Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 May 1875 — Rules in Hiving Bees. [ARTICLE]

Rules in Hiving Bees.

S. J. Parker, M. D., gives the Germantown Telegraph a series of rules to be observed in hiving bees, of which the following is a condensation: 1. Allow no one to stir or make the least noise while ithe bees are lighting. What! Not blow a horn ring a bell or drum on a tin pan or throw dust or water? Not do anything? Yes, reader; iust exactly do nothing but keep still. Now I hard followed this rule in over SOO swarms 1 have hived for myself and others, and I tell you the broad fact, I have never lost a single swarm in all that number. Bees will not go 200 feet from the kite they come out of if you let all be perfectly quiet and there is anything to light on. My bees, not one out" of a hundred swarms go even 100 feet before they always light. So it will be with your bees, reader. So make it a rule to have no stirring, no noise, but all quiet until they are well lighted. Then bring out the hive from the cool cellar—where it has been but a day or two, lest it get damp and moldy— neat and clean, and as yo.u of course have the strips of boards or sticks, boards, hiving-cloth, etc., ready, proceed to place your ladder and platform in the tree or on the ground, and other appliances, so that before the last bee has lit you are ready to hive them. 2. Never put a swarm of bees directly into a hive. You ask whv not? Because if you do the bees may not know it is a hive they are in but only think they have had a slight accident or jar while yet oh their lighting limb hr place. So they will leave the hive and go off to the woods because they don’t know they are hived. Hence you will place the hive so that when shaken off the limb they lit on they all have to creep buzzing into the hive, and all go voluntarily up on the inside of it. Then they will not make the mistake of thinking they are

not hived but will know they have accepted a hive. 3. You need not be very quiet or .alow About making bees go into the hive. You minded the bees till they lit, now is the time to change and make them mind you. So a gentle rudeness in shaking off the limb is as good as saying to them, “ Bees, you have left your lighting-place.” If they don’t go in the hive readily take a dipper or flat piece of shingle or bpard, dip up a few, a pint or so, and shake them roughly close to the hive, as if to say, “ There is the hive, why don’t you see it?” Then brush rapidly,but gently,' the rest toward the hive. 4. As soon as the most of them are in, be ready to remove them to their permanent stand. Thus you avoid the coming out of a second swarm, and the lighting and commingling of two swarms. Thus you get rid, too, of the few bees always uneasy and flying about the swarm, and who doubtless are the ones that find and lead the swarms off to some hollow tree or log in the woods. These bees are rarely over twenty to fifty in number; often not ten of them. 5. Remember to shade the new bive from the sun until the hatched brood is in the new combs.