ADVANCED BEE-CULTURE. 



13 



hives during the working season, hives 

 can be picked up, handled, manipulated, 

 tiered-up, carried, if advisable, to a dis- 

 tant but more desirable location — hives, 

 in short, that can be handled in a way 

 that means business — all these advantages 

 are so great that I should never think of 

 adopting the chaff hive. I know there 

 are methods of management in which the 

 unwieldly, stand-still character of the 

 chaff hive proves no obstacle; but such 

 methods are not the most expeditious. 



Speaking of the greater ease with which 

 an apiary can be managed when the bees 

 are in single-wall hives, brings up the 

 point of handling hives instead of combs. 

 Preventing after-swarming by moving 

 about the hives is an illustration. With 

 small hives, or those that can ^e handled 

 by sections, and in which the frames 

 are securely fastened, the queen may be 

 found by shaking out the bees instead of 

 going over the hives comb by comb. 

 When raising extracted honey, the su- 

 pers, with such hives, may be freed from 

 bees in a similar manner, just as they are 

 driven from a case of sections. It might 

 be mentioned here, parenthetically, that 

 the ' ' bee escape ' ' promises to destroy 

 this point of superiority hitherto claimed 

 for this style of super. When contract- 

 ing the brood nest, one section of the 

 hive is removed instead of taking out 

 combs and putting in "dummies." As 

 the eye of the physician judges of the in- 

 ternal conditions by external symptoms, 

 so the practiced eye of the bee-keeper can 

 easily determine the condition of a col- 

 ony without removing a comb. As a 

 taking apart and thorough examination 

 of the human body was necessary before 

 it was possible to learn to accurately 

 " judge of internal conditions by observ- 

 ing external symptoms, " so movable 

 frames allowed us to learn of the myste- 

 ries of the bee hive, and to reach that 

 stage when the taking apart of the brood 

 combs is seldom necessary. Such being 

 the case, hives that allow us the most 

 completely to accomplish our ends by 

 handling them instead of frames, are, 



other things being equal, the most desir- 

 able. 



THE NEW, HEDDON HIVE. 



I have no hesitancy in saying that, in 

 my opinion, the new Heddon hive comes 

 the nearest to being the perfect hive, of 

 any with which I am acquainted. Just 

 think over the points I have mentioned, 

 and see how fully this hive meets the re- 

 quirements. It is at once the largest or 

 the smallest hive, by simply removing or 

 adding sections. There is no handling of 

 frames nor of "dummies " or division 

 boards. When the brood nest is contract- 

 ed, the supering surface remains the 

 same. None of the sections are left " out 

 in the cold " so to speak, with "dum- 

 mies " instead of brood underneath them. 

 The brood can be ' ' spread ' ' whenever it 

 it is desirable, by simply interchanging 

 the sections. No handling of combs in 

 the operation. The combs can be invert- 

 ed singly or a whole hive at one opera- 

 tion. It is a light, readily-movable, sin- 

 gle-wall hive, and its closed-end frames 

 make it particularly adapted to the estab- 

 lishing of out apiaries or the moving of 

 bees to secure better pasture. This hive 

 has often been recommended as an excel- 

 lent hive for raising comb honey. It is 

 equally as good when producing extracted 

 honey. The shallow frames are peculiar- 

 ly adapted to the tiering-up plan, which 

 is nearly as valuable in raising extracted 



