BEES AND THEIR MASTERS 121 
the sun as his veritable daily guide from year’s end 
to year’s end. Those whose conception of a bee- 
keeper is mainly of one who looks on from his 
cottage door while his winged thousands work for 
him, and who has but to stretch out his hand once 
a year to gather the hoard he has had no part in 
winning, know little of modern beemanship. This 
would be almost literally true of the old skeppist 
days, when bees were left much to their own devices, 
and thirty pounds of indifferent honey was reckoned 
a good take from a populous hive. But the modern 
movable comb-frame has altered all that. Now 
ninety or a hundred pounds weight of honey per hive 
is expected, with ordinarily good seasons, on a 
well-managed bee-farm; and in exceptional honey- 
flows very strong stocks of bees have been known 
to double and even treble that amount. 
The movable comb-frame has three prime uses. 
The hives can be opened at any time and their 
condition ascertained without having to wait for 
outside indications. Brood-combs, with the young 
bees all ready to hatch out, can be taken from 
strong colonies and given to weak ones, and thus 
the population of all stocks may be equalised. The 
filled honeycombs can be removed, emptied by the 
centrifugal extractor, and the combs returned to the 
hive ready for another charge; and so the most 
onerous and exacting labour of the hive, comb- 
building, is largely obviated. 
The modern beehive has another great advantage 
over the old straw skep, in that its size can be 
regulated according to the needs of each colony. 
-More combs can be added as the stock grows, and 
thus no limit is set to its capacity. With the 
