SUMMER MANAGEMENT, 187 
will even try to force an entrance into the hive.* 
Rats and mice must also be guarded against, as 
well as slugs and snails. The toad, too will 
occasionally make his home beneath the hive-stand 
for the purpose of capturing such bees as fall. 
The nests of wasps ought to be destroyed: from 
their superiority in strength and activity, they are 
very annoying, and often destructive, to bees towards 
the end of summer; and the nuisance must 
forthwith be met by contracting the entrance to the 
hive, when the passage is more readily defended.t 
In this place it may be well to draw attention to a 
very simple mode of dealing with wasps attacking a 
* In some parts these birds are very numerous ; and poison has been 
found efficacious, placed at the hive mouth, in little balls of lard, oat- 
meal, and nux vomica, mixed together. 
+ lTuber’s observations on some of the habits of bees have b en the 
subject of ignorant ridicule from Huish ; as where he says that they 
occasionally erect barricades, for greater security. But Mr. Golding 
has given a confirmation of Huber’s assertion. He says, ‘‘ At the end 
of summer, a kind of curtain, apparently a compound of wax and pro- 
polis, and about a sixteenth of an inch thick, was erected before the 
entrance of one of my hives; about two inches and a half in length, 
and half an inch in height, with the exception of a small ap rture at 
each end.” Dr. Bevan, in the ‘“ Honey Bee,” exhibits a drawing of 
this piece of fortification. My own experience is perfectly conclusive, 
as the following extract from my journal will show: “July 31, 1842. 
Weather fine. Removed a box of honey frum a collateral hive. The 
wasps had been troublesome for some days, and as the entrance to the 
centre box was left fully open, the bees had contracted it for better de- 
fence. A thin wall of what app ared to be propolis was attached irom 
the upper edge of the doorway, extending along its centre, and closing 
all up but a space of about three-quarters of an inch at each end. I 
never witnessed a more convincing proof of the sagacity of the bees 
than this beautiful proceeding.” So runs my journal ; to which I may 
add, that the entrance to the box, so contracted, was five inches in 
length, and three-eighths of an inch high ; or double that of Mr. Gold- 
ing. From the hint thus derived fr.m the bees themselves, I con- 
structed the movable blocks or mouth-pieces described and shown at 
page 75. 
