leaving the colony to the discouraging feeling that they are in a large,
empty and desolate house, a divider should be run down into the hive,
and they should be confined to a space which they are able to warm and
defend, and the rest of the hive, until they need its additional room,
should be carefully shut up against all intruders. If this operation is
judiciously performed, the bees will be powerful in numbers, long before
the weather is warm enough to develop the bee-moth, and they will thus
be most effectually protected from the hateful pest.
A very simple change in the organization of the bee-moth would have
rendered it almost if not quite impossible to protect the bees from its
ravages. If it had been so constituted as to require but a very small
amount of heat for its full development, it would have become very
numerous early in the Spring, and might then have easily entered the
hives and deposited its eggs among the combs, without any let or
hindrance; for at this season, not only do the bees at night maintain no
guard at the entrance of their hive, but there are large portions of
their comb bare of bees, and of course, entirely unprotected. How does
every fact in the history of the bee, when properly investigated, point
with unerring certainty to the power, wisdom and goodness, of Him who
made it!
If there is reason to apprehend that the combs which are not occupied
with brood, contain any of the eggs of the moth, these combs may be
removed, and thoroughly smoked with the fumes of burning sulphur; and
then, in a few days, after they have been exposed to the fresh air, they
may be returned to the hive. I hope I may be pardoned for feeling not
the slightest pity for the unfortunate progeny of the moth, thus
unceremoniously destroyed.
Bees, as is well known to every experienced bee-keeper, frequently swarm
so often as to expose themselves to great danger of being destroyed by
the moth. After the departure of the after-swarms, the parent colony
often contains too few bees to cover and protect their combs from the
insidious attacks of their wily enemy. As a number of weeks must elapse
before the brood of the young queen is mature, the colony, for a
considerable time, at the season when the moths are very numerous, are
constantly diminishing in numbers, and before they can begin to
replenish the exhausted hive, the destroyer has made a fatal lodgment.
In my hives, such calamities are easily prevented. If artificial
increase is relied upon for the multiplication of colonies, it can be so
conducted as to give the moth next to no chance to fortify itself in the
hive. No colony is ever allowed to have more room than it needs, or more
combs than it can cover and protect; and the entrance to the hive may be
contracted, if necessary, so that only a single bee can go in and out,
at a time, and yet the bees will have, from the ventilators, as much air
as they require.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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