HOW TO GET THE BEES 75 



of honey as it can possibly get and a "full" 

 bee either can not sting readily or the de- 

 sire to sting is less active at such times. 

 At any rate that first experience at trans- 

 ferring bees from an old gum hive did 

 not cost either of us a single sting. That 

 first experience too taught me that the 

 strings used to tie the brood combs in 

 place would later be removed by the bees. 

 They quickly cemented the combs to the 

 frame with new wax and then they pro- 

 ceeded to cut the strings into sections and 

 remove them from the hive. A few days 

 after the transferring began we found 

 bits of string in front of the entrance of 

 the new house. Some pieces, of course, 

 became stuck fast to the frames and those 

 we removed at the first opportunity and 

 saved the bees the labor of pulling them 

 out of the hive. A bee seems to dislike 

 anything of a worldly nature and for this 

 reason the strings were gotten rid of as 

 quickly as possible. 



Securing wild bees from a bee-tree or 



