42 
BEE-CULTURE. 
passing along in front is attached to all the shutters. This 
arrangement is connected by a lever to the hen-roost, so that 
when the fowls go to roost it closes all the hives, and when 
they fly off in the morning it opens them. An objection to 
this arrangement is, that on cloudy evening^ they go to roost 
too soon and shut out many of the bees. At other times a 
lazy old hen would keep them in entirely too late. 
PRUNING COMBS. 
Is pruning ever necessary 1 If so,, how often ? 
There is a common impression that bees somehow dislike 
old dark combs, that worms will breed more in them and 
that they cannot prosper long in such; hence the practice of 
breaking out the combs frequently to have them replaced 
with new ones. I have never yet seen anything to lead me 
to believe that bees have any preference for new white combs 
over old dark ones. However we may fancy the appearance 
of white combs, and prefer to have our table honey stored in 
it, there seems to be no reason for believing that one is not 
as good for the bees as the other. 
The only way in which it would seem they could be inju- 
riously affected by old combs, is by the cells becoming so 
small as to breed small bees. As every young bee that 
batches leaves a sheath or cocoon inside of its cell, if ten 
young bees arc hatched from each cell every season for ten 
years it wijl contain one hundred cocoons, which one would 
naturally suppose would make it very small. 
It is true they do become some smaller ; yet I am not able 
to say that bees are more prosperous in new than in old 
combs. I have seen bees that were very prosperous in combs 
that were thirty years old. It would take close observation 
to distinguish between tho bees of such a hive and those of 
one containing new combs. However, it may be best to 
break out the part of the combs that are devoted to rearing 
brood most every ten or twelve years. 
As it costs bees a good deal to make comb, save it as long 
as possible. The means and energy expended by bees 
in making combs detract from the amount of honey and bees 
produced. Colonies that expend much of these energies in 
producing bees cannot yield so much honey or combs; nor if 
they spend themselves in making combs and storing honey 
