Humanity to Honey-Bees: or, Practical Directions for the Management of Honey-Bees Upon an Improved and Humane Plan, by Which the Lives of Bees May Be Preserved, and Abundance of Honey of a Superior Quality May Be ObtainedNutt, Thomas
Science
Humanity to Honey-Bees: or, Practical Directions for the Management of Honey-Bees Upon an Improved and Humane Plan, by Which the Lives of Bees May Be Preserved, and Abundance of Honey of a Superior Quality May Be Obtained
On the 26th of June 1826, I suffered a colony of Bees to swarm, in order
to prove the truth of the foregoing statements. It was a very fine
colony: the thermometer had been standing at 110 for six days previously,
in one of the collateral end-boxes; on the eighth day it rose suddenly to
120. I was then forcing my Bees to leave their home; I could have lowered
their temperature, and by so doing, I could have retained my worthies in
their native boxes: but I was then about to prove a fact of the greatest
moment to apiarians. On the ninth day, at half-past twelve o'clock,
the finest swarm I ever beheld towered above my head, and literally
darkened the atmosphere in the front of my apiary. After remaining about
five minutes in the open air, the Queen perched herself upon a tree in
my garden, where she was exposed to the rays of a scorching sun; but
her loyal subjects quickly surrounded her, and screened her from its
influence. I immediately did what I could to assist my grand prize, by
hanging a sheet before it, to ward off the intense heat of the sun. I
allowed the Bees to hang in this situation until the evening. During the
absence of the swarm from the colony, my full employment was to watch the
parent-stock, in order that I might, in the evening, return the Bees of
this beautiful swarm to their native-hive, which they had been forced to
leave. Curiosity and a desire to solve a doubtful problem, for the good
of future apiarians, led me to act as already related, at the expense
of much inconvenience to the Bees. The remaining Honey-Bees continued
labouring during the remainder of the day; and in the evening of that
same day, the thermometer was standing at 90 degrees in the old stock; so
that the absence of the swarm had lowered the temperature of the pavilion
30 degrees, and I was quite sure I could reduce it in the collateral
end-box to that of the exterior atmosphere, which, after the sun had gone
down, was only 65.
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