liEE-CULTURE. 
22 
if it weighs thirty-five pounds over and above the weight of 
the empty hive, it may be supposed to contain honey enough 
to winter. 
EQUALIZING STOCKS FOR WINTER. 
An apiarian, with a considerable number of bees, will, in 
the fall, have some colonies that are rich in honey but scarce 
in bees by overswarming, loss of queen, or other misfortune. 
Other hives will have enough bees, but only from one to 
twenty pounds of honey and but little bee-bread, the re- 
mainder having proper proportions of honey, bee-bread and 
bees. These defective colonies should have been avoided by 
preventing so much swarming (see article on swarming); but 
in this as in many other things, we do not always accomplish 
what we should, or might accomplish. The question is how 
to make the most of things as they are. As soon as honey- 
making is over, and the bee-keeper finds that he has a num- 
ber of such defective stocks, lie must lessen the number 
of them by driving the bees that have almost no honey 
into those that have an abundance of it, but are scarce iu 
bees; and uniting the bees and honey of others in order to 
make them sufficiently strong and rich. But before I show 
how this is done, I must show how bees may be agreeably 
united. 
Bees are jealous of foreigners, and before such can 
enjoy the full privilege of citizenship they must comply with 
their naturalization laws ; and one of these laws is, that they 
must come in well loaded with honey. When bees are gath- 
ering honey freely, and a bee misses its own hive and pro- 
poses to enter another, if it is well loaded with honey it is 
permitted to enter and domicil with them. So, if you have 
two colonies, the one very strong and the other very weak, 
change the relative positions of the hives, putting the strong 
one on the stand of the weak one, and the weak one on the 
stand of the strong one. The bees from the strong hive will 
go out in great numbers for honey, not noticing as they leave 
that they have been moved, and on returning will enter the 
weak colony. Being filled with honey they will be kindly 
received. On entering they feel lost on finding themselves 
in a strange family, and will immediately hurry out to rectify 
the mistake ; but on looking around in vain for somcth'ng 
