150 miner's AMERICAN 



drones, and if no drones exist, how is that to be ef- 

 fected." 



" I see ! I see ! You talk like a book. I've been 

 humbugged, and no mistake I" 



The reader will excuse the foregoing digression from the 

 regular train of my remarks on " subtended" hives, since 

 an illustration of this kind is often more forcible than 

 can be given in any other manner. 



The "subtended" hive that I was speaking of, having 

 drawers, operates in all its ramifications like the hive 

 just described. 



CASE IN WHICH TWO OR MORE BOXES MAY BE USED. 



I have no objections to the use of two or three boxes 

 together, provided that the lower one be about one foot 

 square in the clear ; in which case, as many boxes above 

 as you please may be used ; but one is as many as will 

 be filled generally, and not even that in many parts of 

 the country, if it contain over twenty or twenty-five 

 pounds of honey. I hear of two hives, or boxes, each 

 one foot square, being used in the western part of the 

 state of New York, near Buffalo, with success. The 

 family winters in one, and in the spring it is supered by 

 the empty one which is generally filled full during the 

 season, affording from forty to sixty pounds of honey. 



I disapprove of transferring the family by a change of 

 boxes, in order to place the stock in hives with new 

 combs, as before illustrated. This course, I contend, is 

 absolutely ruinous to the prosperity of the bees, in 

 placing them in hives filled with combs, not at all 



