BAR HIVES. 85 
to adopt and maintain straight combs. As one comb 
is to be attached to each bar, it follows that the num- 
ber of these, and the intervals between them, must 
be accurately adjusted to the msect workmanship. 
The dimensions usually followed are one inch wide, 
and a quarter or three-eighths of an inch thick; they 
reach across the top of the hive from front to back, and 
Wf we attended to a recommendation of Dr. Bevan, 
the three or four central intervals should be seven- 
sixteenths of an inch, while the others gradually in- 
creased that distance up to ninc-sixteenths.* The bars 
were at first fixed into recesses cut along the inner 
edge of the top of the box, but this plan is now dis- 
carded, as the bees were prone to fix the one into the 
other inconyeniently tight. The instructions given as 
to frames in the next section (page 90) will provide a 
more suitable method. 
Our author, with his usual preciseness of directions 
for home workmanship, gives a figure of a “ pattern- 
gauge” which he devised for regulating 
the position of the bars, and also of the 
holes for admittance to the super. He 
would make it of brass, or at any rate 
of sheet metal. In other respects the 
fieure speaks for itself, but it is 
* The inner combs usually contain worker cells only, while the outer 
consist partly of the deeper receptacles for drones and honey. Hence 
it would seem that the intervals outside of the three or four middle 
ones should be increased sufficiently to admit of thicker comb upon one 
side ; while those beyond these two should be wide enough to take it 
upon both siles. The custom of transposing frames, has, however, 
caused this rule to be totally disseimcreien, and a uniform arrangement 
is maintained of about an inch and a half from the centre of one frame 
to the centre of the next. 
