HEREDITY IN THE BEE-GARDEN $55 
cure. Each hive must be watched carefully from 
the beginning. From the time the queen com- 
tuences to lay, in the first mild days of spring, we 
keep the size of the brood nest just a little ahead of 
her requirements. Every week or two IJ put in a 
new frame of empty combs, and when shé has ten 
frames to work upon, and honey is getting plentiful, 
I begin to put on the store-racks above, just as I 
am doing now. This will generally keep them to 
business; but with all the care in the world the 
swarming fever will sometimes set in. And then I 
always treat it in this way.” 
He had stopped before one of the hives, where 
the bees were hanging in a glistening brown cluster 
from the alighting-board; idling while their fellows 
in the bee-garden seemed all possessed with a 
perfect fury of work. I watched him as he lighted 
the smoker, a sort of bellows with a wide tin 
funnel packed with chips of dry rotten wood. He 
stooped over the hive, and sent three or four dense 
puffs of smoke into the entrance. 
‘‘ That is called subduing the bees,’’ he explained, 
“but it really does nothing of the kind. It only 
alarms them, and a frightened bee always rushes 
and fills herself with honey, to be ready for any 
emergency. She can imbibe enough to keep her 
for three or four days; and once secure of immediate 
want, she waits with a sort of fatalistic calm for 
the development of the trouble threatening.” 
He halted a moinent or two for this process to 
complete itself, then began to open the hive. First 
the roof came off; then the woollen quilts and 
square of linen beneath were gradually peeled from 
the tops of the comb-frames, laying bare the interior 
