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52 CHAPMAN'S HANDY-BOOK

she is in the old hive and no notice is taken of the change
in that case, and the two may be left quiet till the evening,
when, a little before dark, the entrance to the new hive
may be opened, and the imprisoned bees immediately fly
out to seek their queen and find their way to the old hive.
The new one may now be removed with its contents, sub-
stituting another empty one in its place, and repeating that
exactly as was done before. As no queen will lay eggs
in a temperature below 80 degrees, and if the new hive is
maintained below this, there is no danger of any such re-
sult. She will, on the contrary, remain in the old hive to
lay her eggs, where the workers also will deposit their
pollen from the flowers to form the bee-bread for the grubs,
while in the ventilated hive nothing will be stored but the
finest wax and honey.

Feeding.
In this country the bees are generally, I am thankful
to say, able to feed themselves all the year round, and
lay up a surplus for their master likewise; so that I
shall not say much on this head. There is hardly any
season, at least in the northern parts of the island, in which
the bees do not work nearly all the year, as there is a per-
petual succession of flowers in the woods; so wherever a
bee master has a hive which is dwindling away, he had
better unite it to its next neighbour; rather than attempt
to restore its vigour by feeding. Indeed, in nine cases out
of ten he will find that the loss of the queen, and not a lack
of honey, is the cause of its failure; and after uniting the
bees, as explained, he will have several pounds of honey,
and at least a pound of wax. Unite, rather than feed,
when you have your apiary fully stocked. But as there
are three or four circumstances under which feeding may
be required even in this country, I must not altogether
pass the subject by; and they are these: When you have
only one stock hive in your apiary, and some accident has
happened to it; the combs, perhaps, have all been broken
down by clumsiness in moving it to its new station. In
this case nothing is easier than to feed it by placing before
the hive, on a fine day, the honey combs which have fallen.