CHAPTER IV.
Method of placing the small Hive,[4] Box, or Glass upon the Improved Cottage Hive, by which means fine Honey may be obtained, without destroying the Bees.
[4] To avoid repetition, we shall in future use the term, "Box," to express any receptacle employed to obtain honey on the improved system, whether it be in wood, glass, straw, or any other material.
At the end of April, or very early in the month of May, take the moveable piece of straw, from the top of the Improved Cottage Hive, ([fig. 3.]) and place it upon the adapter, ([fig. 5],) then put the Box or small Hive ([fig. 7, and 4]) upon this adapter and cover the whole with a milk-pan, to defend them from wet. A glass may be used instead of the small Hive or Box, with equal success, providing it be covered with something that will effectually exclude light; a cover of straw, is perhaps, preferable to any other.
When the Bees are beginning to work in a glass, a cold night generally obliges them to forsake their newly made combs, sends them down into the hive, and compels them to discontinue their labours which are seldom resumed till the middle of the next day; to prevent this delay I would recommend the space between the glass and its cover to be filled with fine tow or wool, the temperature of the glass being thereby kept up, and the Bees enabled to carry on their labours without interruption.
Experience has proved that the milk-pan is the best of all protections for a hive, provided it be six inches in diameter larger than the hive itself.
When the Box is filled with honey and the combs partially sealed, or when the Bees are seen to cluster at the mouth of the Hive at nine or ten o'clock in the morning, let no time be lost in lifting up the Box, and placing between it and the Stock-hive another Box with a hole in the top; the adapter ([fig. 5]) will be found very useful in this operation. It is necessary to use this precaution at all times, but more especially in a rainy season as a greater disposition amongst the Bees to swarm then prevails. "Dry weather makes plenty of honey, and moist, of swarms."[5] However incorrect this position may at first sight appear, the attentive observer will quickly become convinced of its truth.
[5] Purchas on Bees.
Since the publication of the first edition of this little Treatise, many persons have said to me, "their Bees would swarm, although the small hive had been placed on as directed above, and sometimes after they had commenced working in it," the reason for which in my opinion is, that the second small hive was not supplied soon enough, for the like has never in a single instance occurred with my own Bees. I have not had a swarm these twenty years from any of the hives worked upon the Depriving System, occasionally I have compelled a hive to swarm, to fill up a vacancy in my number, where the Queen has died, or some other accident destroyed the stock.
The population of a hive increases rapidly in April and May, and consequently the internal temperature rises in proportion, a very high temperature causes swarming, (Mr. Nutt says 130°) although the Bees may have abundance of room—I have frequently seen a glass lamp that has no opening at the top, placed upon a hive, and the result has been that the Bees swarmed before they had filled it.—If both room and ventilation are carefully attended to swarming may be prevented altogether, and that the one may be as completely under the control of the proprietor as the other, I would recommend Mr. Taylor's Ventilator, which I believe, to be a perfect one, for when properly arranged it will reduce the temperature of a hive at the swarming season, from ten to twenty degrees in a few minutes—I would recommend its insertion in the top of the small hive, box, or glass, before it is placed upon the larger one.