Pettitt also constructs a wooden hexagonal hive; but he uses the top as a mere cover to the glasses, and of course perforates the top with four holes, on which he places the glasses. If he will adopt my amendments, he will give us a hive in all respects perfect. First, he must use the top half purely as a super for the honey available to the master. Secondly, he must make half-a-dozen parallel slits from front to back, with corresponding removable slides, made by a rabbet-plane, to be withdrawn in May, when it is desirable that the bees should ascend, and to be reintroduced when the super is full and is to be removed. From this hive I would banish glasses entirely.
I have introduced six slides into this hive, the ends of which are shaped as shown in the following drawing. On removing the slides, very small ones, about an inch long, must be substituted, to prevent bees coming out at the apertures. On removing the super or top half in July, the little slides are removed in succession, and the long ones introduced, in order to shut off the connection between the upper hive, or bee-master's portion, and the lower, or the queen's. When you remove your portion, a zinc plate eighteen inches square is pressed in between the upper and lower boxes, and the upper carried away on it. But this is not always necessary, as I will subsequently show in describing the Ayrshire hive.
I prefer the hexagonal shape, not from any theory, but from practical experience; and if this hive can be constructed at less expense, it will prove alike popular and profitable. Its price maybe reduced by substituting a plain glass window in each section, with a slide shutter instead of door and hinges, retaining all its seasoned wood and thorough workmanship, while lessening its merely decorative features.
The hive-box I have found unfailing in results is the Scotch or Ayrshire hive. It is octagonal in shape; the lowest box is six inches high, and rather wider than a large common straw hive. There are three octagonal boxes in all, the top of each having parallel slits from back to front, with slides corresponding, and withdrawn when required. In May, you place your first super box on the top of the lowest or stock hive, fitting and corresponding in all respects; you withdraw backward each slide, introducing as you do so a little slide about an inch in length, to prevent the egress of the bees behind. There is no possibility of escape in front, from the end of each slide being filled up by the wood of the box.
As soon as this first super is filled, you place on it another, or third; withdraw the slides on the top of the second as you did from the top of the first, and let the bees ascend still higher. A small glass window in each, with a sliding shutter, enables you to report progress. At the honey harvest, you remove each super as I have previously directed; and it must be a very bad summer that does not end as the bee-master would prefer.
Of all straw hives. Neighbours' is the most beautiful and lasting. With the super hive lifted up, you see three bell-glasses on the flat top of the stock hive, the zinc slides being withdrawn. The cost is thirty shillings. Preferable to three glasses is one flat glass, about six or eight inches deep. Bees prefer united to separate action in treasuring up their stores. But either with three small glasses or one large one, it is a very elegant and serviceable hive.
The collateral system of bee-hives has, however, many able and enthusiastic advocates. Nutt is the great advocate, if not the inventor, of this bee-box. As a system for ventilation and facility of deprivation it is unrivalled. His collateral hive, suitable to be placed in a bee-shed, is as below.
