168 HANDY BOOK OF BEES. 



tops secures ample ventilation for hives as fuU as they can 

 be ; indeed this ventilation is so great that the heat of full 

 hives is less at the end of a short or long journey than it 

 was before they started. If hives are not full or crowded 

 with bees, we do not often use the wire on their crown- 

 holes. The wire at their doors, and a few thin wedges or 

 penny-pieces shpped in between the hives and their boards, 

 before they are tied together tightly with the string, pre- 

 vents suffocation. They travel safely. The nails are used 

 to make all doubly secure. If hives travel over a rough 

 road on a cart, the jolting sometimes causes them to move 

 on their boards, especially if the bottom of the cart is not 

 level. The nails, either through the rolls of the hives, or 

 outside of them, driven partly into the boards, prevent 

 the hives from moving laterally or off their boards. Of 

 course hives are thus prepared for travelling either before 

 the bees go to work in the morning, or after the outdoor 

 labour of the day has closed. In this way not a bee is 

 lost, and the cool of the day is the better time to trans- 

 port and transplant hives. If the weather be cold or 

 rainy, the bees may be all caught during the day, confined, 

 and their hives tied and secured as described already, and 

 transported. In fact, the colder the weather is, and the 

 less the bees are at work when about to be transported 

 and transplanted, the less danger there is, for in cold 

 weather the bees need far less ventilation. We take our 

 bees twenty miles to the moors, part of the way on carts, 

 and the rest of the journey by railway, without having 

 misfortunes and breakdowns. Indeed we cannot con- 

 ceive a more efficient, safe, and easy mode of insuring the 

 safety of hives while being moved from place to place 

 than the one now described, and which we invariably 

 practise. 



Hives without cross-sticks, such as bar-frame hives, are 



