SHAPE OP HIVES. 
brood move compact, fov hovering over and to store their 
honey close around it, where it will be most accessible to the 
bees in winter without leaving their cluster far. L. L. Laux- 
stroth says the most prosperous colony be ever had was in a 
hive four inches deep — broad and flat. Some want an in- 
clined bottom board, that the hive may be kept cleaner and 
the worms roll out. This would seem like a very simple 
means of giving much assistance to the bees ; but they are 
more bother than profit, as living worms when they fall gen- 
erally have a chord attached to them and can crawl up again 
if they wish, and dead ones do but little harm. Besides, if the 
hind part of the stand be elevated an iuch or two higher than 
the front, the inclination of the bottom will be such that the 
constant going out and in will keep the bottom board as clean 
of comb cuttings and filth as though it had an inclination of 
forty-five degrees. If I do not use a movable comb hive I 
want the bottom open that I may invert the hive and examine 
through the bottom. 
DIVIDING HIVES ARE OBJECTIONABLE. 
Bor if the plan is adopted of setting one hive on top of an- 
other, so as to remove one of them to make a swarm, one of 
the hives will contain most if not all the brood and most 
likely the queen, whilst the other will have no queen and 
probably no brood from which to rear one ; and even if a 
queen was furnished them, the combs would likely be so filled 
with honey that there would be no place for eggs. And even 
if it were empty, the cells would generally be built for store 
combs and could never make a prosperous colony ; the same 
is true of hives that divide latterly, to make two of one by 
dividing it in the centre, aud putting an empty half to each 
full one. One half will likely contain most of the honey and 
the other the mo^t of the brood. But it would be too tedious 
to enumerate the advantages aud disadvantages of the various 
kinds of hives in use. Doubtless very many of them possess 
some advantages; but in nineteen cases in twenty their 
complexity, cost of getting up, or in some other way, the ad- 
vantages are overbalanced by the disadvantages. So that I 
would recommend the larger portion of bee-keepers to retain 
a simple style of hive, which I myself would use did I not 
find a necessity of using a hive with movable frames. 
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