“Novice” tells us to “have every comb built between one and the side of the hive” in order to have them straight, but it won’t always work unless the old combs have brood or sealed honey at the top. I have had the old combs widened out so as to fill the whole space, and nothing put in the empty frame at all. I believe this will always happen if empty frames are inserted immediately after extracting. The remedy is, use the Standard hive, move back the division board just to give room for one frame at a time, move back the combs till you come to the middle of the brood nest, insert the empty frame there, and, Ho! you will have the whole frame nearly filled, with nice worker comb, and eggs too before morning perhaps. This should only be done when the bees are gathering honey nicely.
Ila Michener, Low Banks, Ont., Can.
If it is only yourself that reads Gleanings, they might easily be kept nice “in a drawer,” but we confess that we felt rather flattered a short time since in visiting several bee friends, to find the last number at one place conveniently on a stand with a pair of spectacles laid on the pages to keep the place, and at another the number, (although it had only been out a week) looked as if some urchin had used it for a spelling book during a whole term at a country school. It certainly had been used, and we went our way rejoicing. Friend Ila is right about strait combs, and we thank him for the correction. But beware of spreading the brood combs however, before the weather is quite warm.
Mr. D. Dubois, Newburg, Orange Co., N. Y., sends us an ingenious plan for a movable portico to be applied to any kind of a hive. It is made of two boards 4×11 inches, fastened together at the top like a letter A. Now imagine the horizontal cross bar on this letter, a button, with a screw through the centre to hold it up firmly to the hive, and you have it all. Each end of this button is made with a projection that enters a slot cut in each of the boards, but not quite through them. By boring a hole just above the button, we have an upper entrance, with the button for an alighting board; in the winter by turning this button perpendicularly, it closes the upper entrance. To keep the portico from slipping down, a nail is driven just underneath the peak. This allows us to make the upper and lower story just alike and yet have a portico if any body wants one. After testing hives with, and without, for two seasons past, we really cannot think it makes any difference either way with the honey crop. Our friend Dean says a portico encourages the bees in hanging out of doors, and he wants his bees in the hive. Now if the spiders should persist in making a new web in these porticos every morning, as they sometimes do in ours, we can easily lift them off and put them away. Some will probably always prefer porticos, while others will not, as in other things.
DEAR NOVICE:—Please say to the inquisitive ones, through “Gleanings,” that the $34.45 mentioned on front cover of No. 6, Vol. 2, was the cost of the iron work mentioned in the same sentence, at the factory.
That the saws, bolts, belting, and lumber ran the bill for materials up to about $48.00.
That I put the machine together myself, without adding to the figures.