32 
MANUAL OF APICULTURE. 
maple, etc., are good. The most improved bellows smokers, when sup- 
plied with such fuel sawed 5 or C inches long and split into bits a half 
inch or less in size, will burn all day and be ready at any time to give 
a good volume of blue smoke, by which bees of most of the races now 
cultivated in this country are subdued at once. 
With Italian or black bees a puff or two of smoke should be given 
at the hive entrance and the cover and honey board, or quilt, removed 
slowly and carefully, smoke being driven in as soon as the least opening 
is made and the volume increased enough to keep down all bees as fast 
as the covering is removed. The smoker may then be placed on the wind- 
ward side of the hive to 
allow the fumes to pass 
over the top and toward 
the operator. The frames 
may then be gently pried 
loose and lifted out care- 
fully, without crushing a 
bee if it can be avoided. 
Crushing bees fills the air 
with the odor of poison, 
which irritates the bees. 
So also when one bee is 
provoked to sting others 
follow because of the odor 
of poison. 
Too much smoke will 
often render certain ma- 
- nipulations difficult; for 
example, when queens are 
Zz_ to be sought out, or nuclei 
or artificial swarms made, 
volumes of smoke blown 
(Origi- in between the combs will 
drive the bees from them 
so that they will cluster in clumps on the bottoms of the frames or in 
the corners of the hives. A little observation and judgment will enable 
one to know when the bees need smoke and how much of it to prevent 
any outbreak on their part, which it is always best to forestall rather 
than be obliged to quell after it is fully under way. 
The frame hive as now made — with metal rabbets and arrangements 
for surplus honey, and quilts instead of honey boards — reduces propo- 
lization to a minimum and renders the danger of irritating the bees by 
jarring when manipulating much less. As a prerequisite to rapid and 
safe manipulation perfectly straight combs are necessary. 
With the common or black bees it is never safe to do without the veil 
as a protection to the face, and with these bees it will also be very diffi- 
FlG. 13.— Manipulation- 
removing comb. from hi 
nal.) 
