THE inveterate use of the common straw hive, with its fire and sulphur application in autumn to its unhappy inmates, is deeply to be deplored. No humane man can look on the straw hive, rotting on a stand, wasted and worn by wind and rain, covered with a brown earthenware basin, under which vermin breed and multiply, and doomed to brimstone and bee-cide, without feeling it is a penal settlement, or cell of doom, for subjects unworthy of it. There is nothing picturesque or pleasant about it, and the moss of age and usage even of a thousand years fail to beautify it.
A bee-shed is an absolute necessity; it may be rough and coarse, and badly put together, but it cannot and must not be dispensed with. I will assume, in the first instance, that the cheapness of a common straw hive—a rough one costing sixpence, a better a shilling, and a very excellent one eighteen-pence—brings it within the reach of a very poor cottager. On this assumption I proceed to show how he can make the best of a bad house. Placed in his shed with a good swarm in May, it is likely in a good year to be full by the end of June. He must then have ready a good thick board—say three-quarters of an inch or an inch in thickness and twelve inches square, with a round hole in the centre about three inches diameter, perfectly smooth and bevelled in the lower edge of the hole. On this he must have ready a small straw hive with a piece of glass, four inches by three, fastened into the side, in order to see inside; but if he can afford it, still better, a bell-glass or garden-glass, with a woollen nightcap drawn over it, to keep out the light and keep in the warmth. Let this stand ready by him behind the bee-house, about twelve o'clock at noon. He must then take a sharp table-knife, and quietly and fearlessly cut a hole in the top of the hive, about three inches in diameter, and having removed the top by taking hold of its straw loop, he is to place the board with its super over his hive. The smoother he makes the cutting the less trouble will the bees have, and the sooner they will ascend. If the weather still proves friendly, he may have five or six pounds of beautiful honey before the middle of August, and there will be abundance for his bees in the stock hive during winter. The way to remove the super is this:—Get a zinc plate, with sharp edges, some fourteen inches square, press it quietly between the super and the board, laying the left hand on the super and pressing with the right, taking care not to disturb the board on the hive, which the bees will have fastened down. Carry off the super with its bees and honey, laying another board over the hole. Place your super, with the zinc plate below it, at fifty or a hundred yards' distance from your bee-shed; edge up the super about two inches from the plate after it has stood still an hour. The bees will fly out in succession and make their way straight home, and not one will turn on you to sting you. It seems then and there, and in so new circumstances, to dawn on their minds for various reasons, that their proprietor is merely taking his portion in consideration of the care he has bestowed; or, like a mob without a head, they lose all sense of order, self-possession, and organisation, but, unlike a Belfast mob, they rush home out of harm's way.
The Common Straw Hive.
The same hive, with central hole and perforated board, and small straw super or cap.
A small straw super, with glass window, to be placed on the common straw hive.
Common straw hive, with top cut off for board and bell-glass.