A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive | Page 7

made of materials that will secure its durability.
These observations apply equally to the straw hives, boxes, or whatever
the bees may be lodged in or hived. Some cultivators of bees have been
chiefly anxious to promote their multiplication, and to prevent the
escape of the swarms in their natural way, by forming artificial swarms,
by separating a populous hive previous to its swarming, into two parts,
and allowing to each greater room for the construction of their works.
Others, and the most numerous class, have contemplated only the
abundance of the products which they yield, and the facility of
extracting them from the hive, without showing any particular
solicitude as to the preservation of the bees themselves. Another class
of apiarians have, on the other hand, had it more particularly in view, to
facilitate the prosecution of researches in the natural history and
economy of bees.
Then, again, amongst apiarians a diversity of opinion exists regarding
the system to be adopted in the management of the hives, whether the
bees are to be kept in single hives, caps or bell-glasses, and extra boxes,
which may be added at the top, which is called the storifying system; or
inserting additional room at the bottom, called nadering; or whether

adding boxes at the sides, called the collateral system, should be
followed out; and a plan of ventilating the boxes has been added to the
last system, but experience has proved that it is utterly useless, as in
spite of ventilating tubes and thermometers, the bees have swarmed,
and the queen-bee has deposited her eggs in the collateral boxes and
destroyed the purity of the honey.
No successful plan has been yet devised to ventilate the combs where
the bees cluster; for the bees prevent the circulation of the cold air
amongst the combs by immediately forming themselves in thick rows
at the bottom of the combs; and instead of ranging the fields to gather
honey or pollen, have to collect together and idle away their time to
retain the necessary heat for the formation of the combs, or to rear their
brood.
As a single hive, Huber's leaf-hive is certainly the best; but it requires
great attention, and none but experienced apiarists can use it for the
purpose of trying experiments; but in the hands of experienced apiarists
it is invaluable. All other single hives are objectionable, as neither the
proceedings of the bees can be observed, nor the honey taken out,
without either destroying the bees, or driving them out with smoke by
which much of the brood is killed; or if rainy weather occur at the time
the bees are preparing to throw off a swarm, and the hive be filled to its
utmost limits with comb, all the bees must remain idle till the return of
fine weather for want of room.
To meet this objection, some apiarians have straw-hives with flat
wooden tops made, or use boxes, and have holes cut in them at the top,
so that small glasses may be added, when the bees require room. But
this does not prevent swarming, and besides, the flatness of the roof is
prejudicial, as it allows the moisture which exhales from the bees to
collect in the roof, and to fall in drops at different parts, to the great
injury of the subjacent contents of the hive, and, like the common straw
hive or square box, the bees cannot be examined, except partially
through the windows made in the sides.
To remedy this evil, the further plan of storifying hives or boxes, was
introduced, and by this method swarming may to an extent be

prevented, and the wax and honey can be taken without destroying the
bees; and with the same view was introduced the collateral system,
which is adding room at the sides (of course preserving a free
communication between the boxes and hives). But there are objections
to the collateral system, as it is now a very well established fact, that
partitions of any kind are detrimental to the prosperity of the bees; and
the same applies, though perhaps in an inferior degree, to the storied
system, or hives and boxes divided into stories one above another;
besides that which holds good equally to all hives or boxes, that it is
not possible to proportion the hives in all cases to the magnitude of the
swarms, or the energy with which they labour.
In single hives the honey becomes bad and discoloured from being put
into the old breeding cells. In double storied, or collateral hives, the
bees are divided, and live in different families; while their own
preservation, and that of the brood, requires them to live in the strictest
union; the heat also necessary for the secretion of wax is lessened by
the division of