iS BEE-FJRMJNG. 



bees have a little common sense; they take the heavy 

 honey as high up the combs as possible— if at the bottom, 

 its weight would break ofF the tender waxen supports. 



If you are wise you will never employ either tb", 

 dreaded super or the eke in your apiary. If nothing e) !e 

 will teach you the heavy loss and dwindling stocks, year \>y 

 year will bring our words to your remembrance, v/hen too 



late. 



Another system must be noticed, viz., that of col- 

 lateral hives, that is, a hive placed at the side of the old 

 stock, with openings made through the sides, where they 

 join, so that the bees can take possession of it and use it 

 for honey storage only. These have been tried by us 

 until we were sickened by the total loss by death of two 

 colonies, without any swarms for two summers, or even 

 an ounce of produce, not to mention some ten pounds of 

 syrup given each year to keep them from sheer starvation. 



That our readers may not think us wrong in recom- 

 mending hives so small as less than a foot square in the 

 clear we here quote a few remarks of Dr. Bevan, a good 

 old-fashioned English bee-farmer and writer on the honey- 

 bee ; one, moreover, who succeeded in keeping up a very 

 large bee-farm. He had at one time not less, perhaps, 

 than fifty-stocks, though he was years in discovering the 

 simple secret. He says, " In a former part of this work a 

 preference was given to those of Key's, but subsequent 

 information and experience induce me to recommend their 

 diameter to be three-eighths of an inch less than his, viz. 

 " eleven and five-eighths inches square by nine inches deep 

 in the clear." 



The Bee Farmer's Hive is considerably larger than 

 Sevan's ; the only fault we have been able to discover in 

 the latter is the absence of a moveable comb ; without this 

 it cannot be worked on our principle. 



As far as we are able we now propose giving the exact 



