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A Modern Bee-Farm 



The illustration shows the metal portion of my own queen 

 nursery, an apparatus I had made in the first instance as an incu- 

 bator for chickens' eggs. 

 The rectangular portion 

 shows the opening at the 

 side, with a double casing 

 on all other sides, with 

 about I inch between the 

 inner and outer walls. The 

 whole of this compartment 

 is enclosed by wood with 



a closely-fitting door which closes the said open side. The 

 inside is fitted with skeleton framework wherein slide several 

 drawers, each covered on the underside with woven wire. The 

 same arrangement will also take whole frames of comb, but I 

 prefer to have the cells built that they may be cut out singly and 

 so placed in the trays. A thermometer lies on the centre division 

 of one of the drawers ; while another is fixed in a vertical position 

 under glass in the centre of the door ; this glass being again 

 covered by a close fitting shutter to avoid extremes ; thus the 

 internal temperature can be noted at a glance without exposing 

 the cells. With my arrangement, however, the heat is always 

 given from above, and even after examination of the interior 

 there is not the same loss of heat as with the nurseries hitherto 

 used where the whole top is opened, as such have no large body 

 of heat just where most needed for the immediate restoration of 

 the correct temperature. 



Though shown at one end, the hollow heating cylinder H C is 

 at the centre of the back. Under this is placed the lamp, which 

 has a wick of such a size that it can not very well have a flame 

 which would be able to overheat the chamber ; the latter being 

 about t8 inches by 12 inches by 9 inches. The boiler contains 

 between the walls about six gallons of water, so that when the 

 right temperature is once secured it does not vary one degree in 

 twelve hours. The whole stands upon legs with a small table 

 for the lamp to rest upon ; this is trimmed once in twenty-four 



