the 

 Langstroth, and some like a still larger frame. If you do decide to 

 use some of the divisible hives, try only a very few at first, until 

 you decide whether they are suited to your use. 



Q.Which is better in a double-walled hive, a dead-air space, or 

 planer shavings packing? 



A. It is generally considered better to have packing in the 

 space. Theoretically, air might be thought a better non-conduc- 

 tor than shavings, and so it is if the air would remain still; but 

 the trouble is that it will not remain still, but when a part, of it 

 becomes warm, at the warmest part it travels to a cooler part to 

 give up its heat there. The packing stops it from traveling so 

 much. 



Q. Is a "chaff" hive entirely practical? If not, what are the 

 objections to it? I have no cave and do not like to contemplate 

 the work incident to packing 50 or more hives with paper or 

 other material. 



A. Chaff hives have been successfully used to quite a large 

 extent, although perhaps not so much as formerly. One objec- 

 tion is their weight and unwieldiness ; another that when the sun 



