1921.] 



The Modern Bek-Hi\'e. 



hive is capable of excluding all moisture and draught — but this 

 is not so. An indispensable quality in a good hive is that itj 

 should be in a very high degree both heat-retaining and heat- 

 resisting, and in these qualities almost every hive at present 

 on the market is lamentably wanting. If there be one principle 

 more than another which the writer's long practical experience 

 has established beyond a doubt, it is the necessity for double 

 walls in a bee-hive. Nor is it enough to construct the hive of 

 two shells, one fitting loosely within the other. This is better 

 than the single-wall pattern, but it fails in several important 

 particulars, even when the space between the two shells is 

 packed with a heat-intercepting material such as chaff. 

 Packing of this nature is liable to get damp, when it soon 

 changes into a mass of corruption; and if merely left loose 

 between the cases, it proves an unmitigated nuisance, should 

 either of them need to be disturbed. Practicability rules all 

 packing devices out of court, unless the material be securely 

 enclosed. Indeed, its use is rendered superfluous, because 

 dead-air — a perfectly confined empty space — is by far the 

 best heat-retaining medium known. A good hive, therefore » 

 at least as far as concerns the brood-nest, must have all its 

 four sides composed of dead-air cavity- walls, preferably not 

 less than three inches thick over all. 



The writer is w^ell aware that in insisting on this point, he 

 is running counter to the notions, or want of notions, in the 

 majority of bee-keepers, and is especially likely to embroil him- 

 self with " the trade." It is admitted that a clever and care- 

 ful bee-master can make bees thrive to a certain degree in 

 almost anything: admitted also the logic — though not the 

 morals — of the position that while single-walled hives, easy to 

 construct, can be readily sold, it would be folly to push the sale 

 of another article, howwer superior, which is troublesome and 

 expensive to make. Despite the trouble and cost, however, 

 stress must here be laid not on the superiority alone of double- 

 walled hives, but on the downright necessity of thorn, where 

 the bee-keeper looks for the best return on his outlay. 



In such hives, properly designed and put together, it is 

 definitely claimed that the bees will remain healthier at all 

 seasons, will consume a smaller amount of food during winter, 

 will make more speedy progress in numerical sti-ength through- 

 out the spring, and, because they thus reach the brink of the 

 siunmer nectar-flow with a larger population of workers, will 

 certainly collect more honey for their owner. The cottager 

 and smallholder, therefore, to whom these observations are 



