THE AUSTRALIAN BEEKEEPERS’ JOURNAL. 
117 
cylinder closed at one end, and about 1.1 inches 
long; now unravel about five or six wires that run 
around the bottom, which will leave a ring of 
spikes at the bottom easily forced into the 
comb. This forms the Pipe-cover Cage. Take 
a piece of card, and, having got the queen in 
the cage, slip the card under it to confine her; 
place the card and cage on one of the combs 
over open cells of honey, slide out the card, 
and press the projecting wires of the cage well 
into the combs. The queen is thus imprisoned 
in the cage over a good supply of food ; the 
bees can get around about her, and if they 
take to her, will soon commence to feed her. 
In 2-1 hours partly lift out the frame very 
quietly, and if the bees are not clustered 
around the cage it may be gently lifted, and 
the queen allowed to walk out among the bees. 
If, however, the bees surround the cage 
thickly, and seem excited, wait another 
21 hours before releasing the queen ; in short, 
do not release her till you find the bees are 
taking very little notice of her, or they will 
probably attack and sting her, when she either 
dies or becomes useless. The various cages 
recommended for introducing queens are 
rather numerous, but we prefer the Alley, or 
if that is not at hand, the wire Pipe-cover Cage 
just described. We have never failed with 
the Alley Cage. 
Expert beekeeepers frequently introduce 
queens directly without caging, but then 
certain precautions prompted by experience 
are necessary. The most important ones 
being that the queen to be introduced should 
be hungry and not excited, and that the bees 
themselves should be undisturbed. For 
instance, the new queen is kept in a cage for 
30 minutes without food, and then very 
quietly allowed to run in under the mat at 
the top of the frames with no more disturbance 
of the hive than is necessary to take off the 
cover very gently, and raise one corner of the 
mat. This is best done near sunset. 
l'he elements of success in queen intro- 
duction are — 
1st. Queenlessness and absence of queen 
cells. 
2nd. A quiet, unexcited queen. 
3rd. An undisturbed colony of bees. 
And, although queens are often safely intro- 
duced by thoroughly smoking the bees and 
allowing Her Majesty to run in among her 
gorging subjects, we believe the quieting 
method the best, and it is because the queen 
makes her escape from Alley's Cage when 
everything about the hive is quiet that renders 
that method of introduction so universally 
Successful. (To be continued.) 
BEE HIVES. 
__ The Bush Hive, 
i m have tried a new, cheap hive, made by 
'■ * ■ Chambers (formerly of Adelaide, and now 
of 18 Franklin Street, Melbourne), which he 
calls the Bush Hive. It is a very simple 
arrangement for holding 8 or !) of the 
Standard Langstroth frames, with bottom 
board and cover alike and interchangeable. 
The chief features of the hive are : — 
1st. It is narrower than the ordinary Langs- 
troth hive, as it will only hold 9 frames, or 8 
frames and a dummy. The hive is higher by 
about 2 inches than the ordinary hive, and 
the rabbets, on which the frames rest, are 
about 2 inches below the top edge. 
2nd. The entrance is the whole width of 
the hive, and is formed by the front end 
board being 1-inch shorter than the back one, 
so that when the sides and ends are nailed 
together flush at the upper edge, the 1-inch 
entrance space is left the whole width of the 
i front at the bottom. 
3rd. The bottom boards and covers are 
exactly alike and interchangeable, and are 
simply flat boards strongly cleated. 
4th. In supering, a crate of sections is made 
to fit inside the hive above the frames ; and, 
as the sides of the hive stand 2 inches above 
the tops of the frames, the crate will be 
higher than the hive by nearly that amount, 
and a shallow frame, the same size as the 
hive, is made to fit on so as to raise the cover 
clear of the crate of sections. 
5th. The front board of the hive is grooved 
out, and a thin board fitted in the whole 
width of the liive, to form a kind of shelter or 
porch over the entrance. 
The advantages claimed are simplicity, 
cheapness, and portability. 
Our experience of this liive is very favor- 
able. Eight frames is, in our opinion, the 
right number, and ten too many where 
supering for surplus is practised. The sides 
and ends of the hive, projecting 2 inches above 
the frames, appeared to us at first objectionable 
for many reasons ; but we find manipulation 
quite as easy, and perhaps more comfortable 
than when frame tops are level with the top 
of the liive ; and what is certainly a substan- 
tial advantage, the bees do not “ boil over - ’ 
the edge when manipulating, and there is no 
fear of crushing them in replacing the cover 
— they boil up inside, but do not boil over. It 
is a capital hive for packing, and sending by 
rail or carrier. 
Impboved Box Hive. 
Until a frame liive can be got for lialf-a- 
crown, some beekeepers will stick to gin cases, 
soap boxes, Ac. as their pet houses for their 
bees. Still there is a very considerable room 
for improvement between a red or blue gin 
case and a nicely made frame hive, and a 
considerable difference in the cost— say from 
eighteen pence to twelve or fifteen shillings. 
1 have made some experiments during the 
present season, which have proved encouraging. 
Several boxes were made exactly alike, that 
is about 14 inches by 13) inside, and 10 inches 
high, no bottoms or tops, so that they were 
