BENEFIT OF THE TIN ENTRANCES. 



157 



perforated with a hole at the bottom, sufficiently large to 

 admit of one bee coming out at a time. In the spring and 

 summer the sliders are taken away altogether, and are after- 

 wards applied as the circumstances may require. The trea- 

 surer of the British Apiarian Society, of which we were the 

 founder, had a most beautiful apiary at his seat in the vicinity 

 of Maidenhead, and being there on a visit in the month of 

 September, we witnessed one of the most extraordinary 

 circumstances which ever came under our experience. The 

 apiary consisted of twenty-eight populous stocks, all in 

 the hives of our invention; and as if the hour and the day 

 had been agreed upon by the whole community, a regular 

 attack was made upon every hive, and with a fury, as if the 

 direct extermination of the entire apiary were their object. 

 The ground before the hives was covered with the slain, and 

 had the battle continued for two or three hours longer, the 

 ruin of many of the hives would have been the consequence. 

 Fortunately however, every hive was provided with a tin 

 entrance, and we immediately let down one of the perforated 

 sliders, and that which had the contracted entrance by which 

 only one bee could come out at a time ; the attacking bees 

 thus disappointed of forcing their way into the hives, and 

 the inmates being well able to defend the entrance from its 

 limited space, gradually relinquished the contest, and in 

 about an hour afterwards the whole apiary was at rest. It 

 was to the tin entrances that 

 we attributed the salvation of the 

 hives ; the annexed drawing is a 

 representation of them. We must 

 not omit to state that every apiary 

 in the neighbourhood was in the 

 same state of commotion and re- 

 bellion; but the majority of them 

 being under the management of 

 the Apiarian Society, and all of them 

 h 3 



