192 AUSTRALIAN BEE LORE AND BEE CULTURE- 



sary with the frames, so that the bees shall confine themselves to 

 the top bar must have been, nay indeed was, the greatest problem 

 to be solved. If, in the first attempts in the use of slots the bees 

 worked from them in parallel succession, it must have been more by 

 chance than design. We know that the slight improvement 



obtained by these slots or top bars remained without further de- 

 velopment for fully a century. And no wonder, for where one 

 swarm 1 of bees would attach their combs to parallel bars without 

 wax guides of some kind or other, and continue them parallel with 

 the sides of the boxes — a hundred swarms would build at right 

 angles to the bars or diagonally to the box. 



Spacing. — So the further development of improvements in 

 beehives, in the direction of the removal of the combs without 

 their entire destruction, remained until the days of Huber. Was 

 it anything to marvel at that it should be otherwise 1 Yet, with 

 all the advantages we have obtained from the thoughts and experi- 

 ments of others, we find many beginners in bee-keeping stopping 

 short at the difficulties they find in overcoming the first principles 

 of success, i.e., the knowledge in the correct spacing of the bar- 

 frames, the necessity for the whole of them to be placed parallel 

 to each other, at the same time perpendicularly true, and the 

 securely fixing of the starters or foundation comb. They give up 

 bee-keeping in disgust, and vote it a hobby or an industry that 

 can be successful with but few and a certain failure with the many. 

 But such reasoning is not correct. Patience and observation are 

 the only ingredients necessary for success to cover the difficulties 

 the bee-keepers of last century had to stumble against. 



Correct spacing was one of the first and greatest difficulties 

 to be overcome. In a state of nature, brood combs are built 13-16 

 inch from midrib to midrib, or centre to centre. In comb built 

 for storage, it is frequently otherwise, and unless the slots were so 

 placed the bees would build despite them. If eight slots only 

 were so placed in the hive and evenly spaced, and there was room 

 for nine combs, or if there were nine slats used where there was 

 only room for eight combs, the bees would attend to their own 

 spacing irrespective of the bee-keeper's ignorance. This is actually 

 one of the great difficulties of the beginner of to-day, i.e., arrang- 

 ing for the exact bee space between the frames and getting them 

 all parallel to the sides of the hive. 



In the early times when slats were in use it was not known 

 that bees always build their combs according to certain guides. 

 The first bee amongst the wax-workers that is ready with her pellet 



