66 TIE BER-KEEPER’S MANUAL. 
for the sustenance of the family. [ven were any of 
it extracted, there would be no dependence upon its 
being free from brood-cells and pollen; while the 
supers can be shut absolutely against the queen by 
simply placing what are called queen-preventers * 
over the holes of communication. During the winter 
time the bees will be wholly excluded from the supers 
—indeed these will be removed bodily from the hive if 
the arrangements of the outer covering enable greater 
warmth to be thus secured. But when, at the end of 
April or a little later, there arrives a time of pleasantly 
warm weather, it will then be proper to afford the 
additional storing room. Again, a new swarm, what- 
ever the season of year, should be allowed from two to 
three weeks to furnish its stock-hive, before its attention 
is distracted by admission to the super. The signs of 
the requisition of this will be an excessive heat of the 
weather, a crowding of the bees at the entrance, an 
appearance through the windows of approaching eom- 
pleteness, or a rising of the thermometer, where 
present, to 90 degrees or thereabouts. 
SKEP COVERS. 
Whatever difference of opinion there may be as 
to the expediency of the practice of placing straw 
hives in the open air, independently of a house or 
shed, the custom prevails to so great an extent 
that our object would be incomplete were we not 
to point out some of the modes resorted to for pro- 
tecting them in such cases. Of the commoner kinds 
* A frame of wire, slits, or perforations just large enough to admit 
a worker, but excluding the queen or the drones. 
