FLOATING APIAEIES. 321 



in every comb, and the weather is warm, it is safer to remove 

 a part of the brood, and put frames of dry comb alternately 

 with the frames of brood. The brood removed may be used 

 to strengthen weak colonies. 



We have sent bees safely, from Illinois to Utah, by freight. 



589. In shipping bees, or colonies, it is important to place 

 conspicuous cautionary cards or labels on the packages : 

 Living Bees, Handle with Care, This Side Up, Keep out of 

 Sun, etc. 



The damage done by rough railroad handling, is the great- 

 est item of loss, in the transportation of bees properly packed. 

 If colonies are shipped in carloads, they should be so placed, 

 that the combs will rim lengthwise, and not from side to 

 side, as in vehicles drawn by horses. Surplus racks or stories 

 should be shipped separately. 



590. Some Apiarists have practiced shipping bees by 

 water routes to the Southern States in the Fall, for Winter, 

 and returning them in Spring at the beginning of the honey 

 harvest. If proper precautions are taken, this plan may 

 be profitable, where low rates of transportation can be ob- 

 tained, but much judgment must be exercised as to the time 

 of returning them North. As the colonies become strong very 

 early in the South, if they are brought back North before 

 the warm weather, their brood may become chilled, and a 

 tendency to the development of foul-brood is encouraged. 



"Mr. Cotton saw a man in Germany who kept all his num- 

 erous stocks rich by changing their places as soon as the honey- 

 season varied. ' Sometimes he sent them to the moors, some- 

 times to the meadows, sometimes to the forests, and sometimes 

 to the hills.' In France — and the same practice has existed in 

 Egypt from the most ancient times — they often put hundreds 

 of hives in a boat, which floats down the stream by night and 

 stops by day." — ^London Quarterly Eeview. 



591. Delia Rocea, in his treatise on "Bee-culture in the 

 Island of Sjrra," speaks of the Egyptian method of keeping 

 bees on boats, which were floated up and down the Nile to 



