TRANSFERRING BEES. 307 



in any other branch of rural economy, I ann confident, that 

 there is none in which a careless, or inexperienced person, 

 will be more sure to find his outlay result in an almost entire 

 loss. An Apiary neglected or mismanaged, is far worse 

 than a farm overgrown with weeds, or exhausted by ignorant 

 tillage : for the land is still there, and may again, by prudent 

 management, be made to blossom like the rose ; but the 

 bees, when once destroyed, can never be brought back to 

 life, unless the poetic fables of the Mantuan Bard, can be 

 accepted as the legitimate results of actual experience, and 

 swarms of bees, instead of clouds of filthy flies, can be ob- 

 tained from the carcass of a decaying animal ! I have seen 

 an old medical work in which Virgil's method of obtaining 

 colonies of bees from the putrid body of a cow slain for 

 this special purpose, is not only credited, but minutely 

 described ! 



Transferring Bees from the Common to the Movable- 

 Comb Hive. 



The construction of my hive is such, as to permit bees to 

 be transferred to it, from the common hives, whenever the 

 weather is warm enough to allow them to fly. 



On the 10th of November, 1852, in Northern Massachu- 

 setts, I transferred a colony which wintered in good health, 

 and made an excellent stock. 



The transfer may be made of any healthy colony, with 

 tolerably regular comb, and if they are strong in numbers, 

 the hive well provisioned, and the weather not too cool, they 

 will scarcely feel the change. Should the weather be too 

 cold, it will be found almost impossible to make a colony 

 leave its old hive, and if the combs are cut out, and the bees 

 removed upon them, many will take wing, and becoming 



