THOUSAND ANSWERS 
119 
Q. Kindly give the manipulations of divisible brood-chamber 
hives. 
A. Perhaps no two who use divisible hives manage them ex- 
actly alike. In a general way, I may say that advantage of di- 
visible hives is taken by reducing to a single story at time of 
giving supers, although some make the first and second stories 
exchange places. This last, you will see, throws the honey that 
was above the brood-nest right into the middle, and the bees are 
supposed to get busy carrying it up into the supers for the sake 
of getting brood in its place. 
Q. I have decided that a divisible hive consisting of shallow 
frames and supers, one, two or three, according to the strength 
of the queen, is about what I want. Is it a practical combination? 
It looks to me like this hive will be extremely easy of manipula- 
tion and that the job of queen and queen-cell finding will be min- 
imized. I wish to winter out of doors, and think I can make a 
warm hive of the shallow frames and supers by contracting the 
brood-nest horizontally with a tight division-board on each side 
and packing between them and the outside; the ends being 
closed. 
A. I doubt the advisability of your trying shallow or divisible- 
chamber hives. To be sure, some good beekeepers use them, 
but the majority of beekeepers prefer a frame not less than the 
Langstroth, and some like a still larger frame. If you do decide to 
use some of the divisible hives, try only a very few at first, until 
you decide whether they are suited to your use. 
Q.Which is better in a double-walled hive, a dead-air space, or 
planer shavings packing? 
A. It is generally considered better to have packing in the 
space. Theoretically, air might be thought a better non-conduc- 
tor than shavings, and so it is if the air would remain still; but 
the trouble is that it will not remain still, but when a part of it 
becomes warm, at the warmest part it travels to a cooler part to 
give up its heat there. The packing stops it from traveling so 
much. 
Q. Is a “chaff” hive entirely practical? If not, what are the 
objections to it? I have no cave and do not like to contemplate 
the work incident to packing 50 or more hives with paper or 
other material. 
A. Chaff hives have been successfully used to quite a large 
extent, although perhaps not so much as formerly. One objec- 
tion is their weight and unwieldiness; another that when the sun 
