152 miner's AMERICAN 



such extra space tendered them ; and, as I before stated, 

 they will regard such room as a space for laying up their 

 winter stores ; paying but little regard to the form and 

 thickness of their combs, and disregarding the building 

 of brood-combs, in some instances entirely. This is 

 perfectly natural, and proper that they should do so; 

 since the idea that their home, or main tenement, is to 

 be taken away, and they driven out, never enters their 

 craniums. Having already constructed all the brood- 

 combs that the queen can use, what necessity have they 

 for more ? The' regular drone-cells, so important to the 

 welfare of every family, or of its descendants, in supers 

 and nadirs are disregarded. It is true that their store- 

 combs are built in cells otthe ordinary size of drone- 

 cells ; but they are not suited to the raising of drones 

 by any means. Some of said combs measuring three 

 inches in diameter, while a regular drone-comb is not far 

 from one inch thick. There may be instances in which 

 the combs in a nadir may be built with considerable re- 

 gularity ; yet to trust to such for the purpose of giving 

 bees a change of combs, once in three or four years, is a 

 mistaken fallacy. 



Again, we are subjected to the loss of the queen, as I 

 have already shown ; and I was recently informed by a 

 gentleman, who had practiced this method of change, on 

 his being made acquainted with my objections to the 

 plan, that he had no doubt that he had destroyed the 

 queens to his hives, in the aforesaid manner, several 

 times ; but that he should never have known what the 



