PUTTING ON AND TAKING OFF BOXES. 137 



three weeks, as they often do while preparing the young 

 queens for swarming. But when all the bees can be pro- 

 fitably engaged in the body of the hive, more room is un- 

 necessary. 



MAKING HOLES AFTEK THE mVB IS FULL 



If a hive has no holes in the top, it need not prevent 

 3'our getting a few pounds of pure surplus honey. 



If the holes are about two inches apart, and the row is 

 at right angles with the combs, each one will be so made 

 that a bee arriving at the top of a hive, between any two 

 combs, will be able to find a passage into the box without 

 long search, which I can imagine he would have when only 

 one liole is made, or when they are parallel with the combs. 

 If a hive contained eight or ten sheets of comb, and but 

 one passage to the box, a bee inight go up between any 

 two, many times, before it found the opening. 



It has been urged that every bee soon learns all the 

 passages about the hive, and consequently will know the 

 direct road to the box. This may be true, but when we 

 recollect that all within the hive is perfect darkness — that 

 the sense of feeling must guide the bee in all its travels, and 

 that perhaps a thousand or two young workers are added 

 every day, and these have to learn by the same means, we 

 would, if we studied our own interest, give them all possi- 

 ble facilities for enteiing the boxes. What way so easy 

 for them as to find a passage, when they get to the top, 

 between each two combs ? That bees do not know all 

 roads about a hive, can be partially proved by opening 

 the door of a glass hive. Most of the bees about leaving, 

 instead of going to the bottom to make their exit, seem to 

 know nothing of the way, and will vainly try to get out 

 through the glass. I am so well convinced of this, that 

 I take some pains to accommodate them with frequent pas- 



