232 THE BEE keeper's MANUAL. 



Spring, the combs are soon filled with honey, bee-bread and 

 brood, and the surprising fertility of the queen bee, can be 

 turned to no efficient account. If the honey-harvest in any 

 year, is deficient, such a colony is very apt to perish in the 

 succeeding Winter ; whereas in a large hive, the honey 

 stored up in a fruitful season, is a reserve supply, in time 

 of need. In very large hives, I have seen large accumula- 

 tions of honey which have been untouched for years, while on 

 the same stand, stocks of about the same age, in small hives 

 have perished by starvation. A good early swarm in any sit- 

 uation at all favorable, will fill, the first season, a hive that 

 holds a bushel : and if there is any location in which they can- 

 not do this, a doubled swarm should be put into the hive, or 

 bee-keeping may, as far as profit is concerned, be abandoned. 

 But it may be objected that if the swarm was not sufficiently 

 strong to fill their hive, the bees often suffer from the cold in 

 Winter, and become too much reduced in numbers, to build 

 early and rapidly in the ensuing Spring. This is undoubt- 

 edly true, and hence the great importance of putting a gen- 

 erous allowance of bees into a hive at the first start, unless, 

 as on my plan, the requisite strength can be given to them, 

 at a subsequent period. The hive, if large, should be all 

 the more carefully protected from extremes of cold, in order 

 to give the bees an opportunity of developing their natural 

 powers of re-production, to the best advantage. 



In such a hive, the queen will be able to breed almost 

 every month in the year, even in the coldest climates where 

 bees flourish, and on the return of Spring, thousands of 

 young bees will be found in it, which could not have been 

 bred in a small, or badly protected hive. The Polish hives 

 described by Mr. Dohiogost, have already been referred to. 

 Some of these hold about three bushels, and yet the bees 

 swarm from them with great regularity, and the swarnis 



