[15] The beautiful open or Franklin stoves, manufactured by Messrs. Jagger, Treadwell and Perry, of Albany, deserve the highest commendation: they economize fuel as well as life and health.
[16] Dr. Scudamore, an English physician who has written a small tract on the formation of artificial swarms, says that he once knew "as many as ten swarms go forth at once, and settle and mingle together, forming literally a monster meeting!" Instances are on record of a much larger number of swarms clustering together. A venerable clergyman, in Western Massachusetts, related to me the following remarkable occurrence. In the Apiary of one of his parishioners, five swarms lit in one mass. As there was no hive which would hold them, a very large box was roughly nailed together, and the bees were hived in it. They were taken up by sulphur in the Fall, when it was perfectly evident that the five swarms had occupied the same box as independent colonies. Four of them had commenced their works, each one near a corner, and the fifth one in the middle, and there was a distinct interval separating the works of the different colonies. In Cotton's "My Bee Book," there is a cut illustrating a hive in which two colonies had built in the same manner.
[17] I have often spent more than ten minutes in opening and shutting a single frame in the Huber hive, and even then, have sometimes crushed some of the bees.
[18] The scent of the hives, during the height of the gathering season, will usually inform us from what sources the bees have gathered their supplies.
[19] If they cannot obtain it, the Apiarian must himself furnish it.
[20] The queens taken from such hives may be advantageously used in forming artificial colonies.
[21] Bevan.
[22] Bevan.
[23] A bee, a few days after it is hatched, is as fully competent for all its duties, as it ever will be, at any subsequent period of its life.
[24] Report on bees to the Essex County Agricultural Society, 1851.