BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
**357.** Eaeh live, in an apiary, should bear a nuuber, on the back of the broad apartment; and this should be printed in black characters, large enough to be seen at a distance. In small apiaries live-keepers use a slate, on each live; but in large ones, where many operations are performed, it is better to keep a record of the condition of the colonies, and of all the operations, in a special book.
We will add, that a live which does not furnish a thorough control over every comb cannot allow of the manipulations which the bee-keeper's necessities demand. Of such lives, the best are those which best unite _clequiness_ and _simplicity_, with _protection in Winter_, and _ready access_ to the spare honey-boxes, or supers.
**358**. In closing this chapter on hives, we cannot refrain from advising the beginners in bee-culture to be very cautious in buying patent hives. More than eight hundred patents on bee-hives and implements have been issued in the United States from 1873 to 1890. Not ten of these have proved to be of any use to bee-keepers. The mention of this faet will suffice to show the small value of these 790 patents, and the loss incurred by those who have bought them, before they were able to judge of their merits.
## Materials for Bee-Hives.
**359**. The variety of opinions respecting the best _materials_ for hives, has been almost as great as on the subject of their proper size and shape. Columnella* and Virgil recommend the hollowed trunk of the _cork tree_, than which no material would be more admirable if it could only be cheaply proeured. Straw hives have been used for ages, and are warm in Winter and cool in Summer. The difficulty of making them take and retain the proper shape for improved bee-keeping, is an objetion to their use. Hives made of wood are, at the present time, fast superseding all others. The _lighter_ and more _spongy_ the wood, the poorer will be its power of conducting heat, and the warmer the hive in Winter and the cooler in Summer. Cedar, poplar, tulip-tree, and especially _soft pine,_ afford excellent materials for be-hives. The Apiarist must be governed, in his ehoiee of lumber, by the cheapness with which any suitable kind can be obtained in his own immediate vicinity, and by its lasting qualities.
Footnote *: Columnella, about the middle of the first century of the Christian Era, wrote twelve books on husbandry"_De re rustica."_
Scholz, a German Apiarist, recommends hives made of _adobe_--in which frames or slats may be used--as cheaply construed, and admirable for Summer and Winter. Sueh structures, however, cannot be moved. But in many partsof our country, where both lumber and saw-mills are scarce. and where people are accustomed to build adobe houses, they might prove desirable. The material is plastic clay, mixed with eut straw, waste tow, etc.
**360.** To make the movable-frame lives to the best advantage, the lumber should be eut out by a circular saw, driven by steam, water, or horse-power, or even by footpower. In buildings where such saws are used, the frames may be made from the small pieces of lumber, scidim of any use, except for fuel, and may be packed almost solid in a box, or in a live which will afterwards serve for a pattern. One frame in such a box, properly nailed together, will serve as a guide for the rest. The parts of the live can easily and cheaply be made by any one who can handle tools. Much has been said of late, concerning the great cost of factory-made hives. Lunber is constantly growing more scarce and higher in price, and the only way to have cheap hives is to make them of lumber selected out of odds and ends and short pieces. The dovetailed or lock corner hive (figs. 83, 85), sold by most dealers cannot be manufactured in a small shop or factory; but the look joints are not indispensable. When the lumber is nailed at the joints and nailed both ways the corners are just as likely to hold and will rot less.
**361.** Mr. A. I. Root, in a former edition of the A B C of Bee-'ulture gave very good instructions about hive making on a small scale. We here cite, with illustrations, his explanation of "why boards warp":
"Before going further, you are to sort the boards so as to have the heart side of the lumber come on the outside of the hive. If you look at the end of each board, you can see by the circles of growth, which is the heart side, as is shown in the cuts. At B, you see a board cut off just at one side of the heart of the tree; at C, near the bark; at A, the heart is in the center of the board. You all know, almost without being told, that boards always warp like C; that is, the heart side becomes convex. The reason is connected with the shrinkage of boards
in seasoning. When a log lies until it is perfectly seasoned, it often checks as in fig. 2. You will observe that the wood shortens in the direction of the circles, and but very little, if any, along the lincs that run from the bark to the center. To allow this shrinkage in one direction, the log splits or checks in the direction shown. Now to go back to our boards, you will see that B shrinks more than A, because A has the heart of the trec in its center; that C will shrink, iu seasoning, much more on the bark side, than on the heart side; that this cannot fail to bring the board out of a level; and that the heart side will always be convex. You have all seen bee-hives, probably, with the corners separated and gaping open, while the middle of the board was tight up in place. The reason was that the mechanie
had put the boards on, wrong side out. If the heart side had been outward, the corners of the hivc would have eurled inwardly, and if the middle had been nailed securely, the whole hivc would have been likely to have close, tight joints, even if exposed to the sun, wind, and rain."
**362**. Double-walled hives, chaff hives, and Winter covers, will be described in the chapter on "Wintering" (**619**). The upper stories, half stories, wide frames, sections, etc., for comb, or extracted honey, will be discussed in the chapter on honey producing (**716**).
Ventilation of the Bee-Hive.
**363**. If a populous colony is examined on a warm day, a number of bees may be seen standing upon the alighting-board, with their heads turned towards the entrance of the hive, their abdomens slightly elevated, and their wings in such rapid motion, that they are almost as indistinct as the spikes of a wheel, in swift rotation on its axis. A brusk current of air may be felt proceeding from the hive; and if a small piece of down be suspended at its entrance, by a thread, it will be drawn out from one part, and drawn in at another. Why are these bees so deeply absorbed in their fanning occupation, that they pay no attention to the busy numbers constantly crowding in and out of the hive; and what is the meaning of this double current of air? To Huber, we owe the satisfaetory explanation of these curious phenomena. The bees, thus singularly plying their rapid wings, are _recultating_ the hive; and this double current is caused by pure air rushing in, to supply the place of the foul air which is forced out. By a series of beautiful experiments, Huber ascertained that the air of a crowded hive is almost as pure as the surrounding atmosphere. Now, as the entrance to such a live is often very small, the air within cannot be renewed, without resort to artificial means. If a lamp is put into a close vessel, with only one small orifice, it will soon exhaust the oxygen, and cease to burn. If another small orifice is made, the same result will follow; but if a current of air is by some device drawn out from one opening, an equal current will force its way into the other, and the lamp will burn until the oil is exhausted.
**3G1**. It is on this principle of maintaining a double current by _artificial means,_ that bees ventilate their crowded habitations. \(\Lambda\) file of ventilating bees stands inside and outside of the hive, each will head turned (" its entrance, and while, by the rapid fanning" of their "many twinkling" wings, a brisk current of air is blown out of the hive, an equal current is drawn in. As this important office demands unusual physical exertion, the exhausted laborers are, from time to time, relieved by fresh detachments. If the interior of the live permits inspection, many ventilators will be found scattered through it, in very hot weather, all busily engaged in their laborious employment. If its entrance is contracted, speedy accessions will be made to their numbers, both inside and outside of the live; and if it is closed entireiy, the heat and impurity quickly increasing, the whole colony will attempt to renew the air by rapidiy vibrating their wings, and in a short time, if unrelieved, will die of suffucation.
**365**. Careful experiments show that pure air is necessary not only for the respiration of the mature bees, but for hatching the eggs, and developing the larvae; a fine netting of air-vessels enveloping the eggs, and the cells of the larvae being closed with a covering filled with air-holes (**168**).
**366**. Ventilation is also necessary to ripen the nectar harvested in the fields and evaporate the water that it contains.
In Winter, if bees are kept in a dark place, which is neither too warm nor too cold, they are almost dormant, and require very little air; but even under such circumstances, they cannot live entirely without it; and if they are excited by atmospheric changes, or in any way disturbed, a loud humming may be heard in the interior of their hives, and they need almost as much air as in warm weather. (**621**).
**367**. If bees are greatly disturbed, it will be unsafe, especially in warm weather, to confine them, unless they have a very free admission of air; and even then, unless it is admitted above, as well as below the mass of bees, the ventilators may become clogged with dead bees, and the colony perish. Bees under close confinement become excessively heated, and their combs are often melted; if dampness is added to the injurious influence of bad air, they become diseased; and large numbers, if not the whole colony, may perish from diarrhoea. Is it not under precisely such circumstances that cholera and dysentery prove most fatal to human beings? the filthy, damp, and unventilated abodes of the abject poor, becoming perfect lazar-houses to their wretched inmates.
**368**. We have several times examined the bees of new swarms which were brought to our apiary, so closely confined, that they had died of suffocation. -In each instance, their bodies were distended with a yellow and noisone substance, as though they had perished from diarrhoea. A few were still alive, and although the colony had been shut up only a few hours, the bodies of both the living and the dead were filled with this same disgusting fluid, instead of the honey they had when they swarmed.
In a medical point of view, these facts are highly interesting; showing as they do, under what circumstances, and how speedily, diseases may be produced resembling dysentery or cholera.
**369.** In very hot weather, if thin hives are exposed to the sun's direet rays, the bees are excessively annoyed by the intense heat, and have recourse to the most powerful ventilation, not merely to keep the air of the bive pure, but to lower its temperature.
Bees, in such weather, often leave, almost in a body, the interior of the hive, and cluster on the outside, not merely to escape the close heat within, but to guard their combs against the danger of being melted.
**370.** Few novices have an adequate idea of the danger to heavily laden combs from heat, especially if the cluster of bees, outside, happens to obstruct the entrance, by hanging in front of it. In the Summer of \(18^{--}_{77}\), we have seen whole rows of hives, which were exposed to the sun's rays, in a large apiary, "melt down" almost simultaneously,--causing a loss of hundreds of dollars,--for lack of sufficient ventilation, owing to the clustering of the bees in front of the entrance.
**371**. After one cenh breaks down, the leaking" honey spreads over the botton-board, runs out of the entrance, daubs the bees, and prevents further ventilation; then the rest of the combs fall pell-mell on one another, crushing the brood, the queen, and the remaining bees. It is utter destruction.
**372**. In very hot weather, the bees are specially careful not to cluster on new combs containing sealed honey, which, from not being lined with ecooons, and from the extra amount of wax used for their covers, melt more readily than the 'breeding-cells.
**373**. Apiarists have noticed that bees often leave their honey-cells almost bare, as soon as they are sealed; but it seems to have escaped their observation, that this is absolutely neecessary in very hot weather. In cool weather, they may frequently be found clustered among the sealed honey-eombs, because there is then no danger of their melting.
Few things are so well fitted to impress the mind with their admirable sagacity, as the truly scientific device by which they ventilate their dwellings. In this important matter, the bee is immensely in advance of the great mass of those who are called rational beings. It has, to be sure, no ability to decide, from an elaborate analysis of the chemical constituents of the atmosphere, how large a proportion of oxygen is essential to the support of life, and how rapidly the process of breathing converts it into a deadly poison. It cannot, like Liebig, demonstrate that God, by setting the animal and the vegetable world, the one over against the other, has provided that the atmosphere shall, through all ages, be as pure as when it first came from His creating hand. But shame upon us! that with all our boasted intelligence, most of us live as though pure air was of little or no importance; while the bee ventilates with a philosophical precision that should put to the blush our criminal negleet.
It is said that ventilation cannot, in our ease, be had without cost. Can it then be had for nothing, by the industrious bees? Those ranks of bees, so indefatigably plying their busy wings, are not engaged in idle amusement; nor might they, as some shallow utilitarian may imagine, be better employed in gathering honey, or superintending some other department in the economy of the hive. At great expense of time and labor, they are supplying the rest of thecolony with the pure air so conducive to their health and prosperity. What a difference between them and some human beings, who, "if they lived in a glass bottle, would insist on keeping the cork in!"
Inpure air, one would think, is bad enough; but all its inherent vieleness is stimulated to still greater activity by air-tight, or rather _lung-tight_ stoves, which can economize fuel only by squandering health and endangering life. Not only our private houses, but our places of public assemblage are often either unimproved with any means of ventilation, or to a great extent, supplied with those so deficient, that they only
"Keep the word of promise to our ear, To break it to our hope."
Men may, to a certain extent, resist the injurious influences of foul air; as their employments usually compel them to live more out of doors: but alas, alas! for the poor women! In the very land where they are treated with such merited deference and respect, often no provision is made to furnish them with that first element "if health, cheerfulness, and beauty, beaven's pure, fresh air.
OINERVING Hives.
**371**. For nearly a century, hives have been in use containing only one comb, instead on both sides by glass. These hives are darkened by slutter, and, when opened, the queen is as much exposed to observation as the other bees. Mr. Langstroth discovered that, with proper precautions, colonies can be made to work in observing-hives, even when exposed continually to the full light of day; so that observations may be made at all times, without interrupting by any _sudden_ admission "f light, the ordinary operations of the bees. In such hives, many intelligent persons from various States in the Union have seen the queen-bee depositing her cogs in the eells, while surrounded by an affectionate circle of her devoted children. They have also witnessed, with astonishment and delight, all the mysterious steps in the process of raising queens from eggs, which with the ordinary development would have produced only the common bees. Often for more than three months, there has not been a day in our apiary, in which some colonies were not engaged in rearing new queens to supply the place of those taken from them; and we have had the pleasure of exhibiting these facts to bee-keepers, who never before felt willing to credit them.
**375**. An Apiarist may use the box lives a whole lifetime, and, unless he gains his information from other sources, may yet remain ignorant of some of the most important principles in the physiology of the honey-bee; while any intelligent cultivator may, with an observing-hive and the use of movable-frames, in a single season, verify for himself the discoveries which have been made only by the accumulated toil of many observers, for more than two thousand years.
"An opportunity of beholding the proceedings of the queen, in hives of the old form, is so very rarely afforded, that many Apiarists have passed their lives without enjoying it; and Reaumur himself, even with the assistance of a glass-hive, acknowledges that it was many years before he had that pleasure."--(Bevan.)
Swannerdam, who wrote his wonderful treatise on bees, before the invention of observing-hives, was obliged to tear hives to pieces in making his investigations! When we see what important results these great geniuses obtained, with means so imperfect, if compared with the facilities which the veriest tyro now possesses, it ought to teach us a becoming lesson of humility.
The sentiments of the following extract from Swammerdam, ought to be engraven upon the hearts of all engaged in investigating the works of.God:
"I would not have any one think that I say this from a love of fault-finding"--he had been criticising some incorrect draw ings and descriptions--"'my sole design is to have the true face and disposition of Nature exposed to sight. I wish that others may pass the like censure, when due, on my works; for I doult not that I have made many mistakes, although I can, from the heart, say, that I have not, in this treatise l assigned to mislead."
**376**. This live is a simplified form, but Mr. D. F. Savage suggested a still more simple one, by making the top so narrow as not to conceal any of the bees, and leaving off the shutters entirely, to replace them with a dark cloth thrown over the hive. But this cloth can be used only when the hive is established inside the house. Its main advantages are to do away with the noise and jar of opening the shutters.
**377**. A parlor observing-hive of this form may be conveniently placed in any room in the house; the alightingboard being outside, and the whole arrangement such that the bees may be inspected at all hours, day, or night, without the slightest risk of their stinging. Two such hives may be placed before one window, and put up or taken down in a few minutes, without cutting or defaeing the woodwork of the house.
An observing-hive will prove an unfailing source of pleasure and instruction; and those who live in crowded cities, may enjoy it to the full, even if condemned to the penance of what the poet has so feelingly described as an "endless meal of brick." The nimble wings of the agile gatherers will quickly waft them above and beyond "the smoky chimney-pots"; and they will bear b the halmy spoils of many a rustic flower, "blushing unseen," in simple loveliness. Might not their pleasant murunrings awaken in some the memory of long-forgotten jays, when the happy country child listened to their soothing music, while intently watching them in the old homestead-garden, or rovel with them amid pastures and hill-sides, to gather the flowers still rejoicing in their "meadow-sweet breath," or whispering of the precious perfumes of their forest home?
"To me more clear, congenial to my heart,
One native charm than all the gloss of art;
Spontaneous joys, whcre nature has its play.
The soul adopts and owns their first-lorn sway;
Lightly they frolie o'er the vaeant mind,
Unenvied, unmolested, unenfined,
But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade,
In those, ere triffers half +their wish obtain,
The toilsome pleasure sickens into pain;
And e'en while fashion's brightest arts decey,
The heart distrusting asks, if this joy."
## Chapter 5. Handling bees.
The Honey-Bee Capable of Being Tamied.
**378**. If the bee had not.sueh a formidable weapon (**78**) both of offense and defense, many who now fear it might easily be induced to enter upon its cultivation. As the present system of management takes the greatest possible liberties with this insect, it is important to show how all necessary operations may be performed without serious risk of exciting its anger.
Many persons are unable to suppress their astonishment, when they.see an Apiarist, with the help of a little smoke, opening live after hive, removing the combs covered with bees, and shaking them off in front of the hives; forming new swarms, exhibiting the queen, transferring the bees with all their stores to another hive; and in short, dealing with them as if they were as harmless as flies. We have sometimes been asked, whether the hives we were opening, had not been subjected to a long course of training; when they contained swarms which had been brought only the day before to our apiary.
We shall, in this chapter, show that any one favorably situated may enjoy the pleasure and profit of a pursuit which has been appropriately styled, "the poetry of rural economy," without being made too familiar with a sharp little weapon, which speedily converts all the poetry into sorry prose.
It must be manifest to every reflecting mind, that the Creator intended the bee, as truly as the horse or the cow, for the comfort of man. In the early ages of the world, and indeed until quite modern times, honey was almost theonly natural sweet; and the promise of "a land flowing with milk and honey" had once a significance which it is difficult for us fully to realize. The honey-bee, therefore, was created not merely to store up its delicious nectar for its "win use, but with certain propensities, without which man could no more subject it to his control, than he could make a useful beast of burden "f a lion or a tiger.
**379.** One of the peculiarities which constitutes the foundation of the present system of management, and indeed of the possibility of domesticating at all so iraseible an insect, has never to our knowledge been clearly stated as a great and controlling prineiple by any one before Mr. Langstroth. **It may be thus expressed** :_.1 _honey-bee when heavily laden with honey never volunteers an attack, but acts solely on the defensive._
This law of the loneyed tribe is so universal, that a stone might as soon be expeeted to rise into the air, without any propelling power, as a bee _well_ filled with honey to offer to sting, unless crushed or injured by some direct assault. The man who first attempted to hive a swarm (**12S**) of bees, must have been agreeably surprised at the ease with which he was able to aeconplish the feat; for it is wisely ordered that bees, when intending to swarm, should fill their honey-bags to their utmost capacity.
They are thus so peaceful that they can easily be secured by man, besides having materials for commencing operations immediately in their new habitation, and being in no danger of starving, if several stormy days should follow their emigration.
**3S0**. While swarming, bees issue from their hives in the most peaceful mood imaginable; and unless abused allow themselves to be treated with the greatest familiarity. The hiving of them might always be conducted without risk, if there were not, _occasionally_, some improvident or unfortunate ones, who, coming forth without a sufficient amount of the soothing supply, are filled instead with the bittedaring to meddle with them. Such thriftless radicals are always to be dreaded, for they must vent their spleen on something, even though they perish in the act. (**S1**.)