80 THE HIVE AND THE HONEY-BEE. 



floor become dry ; whereas, if the entrance passage be cut out 

 of the box, the rain that may, and at times will be, drifted in, 

 will be kept in, and the floor be wet for days and perhaps for 

 weeks, and be very detrimental to the bees. In depth, the floor- 

 box, measured from outside to outside, should be four inches, 

 so that, if made of three-fourth-inch deal, there may be left for 

 the depth of the box part two inches and a half. Internally it 

 is divided into three equal compartments, being one for each bee- 

 box. Admission to these compartments, or under boxes, is by 

 the drawer, or drawer-fronts, or blocks, which will be described 

 presently. 



" The bottom, or open edge of each of the boxes, should be 

 well planed, and made so even and square, that they will sit 

 closely and firmly upon the aforesaid floor, and be as air-tight as 

 a good workman can make them, or technically expressed, be a 

 dead fit, all round. In the floor-board are made three small 

 openings, i. e., one near the back of each box. These openings 

 are of a semilunar shape (though any other shape would do as 

 well), the straight side of which should not exceed three inches 

 in length, and will be most convenient, if made parallel with the 

 back edge of the box, and about an inch from it. They are 

 covered by perforated, or by close, tin slides, as the circumstances 

 of your apiary may require. The drawer, the front of which 

 appears under the middle box, is of great importance, because 

 it afifords one of the greatest accommodations to the bees in the 

 boxes. In this drawer is placed, if necessity require it, a tin 

 madftto fit it, and in that tin another thin fiame, covered with book 

 muslin, or other fine strainer, which floats on the liquid deposited 

 for the sustenance of the bees. Here, then, you have a feeder, 

 containing the prepared sweet, in the immediate vicinity of the 

 mother hive, and without admitting the cold or the robbers to 

 annoy the bees. When you close the drawer thus prepared with 

 bee food, you must draw out the tin placed over the semilunar 

 aperture, which will open to the bees a way to their food in the 

 drawer beneath. The heat of the hive follows the bees into the 

 feeding apartment, which soon becomes the temperature of their 

 native hive. There the bees banquet on the proffered boon in 

 the utmost security, and in the temperature of their native domi- 

 cile. Under such favorable circumstances, it is an idle excuse, 

 not to say a want of humanity, to sufiier your bees to die for 

 want of attention to proper feeding." 



