186 AUSTRALASIAN 
Proceed thus till all the straight worker combs containing brood 
or honey are transferred ; take no others, unless there happen 
to be any perfectly straight worker comb empty large enough 
to fill the frames in one piece, when these may be used also. 
Under no circumstances should crooked or drone comb be 
transferred. The hives may be filled up with frames of comb 
taken from other hives or with frames of foundation, the brood 
combs being kept in the centre. Place the hive, as soon as it 
is ready, where the box-hive stood; raise the front a little, and 
shake the driven bees out of the box, so that they can enter 
the hive, which they will do at once, and if all be well, and no 
accident have happened to the queen, they will proceed without 
delay to fasten the combs in the frames. In the course of a 
day or two the wires can be removed. 
Other methods are sometimes recommended for securing the 
combs in the frames, but having tried most, and having trans- 
ferred some hundreds of colonies with their combs, there is no 
plan I have found to answer so well as the wires I have 
described, They are easily put on, and may be taken off 
without lifting the frames from the hive. 
I have often transferred without driving the bees into an 
empty box, merely turning the box-hive up, driving the bees 
with smoke to one end, then tearing off the other end, cutting 
out and transferring the combs and shaking the bees into the 
new hive, which had in the first instance been placed where 
the old box-hive had stood. The first described process takes 
a longer time, but it makes cleaner work, and is the proper 
plan for a beginner to adopt. 
MR. HEDDON’S NEW PRACTICE. 
Mr. Heddon recommends doing away altogether with the 
transferring of the combs into frames. He drives the bees 
into an empty box, as already explained, and then shakes them 
at once in front of the new hive, already filled with frames of 
comb or of comb-foundation, and placed where the box-hive 
had stood. The old box-hive with its contents is then set 
aside for twenty days, until all the young bees have emerged 
from the cells. If the weather turns cold the box should be 
placed in a warm room uatil a sufficient number of bees have 
emerged to keep up the temperature of the box. The young 
