A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive / With an Abstract of Wildman's Complete Guide for the Management of Bees Throughout the Year

by William Augustus Munn

The person who intends to erect an apiary, should purchase a proper number of hives at the latter end of the year, when they are cheapest. The hives should be full of combs, and well stored with bees.

The purchaser should examine the combs, in order to know the age of the hives. The combs of that season are white, those of a darkish yellow are of the previous year; and, where the combs are black, the hives should be rejected, because old hives are most liable to vermin and other accidents.

If the number of hives wanted were not purchased in the autumn, it will be necessary to remedy this neglect after the severity of the cold is past in the spring. At this season, bees which are in good condition, will get into the fields early in the morning, return loaded, enter boldly, and do not come out of the hive in bad weather; for when they do, this indicates that they are in great want of provisions.

They are alert on the least disturbance; and by the loudness of their humming, you can judge of their strength. They preserve their hives free from filth, and are ready to defend it against every enemy that approaches.

But the better plan is at once to commence with new hives, and purchase the first and strong swarms to put into them, and introduce them into the bee-house.

There are various substances found in a hive, such as the wax, with which the combs are built, the honey, the farina or pollen, with which the bee-brood is fed, and propolis.

Honey, is a fluid or semi-fluid substance, the materials of which are collected by the bees, from the nectaries at the base of the corollæ of flowers, where this vegetable production is secreted.

It cannot be said to be a purely vegetable production when found in the combs, for after being collected by the insect by means of its proboscis, it is transmitted into what is called the honey bag, where it is elaborated, and, hurrying homewards with its precious load, the bee regurgitates it into the cell of the honey comb. It takes a great many drops to fill a cell, as the honey bag when full does not exceed the size of a small pea.

When the cell is full, it is sealed up with a mixture of of wax and pollen, and reserved for future use in winter and spring.

Wax. There are several varieties of this substance, but bees-wax is a secretion of that insect from its ventral scales. With this substance the comb is constructed; it takes the bees, according to Huber's account, twenty-four hours to secrete the six laminæ of wax in the wax pockets, which may be seen to exude between the segments of the under side of the abdomen of the bee. For the purpose of the formation of wax, the bees have to cluster and form themselves into festoons from the top of the hive, and after the elapse of the necessary period, the wax scales are formed, with which the bees commence immediately to build their combs, and the various cells for the reception of the brood or food, according to the season of the year.