TAKING HONEY BY MEANS OF DIVIDERS.
After having noted the utility of Dividers, in adding fresh empty boxes, the reader will readily perceive their importance in the removal of full ones, when the period arrives for depriving a colony of a portion of its honey. In this case, the two dividers must be introduced between the middle board of the box to be removed and the box below it, precisely as in nadir hiving. In the act of deprivation a little more force will be required to push in, as well as to withdraw the divider, as it will generally have to pass through a portion of honey-comb. The above directions apply to the removal of an upper box, which will in general be the first for which they will be required. When any other is to be taken away, the plan of proceeding must be varied, but it would be tedious to give directions for every case; an intelligent operator by an attention to the instructions already given, and his own reflection, will be able to adapt his mode of proceeding to the particular exigency. Only one divider should be introduced till the situation of the queen be ascertained: if she be in the box intended for removal, the divider must be withdrawn, and the experiment tried again in a week or two. If in an hour after the introduction of the divider, the bees in the box intended to be taken should exhibit symptoms of inquietude, it may be assumed that the queen is not within that box, the disturbance being caused by the anxiety of the bees to have access to her; whereas if she be in the box, the bees in company with her will be tranquil, and the excluded portion of the family will be in a state of commotion. Having, we will suppose, ascertained that the queen is in the desired place, the second divider should be introduced as before directed, when the box, with one of the dividers underneath it, must be removed. The apiarian, when performing this operation for the first time, may find it convenient to raise a stage of empty bee-boxes or other convenient articles, on one side or at the back of the box to be removed, and upon a level with the bottom of its middle board; he can then, after having introduced the dividers, very easily slide the full box, with its middle board and divider, over his temporary stage. (This mode of proceeding may likewise be found applicable on other occasions.) The operation having proceeded thus far, the box is ready for being applied over the hole of delivery, where a floor board should be placed with its sliding shutter open, and with an uncovered empty box upon it. (If the full box were itself placed upon the floor board, stranger bees might smell the honey and become very troublesome intruders:—this is the reason why an empty box is interposed betwixt the full one and the floor board.) The full box and middle board, with the divider underneath them, being raised upon the empty box and the divider withdrawn, a portion of the bees will immediately sally forth, to join the family from which they have been separated. I say a portion, for notwithstanding their attachment to their queen, they will not all quit, without reluctance, so great a treasure as a box full of honey; if any of the combs contain brood also, this reluctance will be increased. When therefore the bees issue slowly, the sliding shutter should be closed, and re-opened in a quarter of an hour. This short imprisonment will produce some impatience and restlessness, and consequent eagerness to be set at liberty; and on re-opening the shutter there will be a fresh sally: this method must be pursued, at similar successive intervals, till all or nearly all the bees have quitted the box; should a few still remain, the box, towards evening, may be taken out of doors and the stragglers brushed out upon a board or cloth, with a wing, and placed upon a support near the entrance to the stock; those that are not injured by the wing will soon find their way in: thus will the whole operation be completed. But if the upper story be taken, it will be obvious that either an empty box or a top board must be placed over the stock.
If this method of deprivation should fail of success, some other course must be pursued. Mr. Isaac’s plan promises well. After removing the box from the stock, he used to confine his bees in it, till their anger and agitation had rendered their prison so hot and uncomfortable, and probably so unwholesome, by the deterioration of the air, that they were glad of an opportunity to quit it, which he soon afforded them. Unscrewing the top of his box, and introducing a divider underneath it, he placed an empty box over the full one, and opened a communication between the two, by withdrawing the divider. At the same time he gave an additional impulse to the ascent of the bees by drumming smartly upon the sides of the full box. When the bees were entirely or nearly gone, he took out either the whole of the combs or such as contained honey without brood, proceeding according to the directions given in page 163. There is another resource, in the method uniformly practised by Mr. Keys, viz. that of fuming, which is effected by placing an empty box over the full one, in the manner described above, and expelling the bees with the smoke of burning puff balls, probably that of woollen rags would answer as well, though Mr. Keys relies upon the stupifying quality of the puff balls, which however, he says, is in a great measure lost if the balls be kept more than a year. The operation may be afterwards finished in the usual way.
Where straw-hives are used, or where boxes are surmounted by them, a very simple method of taking the honey, without destroying the bees, was adopted by J. F. M. Dovaston, Esq. a Salopian gentleman. I will suppose that he took off the hive with a middle board and divider underneath it; he then inverted it upon a kettle of hot water, fitted to receive the hive without any part sinking into the water; the whole being surmounted by an empty box, and the divider withdrawn: in ten minutes the heat so annoyed the bees, that they were heard marching, magno cum fremitu, into the empty hive. In a few minutes, when all was quiet, the divider being introduced again, the hive was replaced by the box containing the bees. Mr. D. found that on this plan not a single bee remained among the combs. I see no good reason why a similar practice should not be adopted with boxes or Moreton-hives; in this case the water in the kettle should be heated gradually by a chaffing-dish, and the box or hive should have a perforated divider under it, like that for uniting stocks: the empty box had better communicate with the open air, lest the heat of the steam should be intolerable to the bees. Having the top unscrewed would probably answer the purpose, as it could then be easily pushed on one side. Dr. Evans, when he could not readily dislodge the bees from the box, had recourse to Dr. Warder’s plan of placing it over an inverted empty box, that contained a lighted sulphur match, the fumes of which stupified the bees’; and on the upper hive being rapped, they fell down in a state of insensibility, but soon revived and joined the family, by the usual entrance. The fumes of sulphur answered as well as those of the narcotic fungus recommended by Thorley and Keys, which it is sometimes difficult to procure and troublesome to prepare. Immersing the bees in cold water would answer, with a glass or earthenware hive. Dr. Evans was led to adopt it in consequence of reading Wildman’s account of Madame Vicat’s method of clearing her bees from vermin, by plunging them in water. The chapter on Bee-maladies contains some remarks on this subject.
At the commencement of my apiarian inquiries, I felt that there was a want of more minute information than is given by Keys; and others with whom I have conversed upon the subject, have had the same feeling: this has induced me to enter into a descriptive detail of the whole business of super-hiving, nadir-hiving, and deprivation. Those who are in possession of "The ancient Bee-master’s Farewell," will perceive that I have made some alterations in the boxes of Keys and some additions to them: the principal of these are the sinking of the entrances in the floor boards, instead of having them cut in the lower edges of the boxes; having fixed bars upon the tops of the boxes, instead of Keys’s loose ones, and the use of middle boards. The first was my own suggestion, the two last were improvements made by Mr. Walond. Entrances made in the floor boards enable the apiarian to place his boxes upon the boards in whatever direction he chooses, and render sliding shutters in the upper boxes unnecessary. The loose bars were inconvenient, from the bees attaching their combs to the sides of the boxes, which they almost always do, as well as from their attaching every comb to two or three bars. The middle boards facilitate the introduction of the dividers, secure the apiator against the effects of any little irregularity in the adaptation of the boxes to each other, at the time of adding or taking away, and form a good foundation for a superstructure of cell-work; for sometimes the bees depart from their usual practice of suspending their combs from the roofs of the boxes, and build from below upwards.
It is the usual custom in this country, to sacrifice the lives of the bees, in order to get possession of their stores. This is generally done in September, by setting the hive, late in an evening, over lighted brimstone matches, placed in a hole dug in the earth; the soil being quickly drawn round the hive, as well to prevent the escape of any of the bees, as to confine the sulphurous gas. In about a quarter of an hour, if the hive receive a few smart strokes on its sides, the bees will be found to have dropped insensible into the hole, where they are immediately buried; otherwise they would revive, such of them at least as were not singed or otherwise injured by the fire. The heaviest and lightest hives are usually selected for the purpose, the former as yielding most profit, the latter as being unlikely to survive the winter.
If, after a hive of bees has been suffocated, the apiarian wish to search for the queen, the best mode of doing so is to lay the whole of the bees on white paper, or in water on a white shallow dish, and examine them singly; her colour upon the back is not so remarkably different from that of the workers as to be very striking; but on looking at the under part of her, she will be immediately recognised.
I adverted to this latter mode of robbing bees of their treasure in [Chap. XIV.] and there quoted the lamentation of Thomson at their fate. For this humane appeal, he has been thus apostrophized by Dr. Evans.
“And thou, sweet Thomson, tremblingly alive
To pity’s call, hast mourn’d the slaughter’d hive,
Cursing, with honest zeal, the coward hand,
Which hid, in night’s dark veil, the murd’rous brand,
In steam sulphureous wrapt the peaceful dome,
And bore the yellow spoil triumphant home.”