Page:Jardine Naturalist's library Bees.djvu/188

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184
MANAGEMENT IN SPRING.

be an opening along the whole front three inches high. Rest the edge of a board, two or three feet square, on the floor of the hive; on this board place the common hive, into which the bees have been received on swarming; give a smart stroke on the top, and the bees will fall down; remove the common hive, and they will hurry as if for shelter into the other, and in a few minutes the whole will be ensconced in their new habitation. Should they linger longer than is convenient, a puff or two of smoke will cause them to ascend with great speed. A guide-comb must be fixed in this hive, before peopling it.

Since this work was ready for the press, the writer has seen a Treatise on Bees, by Mr. Nutt, a gentleman of Lincolnshire, in which he describes and recommends a hive of his own invention. It consists of three boxes, placed collaterally, each twelve inches square and nine inches deep. The central one, which is, somewhat affectedly called "the Pavilion of Nature," constitutes the grand breeding apartment; while the other two, to which there is access from the pavilion by horizontal openings made in the ends for that purpose, form the chief honey magazines. In the management of this hive, the pavilion is left untouched, and the wings, or collateral boxes only appropriated. When the population of the central box, at the beginning of summer, has increased to such a degree as to raise the internal temperature to 100 degrees of Fahrenheit, the slides inserted between the centre and end boxes are drawn up, and access to the latter given to the bees; by which means the temper-