508 SHIPPING AND TRANSPORTING BEES. 
alternately with the frames of brood. The brood removed 
may be used to strengthen weak colonies. 
As arule, it is better to ship small lots by Express, but 
large lots may be sent in early Spring, by freight, if they 
are not to be more than a week on the way. We havesent 
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 pack- 
ages: Living Bees, Handle with Care, This side up, Keep 
out of the sun, etc. 
The damage done by rough railroad handling, is the 
greatest 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 run lengthwise, and 
not from side to side, as in vehicles drawn by horses. Sur- 
plus racks or stories should be shipped separately. 
590. Some Apiarists, among whom we will cite the firm 
of Flanagan and Illinski of Belleville, Ill., have practiced 
shipping bees by water routes to the Southern States in the 
Fall, for Winter, and returning them in Spring at the begin- 
ning of the honey harvest. If proper precautions are taken, 
this plan may be profitable, where low rates of transporta- 
tion can be obtained, but much judgment must be exercised 
as to the time of returning them North. As the colo- 
nies 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 developement of 
foul-brood is encouraged. 
591. Della Rocca, in his treatise on ‘‘ Bee-culture in the 
Island of Syra,’’ speaks of the Egyptian* method of keep- 
* ** Mr. Cotton saw a man in Germany who kept all his numerous stocks 
rich by changing their places as soon as the honey-season varied. ‘Sometimes 
he sends them to the moors, sometimes to the meadows, sometimes to the for- 
ests, 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 Review, 
