g6 THE BLESSED BEES. 



ately closed. The bees would go to work without 

 hesitation in the empty comb, and so confusion and 

 loss of time were avoided. The honey was extracted 

 now from the twelve frames just taken, and they 

 were used for the next hive, and so on until every 

 hive had been attended to. It took two days of 

 hard work to extract from the thirty-five hives, but 

 it was interesting and exciting labor. The result 

 showed an average of five and a half pounds of 

 honey to a frame, sixty-six pounds to a hive, or 

 2,310 in all. 



The bees continued work day after day with the 

 quiet, happy air, so delightful to every bee keeper, 

 for it assures him that his hives are being filled. 

 To sit among the hives was to surround oneself 

 with a ceaseless sound of joyous humming. Large 

 numbers of workers were constantly leaving and re- 

 turning. Now and then a clumsy drone would go 

 booming past, making up in quantity of noise for 

 lack of industry. As all the supers were now sup- 

 plied with combs, of course it took less time to fill 

 them with honey. On the eighth day I again ex- 

 tracted, and obtained an average of fifty-nine pounds 

 per hive, 2,065 pounds from the thirty-five. I found 

 in two or three cases that the queens had got into 

 the upper stories, and nearly filled one or two combs 

 with eggs. Such frames I gave to the two nuclei, 

 left after Italianizing. 



