A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing BeesWeeks, John M. (John Moseley)
Science
A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees
Weeks, John M. (John Moseley)
Bees
Rule VIII. On supplying swarms with Queens, when necessary, 38
Rule IX. On multiplying colonies to any desirable extent,
without swarming, 42
Rule X. On preventing the depredations of the moth, 43
Rule XI. On feeding, 56
Rule XII. On wintering, 60
Rule XIII. On transferring bees from one hive to another, 60
XIV. General Observations, 65
MANUAL, &c.
RULE I.
ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF A BEE-HIVE.
A bee-hive should be made of sound boards, free from shakes and cracks; it
should also be planed smooth, inside and out, made in a workmanlike
manner, and painted on its outside.
REMARKS.
That a bee-hive should be made perfect, so as to exclude light and air, is
obvious from the fact, that the bees will finish what the workman has
neglected, by plastering up all such cracks and crevices, or bad joints,
as are left open by the joiner. The substance they use for this purpose is
neither honey nor wax, but a kind of glue or cement of their own
manufacturing, and is used by the bees to fill up all imperfect joints and
exclude all light and air. This cement or glue is very congenial to the
growth of the moth in the first stages of its existence.
The moth miller enters the hive, generally, in the night--makes an
incision into the glue or cement with her sting, and leaves her eggs
deposited in the glue, where it remains secure from the bees; it being
guarded by the timber on its sides. Thus, while a maggot, (larva) the moth
uses the cement for food until it arrives so far towards a state of
maturity as to be able to spin a web, which is more fully explained in
remarks on Rule 10.
The size of a hive should be in accordance with the strictest rules of
economy, and adapted to the peculiar nature and economy of the honey-bee,
in order to make them profitable to their owner.
The lower apartment of the hive, where they store their food, raise their
young bees, and perform their ordinary labors, should hold as much as a
box thirteen inches and one half or fourteen inches square in the clear.
If the hive is much larger than the one described above, with the chamber
in proportion, which should hold about two-thirds as much as the lower
apartment, the bees will not be likely to swarm during the season.
Bees in large hives never swarm; and those in hives much less than the one
already described, do but little else than raise young bees and lay up a
sufficient quantity of food to supply them through the coming winter, and
are more liable to be robbed.
All hives of bees that swarm are liable to swarm too much, and reduce
their colonies so low in numbers as to materially injure them, and is
frequently the cause of their destruction by the moth, which is more
particularly explained in remarks on Rule 2.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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