50 
chapman’s HANDY-BOOK. 
cumstances, make the best of it, and always seem to me 
to be singing all day long, that song which I wish were 
better known, or rather more generally acted u P 0I b by 
us men creatures—“Try, try, try again. iHore than 
once I have allowed them to make the trial. I ha\e ted 
them for a day or two with the refuse combs, v, hich they 
thankfully accepted, in lieu of the thirty pounds or so 
which I took from them.; the feeding was necessary to 
enable them to get their new combs built with as litt e 
delay as possible. The season proved favourable for 
honey gathering, though this experiment was made in 
the beginning of winter 5 in fact, the trial succeeded, 
and this family of persevering bees are now one of my 
best stocks. 
But the object of the bee master who has a fully stocked 
apiary, should be not only to take a larg’e quantity of honey 
by this process, but also to reduce liis stock to the number 
which he wishes to swarm the following spring. So at 
sunset he should unite the bees of this deprived hive to its 
next neighbour in the mode last described. The doubled 
hive should be moved midway between the places lately 
occupied by the two. If three hives are united, do not dis¬ 
place the middle one, but take away altogether those which 
you have emptied. The bees will then have no difficulty 
in finding their new home, especially if, for a day or two 
after, you prop up the front of this hive with some little 
wooden wedges, so as to make the doorway much handier. 
But the greatest confusion and loss will be occasioned by 
the attempt to join bees from different parts of the apiary 
—for, says Jonas de Gelien, of Edinburgh, in the “ Bee 
Preserver,” bees that have not swarmed voluntarily return 
to the place they have been accustomed to, even after 
having been shut up for months. The same thing’ happens 
if you unite swarms distant from each other. Next day, 
or the day after, you would have the mortification to see 
the bees return by hundreds to their old residence, flutter 
about for a length of time, and lose their lives, either by 
falling down from fatigue, or throwing themselves into 
the neighbouring hives, where they are put to death. Not 
having left their new dwelling with the same precaution 
that a swarm uses to reconnoitre the one it has chosen, or 
