BEEKEEPING

THAT IS

BREEDING BEES FOR PROFIT

BASED

ON SCIENCE AND EXTENSIVE EXPERIENCE

HE WROTE

DR. T. CIESIELSKI

c. k. University Professor.

II.

Management in the apiary.

PRICE: 5 Koron. — 2 ruto. 50 kop. — 5 rn.

LVIV, 1901.

Published by the author. — Lyczakowska ul. 1. 93.

Principal stock at the Gubrynowicz and Schmidt bookstore

in Lviv.

All rights reserved.

From the printing house of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, under the management of K. Bednarski.

Part two.

MANAGEMENT IN THE APIARY.

Introductory remarks.

In this second part of Beekeeping, we provide detailed information on how to handle bees in order to obtain the highest possible profit from their breeding, for this reason we omit all such inventions, devices and measures that expose the beekeeper to unnecessary expenses and costly tests, and that neither contribute to improving the existence of bees nor to increasing their benefits. Whoever wants to play bees should not take into account the expenses, but whoever wants to make a real profit from the bees should organize their economy in such a way that, with the most economical and appropriate investment, they can increase their work capacity and derive the greatest benefits from it as much as possible.

In order not to repeat ourselves in the course of learning, we point out that this second, practical part is set against the background of the first, theoretical part of the work, so only those who will understand everything well and understand what we are saying here will be thoroughly familiar with the first part of Bartnictwo. i.e. with the nature of bees. As for the expressions we use, it is enough to explain that we call a bee family a swarm; a dwelling in which the family is located, i.e. a hive, we call it a hive; a hive together with the hive settled in it and managed therein is called a trunk, but it should be noted that by the word "trunk" we also understand a family with only the internal structure, i.e. with combs and brood, without regard to the external cover, i.e. the hive; the place where the bees' trunks are placed is called the apiary; the apiary - together with the fence, all beekeeping equipment and the tree trunks - is called the apiary; an apiary fence with an eaves, i.e. a roof with the higher side facing the center of the apiary, is called an apiary fence; the inner part of the apiary, not covered with anything, is called a toque; a building intended for storing trunks during the winter, built either in the ground or above the ground, is called a lockstitch.

§. 1. Arranging the apiary.

Anyone who intends to set up an apiary should first of all look around to see if there are favorable conditions for breeding bees in general; although it is certain that a good beekeeper will be able to derive benefits from bees even in the worst area, breeding bees on a larger scale, for profit and not for personal pleasure, can only be profitable in a better area. It is very difficult to say in advance whether a certain place is more or less suitable for bees, for this you need to have a lot of knowledge, knowledge of climatic and plant conditions, and, above all, a lot of experience.

The best benchmark in this direction are peasant apiaries, most often run without the slightest knowledge; Therefore, if in an area where there are such semi-wild apiaries, and they maintain a fairly constant number of stumps from year to year, you can be sure that this area is completely suitable for bees, and if there are numerous and more significant peasant apiaries, then the area this is very good for the bees, on the contrary, when we do not come across any peasant apiary, we need to be very careful, and even if appearances suggest that it is beneficial for the bees, we should approach the matter with great disbelief and caution, because most often the conditions will turn out to be unfavorable that it will be possible to break them only with great difficulty.

An area very good for bees can be considered as one where trees and honey-bearing plants of one species bloom in larger masses, starting from spring until late summer, such as fruit trees, maples, chestnuts, acacias, lindens, fields of rapeseed, mustard, clover. white, swedish, sainfoin, lyre, saradel, areas of blueberries, raspberries, heather, etc. A good area can be defined as one where melliferous trees and plants do not bloom constantly throughout spring and summer, but bloom only at certain intervals, and occur in a great multitude. Areas where there are many melliferous plants, but they do not occur in large numbers of one species, are less suitable for bee breeding. So that a beginner in beekeeping can have some idea of the number of plants needed for one trunk, he should read carefully the passage on page 146 of Beekeeping, part I.

Choosing a place. Even in an area that science and experience shows us as suitable for bees, it does not matter where we set up the apiary, sometimes a distance of several hundred or even several dozen steps can play an important role, which is why we list here the most important factors that are decisive when choosing a location.

First of all, secluded places should be chosen for the apiary, so that on the one hand the bees are disturbed as little as possible, and on the other hand, they also cause as little disturbance to others as possible; Therefore, if it is possible, they should be placed away from buildings and the road, and if someone is forced to place the bees not far from the road, he should surround them with a fence up to meters high on this side. The apiary should not be placed on a very high hill, because here the bees will suffer from strong winds, and it is difficult for them to carry their load up the hill during the honeycombing period. The most suitable are the southern and western slopes of hills, or an open lowland, provided that it is not wet; in humid places, bees suffer greatly from the cold that prevails in spring, i.e. at the time when they need the most heat for rapid development. It is very beneficial to arrange apiaries in small forests, groves, and clear-cut areas; however, in large forests with old trees, bees suffer a lot from birds, which in the spring, in the absence of other insects, exterminate them in masses, and among tall trees, many bees are destroyed during the harvest time, if they have to collect them outside the forest. The proximity of a spring, a small stream or a river is beneficial for the apiary, but on the other hand, the proximity of a pond, lake or a wide river is very harmful, especially if the bees have to look outside the water for food, because when they return, loaded, they fall in masses into the water with every sharp gust of wind. and they melt; in such a position the trunks will never be strong, and only a strong trunk can bring real benefit. When choosing a place for an apiary, you should also make sure that there are no strong and cold air currents there. This is easy to see if you go out in the evening after a warm day in light clothes, then you can notice that while in some places there is a nice wind a warm breeze, in others there is a cold, annoying air current; such places should be avoided, because there are similar cold air currents almost constantly in all seasons and not only destroy the bees in flight, but also interfere with their normal development in the hives. Finally, the apiary should be arranged in such a way that in direct there was a benefit nearby, i.e. as many melliferous plants as possible should grow nearby; In particular, you should keep an eye on the proximity of the spring harvest, as bees can be transported to the summer harvest. The proximity of large cities, sugar and gingerbread factories, mead factories, breweries, and distilleries is very harmful to apiaries, as bees die here in thousands, and sometimes even the infectious foulbrood disease can be brought to the apiary from robbery.

Preparation of the apiary. Having chosen a suitable place for an apiary, first of all the area must be properly arranged. If the place is a horizontal plane, all protrusions and depressions should be leveled, and if it is a hillside, it is necessary to arrange terraces, i.e. steps, on which the tree trunks can be placed in rows and have easy access to them. Around the apiary, a ditch should be dug at least one meter deep and one meter wide; build a embankment of the selected soil from the center of the apiary, as this will make it more difficult for pests to access it. Honey-producing shrubs and trees should be planted on this embankment. such as: Iwy (Salix Capraea), Buckthorn (Rhamnus Frangula) in a mixed manner, at intervals of one meter from each other, further White willow (Salix alba), Brittle willow (Salix fragilis), Standard maple (Acer platanoides), Sycamore maple [Acer pseudoplatanus), Tatar maple (Acer tartaricum), Acacia ordinary or ever-flowering (Robinia pseudoacacia var. semperflorens), Wild chestnut (Aesculus Hippocastanum). These trees should be planted alternately at intervals of five or six meters from each other. Among these bushes and trees, lungworts (Pulmonaria officinalis) should be sown and raspberries (Rubus Idaeus) should be planted.

In the center of the apiary, plant fruit trees in rows, mainly cherry trees, apple trees and plums (pears grow tall and produce little honey), apple trees at seven-meter intervals, and plum and cherry trees at one-meter intervals. For variety, you can plant gooseberries and currants in rows. By planting the apiary in this way, we will have protection from the winds, coolness desired in the summer and continuous harvest, starting from the first spring until the end of June, that is, until the main harvest begins to appear in the field.

It will be good if we fence the apiary from the inside, i.e. in front of the embankment, with a brushwood fence, over which we can put a straw roof with an eaves outside the apiary. Such a roof should be up to 2 1 and 2 meters high from the center of the apiary, and up to 1 J / 2 meters wide, this will create an ostrzessek, i.e. a protected place for arranging tree trunks, which will then not need separate roofs. The apiary is very desirable in the apiary because, apart from other various conveniences, it allows us to conveniently work on the trunks when it is impossible to work on other trunks standing on the top due to the straw. In the apiary, there should be a lockstitch in one corner on the north side, and a house for the beekeeper in the other, through the hall of which should be the only entrance to the apiary. If, for reasons of transport, the apiary house will not require a different location for the purpose of removing the trunks, it will be best if it is also located on the northern side of the apiary and, due to the risk of fire, away from the beekeeper's house.

The one who will not do much for the bees will be able to plant as many of the above-mentioned trees and shrubs as possible right next to the apiary, or in its immediate vicinity, and also add four species of linden trees to the above, i.e. the small-leafed linden (Tilia parvifolia), the large-leafed linden (lily grandifolia), Silver Linden (Tilia argentea) and American Linden (Tilia americana), which bloom at two-week intervals, i.e. from mid-June through July.

Purchasing trunks. It does get lost sometimes; that someone, whether by donation or by catching a stray swarm, comes to the bees, in such cases he must take what fate has given him and cannot choose; Another thing is that when someone wants to acquire an apiary by purchasing it, he should remember that only bad stumps should be bought, and every penny spent is a waste of money, because instead of comfort and profit, they will only bring him trouble and loss.

Anyone who wants to set up an apiary should first of all become familiar with the most basic principles of the life and nature of bees, and also with the most important aspects of their practical breeding; This knowledge should be acquired not only by those who will be personally involved in running an apiary, but also by those who entrust their apiary to the care of a hired beekeeper, i.e. a beekeeper by profession, otherwise both will pay a heavy tribute to ignorance. How to obtain this knowledge is simple: theory should be learned from a good book, practice can be easily acquired by taking part in activities in any well-run apiary. Therefore, if someone has already become familiar with bees so much that he knows their entire development well, and the buzzing of a bee near his nose does not make him shiver or make him anxious, he can start realizing his intention.

If you want to take care of bee breeding yourself, it is best to start with a small number of stumps, at least you should buy two stumps, and at most 10 stumps. We do not recommend starting with one trunk, because it is difficult for a beginner to avoid any mistakes, so it will often happen that he misses this one trunk, and then all his enthusiasm for bees is ready to die in the bud itself, but with two trunks, he will quickly disappear the first attempt is a winner, because whatever he fails in one attempt, he will fail in the second attempt; It is not advisable to start with more than ten trunks because the initial work with bees is very tedious, and only with prolonged practice do we acquire the necessary skill which makes even the most difficult manipulations not tedious; Moreover, the expense for a larger number of trunks is significant, and in the event of failure, it may happen that only empty hives will remain, which will be difficult to get rid of.

Anyone who intends to run an apiary by a professional beekeeper must, of course, start with a larger number of stumps, otherwise the apiary will not be profitable for a long time, but in such a case it is better to give up income for a few years and invest a lot of capital at once, which may turn out to be in practice, he was thrown miserably. If calculations fail very often in life, it is the bee economy that most often and most easily suffers a similar fate. In this case, we recommend starting the apiary with at least 25 trunks, and at most with 50 trunks, or finally with 100 trunks; an agreement should be reached with the beekeeper so that, in addition to a modest salary, he receives a certain income from the growth of the trunks and the honey obtained; the calculation of the growth of trunks and honey should be completed only after wintering on St. Patrick's Day. Wojciech, that is, April 23.

You should start purchasing the trunks only in spring, after the main flight, and preferably only in the second half of May, when you can easily estimate the condition of the trunk as precisely as possible. It is not worth buying bees in autumn unless you know very well about the goodness of the trunk and the needs and conditions of the overwintering bees, otherwise you can lose everything during the winter. You can also start your apiary by purchasing hives, having prepared the hives needed for this in winter; then you should buy only the earliest swarms, just before the main harvest, i.e. in our area from June 15 to the last; It is not worth buying later colonies, because most often they will not collect enough honey for the winter and we will suffer a loss in the first year.

When buying bees, you need to pay less attention to the price and more to the quality of the stock or the hive; It's better to overpay for a good stock than to get a poor one for half of it. The value of the trunk in different times and areas varies, and it can be best estimated if we multiply the average price of one pound of honey by 30 and add the value of an empty hive. According to this standard, nowadays, for example, the value of a good trunk in a Toivarsity hive, i.e. a Slavic one, is 10 to 12 florins, and in a straight hive from 6 to 8 florins. The value of a swarm in the second half of June is calculated by multiplying the average price of one pound of honey by 20, so nowadays a natural early swarm has a value of 4 to 5 1.

The person who buys a good stump in May will always do better, because by caring for it carefully, he can get a swarm from it in the first year and a good income in honey, while when buying an early swarm, he can only count on some income in honey.

When buying stumps, remember that you cannot buy them within a distance of more than 3 kilometers, i.e. half an hour away, counting in a straight line, otherwise most of the bees would return from the moved stumps to the old place, and the natural swarms would you can also buy them in part, because they do not return to their former place unless they lose their mother. Of course, you could also buy artificial swarms only at the same distance as the old tree trunks, but we do not recommend buying artificial swarms at all, because you can easily be cheated.

If you are not an experienced beekeeper and are not buying bees, it is best to ask a good beekeeper to help you with the purchase and selection of bees. It is safest to buy bees in demountable hives, because here the condition of each trunk can be examined most carefully, but you should be careful not to buy bees in too expensive hives, because it is not the hive, but the strength of the swarm that determines the goodness of the trunk. With the help of a good expert, you can buy bees in non-demountable hives; A beginner in such hives will not be able to properly assess the goodness of the trunk.

As for the breed of bees that should be recommended for purchase, this is irrelevant; the most suitable for our conditions is our native bee, which is both honey-producing and swarming, although, as with all organic beings, there will also be some trunks that are eager to work and more prone to reproduction than others. However, since the entire brood of bees depends on the mother and can be changed in one summer by replacing the queens, any sensible beekeeper can easily transform a brood of lethargic bees into a larger one.

Assuming that the one who takes up the beekeeping profession is first thoroughly acquainted with the first part of Beekeeping, we give here the signs of a good stock only in a summary. Thus, a good trunk, suitable for reproduction, should have: a) a healthy mother, not older than 3 years, b) significant fly strength, c) fully developed combs, with working cells (not drones), d) a sufficient supply of honey. We will most likely assess the condition of the trunk when we dismantle it, which can be easily done by purchasing bees in the second half of May. In a strong, good trunk we will find: <i) at least eight combs of clean wax with working cells, of which at least four combs will be filled in half or wa / 3 of their area with brood at various stages of development, densely standing, b) all eight combs will be covered in black with bees, this means that no bare work will be visible between the bees, c) a queen bee, with a bulging abdomen, which proves that she is still brooding strongly, d) at least 3 pounds of sewn honey, i.e. half of the frame in a Slavic hive, which then the honey will most often be separated on several combs. In a trunk in which we see the brood standing compactly in all stages of development and the eggs in the cells, there is no need to deliberately look for the mother, because the correct state of the brood proves that she is actually in the trunk and that she is healthy. At this time, you can pay less attention to the last condition, i.e. a sufficient supply of honey, because as soon as the trunk is good and strong, you can easily add the missing amount of honey to it at this time.

In the case of beehives that cannot be dismantled, it is difficult to check exactly the internal condition of the trunk, except in the case of bottomless beehives, where by examining the method and carefully bending the combs, it can be examined quite closely; So here it is best to focus on external symptoms. 1 such stumps - strong ones can best be found in the evening in the apiary by listening near the ponds, in such stumps the bees sit calmly in the pond and beat the air with their wings, while you can hear a uniform, thick roar, like the sound of boo! at! at! at! and warm air bursts from the pond. A trunk behaving this way in May is healthy and strong, and others should not be purchased. You can also assess the trunk during flight on a clear, warm day, i.e. between 9 and 11 a.m. A good one will be a trunk in which the bees are walking in droves, that is, they are constantly leaving and arriving several at a time, and the bees returning from the field they carry an abundance of perhas; a trunk from which bees fly out less often or do not bear abundant bees is either weaker or even motherless. At noon time you cannot judge the goodness of the tree by bees, because then it loses, and sometimes the worse tree loses more strongly than the better one. The strongest trunks selected should be bought and taken away immediately so that no change occurs in them, unless we buy from a person known for his integrity.

We repeat once again that it is better to overpay for a very strong stock than to get a poor one for free.

It is almost unnecessary to mention here that the idea that bees acquired after the dead do not prosper is a ridiculous superstition. You should be most careful when purchasing an apiary in bulk, because then you buy both good and bad trunks together, and most often you buy neglected and diseased trunks, because healthy and strong ones are rarely thrown away - no one will get rid of them.

Arranging the stumps in the apiary can be done in two ways: under the point or on the top. In an apiary arranged in the manner described above, it will be most appropriate for some of the trunks to stand on a top, and some under a point. Placing it under a blade is very beneficial for many reasons, namely: the trunks are better protected from salt, wind and cold in spring and from heat in summer; hives here are less damaged; working around the bees is more convenient, you just need to make sure that the trunks are not too dense, but at a distance of at least one and a half meters from each other, otherwise the bees will wander and you will not be able to work around the trunks freely enough. Under the blade, the trunks should stand in only one row and with the eyes facing forward.

It is also best when the trunks are arranged in rows on a toque: however, you should make sure that the trunks are in rows and that the rows are properly spaced from each other, and as much as possible, trees that are not too tall, such as cherry, plum or apple trees. partitioned. Apple trees should be planted in alternating rows at seven-meter intervals, and cherry and plum trees at four-meter intervals. In the middle, between the rows of trees, there will be rows of trunks spaced two or three meters apart, so that the bees will have the desired coolness during the summer heat and will be able to orient themselves easily. A dense arrangement of bees in rows is harmful because when returning from the field, the bees wander and fly to other tree trunks, which may give rise to robbery during a bad harvest; the most harmful thing is the dense arrangement of the apiary because of the young mothers flying out for the wedding ceremony, because it very often happens that such a mother, returning from the wilderness, wanders to another tree trunk and is cut down, which is why in apiaries arranged in this way there are many motherless .

If anyone, due to lack of space, is forced to arrange the trunks more densely, let him place them in mixed rows, two trunks next to each other, with their backs to each other and their eyes facing all four directions, as shown in the enclosed drawing:

This arrangement with the hives are level and open from the abutment, as they are. For example, Slavic hives are convenient because only one roof is needed for each pair of hives. If the trunks are arranged more densely, it is also very beneficial to paint various shapes around the mesh of each hive, such as circles, squares, triangles, etc., with various paints, as this makes it much easier for the bees to orient themselves.

First of all, you should ensure that the trunks are placed as conveniently as possible in the apiary, and it does not matter which direction the eyes are facing, this fact is quite indifferent, but if this condition can also be met, we advise you to arrange the trunks with the eyes. towards the north, because this position of the holes protects the bees from flying into cold and sunny bottoms in winter, spring and autumn, when most bees die. Anyone who claims that the bees placed in such a position will later start flying out into the field during the harvesting season, as for example in the case of ponds located to the east, is wrong, because during the harvesting season and in the warm season the bees escape into the field, regardless of whether the sun shines or not. whether the eyes are covered or not; and, moreover, in summer, when the bees can make the most of the morning time, the first sun rays shine into the eyes facing north, because, as we know, the sun then rises in the so-called great east, i.e. in the north-eastern position.

It is most convenient to place the trunks separately on four stakes driven at least 30 cm deep. into the ground and protruding at least that much above its surface. These stakes should be driven as precisely as possible to the level, which can be easily measured by placing a straight batten crosswise on them, or by using a level, i.e. a water scale, or by using a triangular plumb line. The most durable are oak stakes, but also pine ones, and even those made of other trees will be quite durable if they are first soaked in an iron solution, which we prepare by adding grams to every 10 liters of water, i.e. 1 pound of iron sulfurate, which can be purchased in any trade, and which is also called "dill" or "eisenwytryol". In light, sandy or tory soil, the stakes should be driven deeper, as they may give way under the weight of the trunks. The stakes should be up to 50 cm high. protrude above the ground, because then all work is carried out in hives that are opened from the side, most conveniently. In the case of bottomless hives, the first bottom comes on the stakes, on which the hives are then placed; hives with bottoms are placed directly on stakes; in the case of tall and heavy hives, on the opposite side of the pond, you should also hammer in a ring to which the hive should be tied. We recommend placing all straight trunks, i.e. non-detachable ones, in pairs next to each other, so that you can then use them by making swarms that can be folded into one detachable hive, as in This will be discussed on page 256.

Placing tree trunks on long foundations, i.e. joists, is inconvenient, because when we work on one trunk, we unnecessarily shake and disturb all trees standing on the same foundation. Also inconvenient are short foundations, placed two under each hive, because such foundations never lie quite securely, the hives sway on them, so they easily fall over, and then the positioning of the hive is too low, so working on such a trunk is very tiring. .

The place in front and under the hives is best covered with grass, but it should always be cut short so that bees that accidentally fall into it can easily get up, and so that the beekeeper can notice when something abnormal happens in the trunk, which will most likely happen after the bodies. bees lying in front of the pond. Some people keep the area around each hive completely bare, carefully raking the grass; this is only good if the area is covered with coarse sand, i.e. gravel, otherwise many bees falling in front of the pond, especially during heavy harvesting, will die, as they will be covered with they will not be able to fly to the ground.

In Germany they build so-called pavilions, i.e. more or less decorative houses whose walls are made of beehives. In such pavilions, the trunks are arranged so that the eyes go outside and the valves go inside, so the beekeeper can do all the work while staying inside the pavilion. This device has some benefits, but much more harm, and for this reason we strongly advise against placing tree trunks in pavilions.

The good thing about pavilions is that you can accommodate many trunks in a small area, that the apiary looks beautiful, and that the beekeeper can work comfortably because he is neither bothered by bees inside, flying to the pavilion window, nor is he left hanging by bad weather.

The disadvantage of the pavilions is that the trunks cannot be moved if necessary, that rescue is impossible in the event of a fire, that working inside can easily lead to a general robbery, and that due to the dense arrangement of the meshes, many mothers die while overheats to the poison, that the trunks of the upper floors are always weaker, because the bee, returning loaded with bees, flies to the trunks in the lower floors, that when the trunks are dismantled, many bees are destroyed and fall inside the pavilion, that in the event of foulbrood disease, rescue is difficult, that it is difficult is to regulate the nests so that the bees do not hibernate too warmly, as a result of which the bees squirt out of the ponds in winter, eat a lot of honey, become molten, and in other words, do not hibernate well.

How many trunks can be planted in one apiary? For smaller apiaries this question is irrelevant, but for larger scale beekeeping it is worth considering. Establishing a good apiary requires significant input, so it must be used appropriately; on the other hand, accumulating too many tree trunks in one place is not appropriate. Experience shows that in good areas it is best to have 100 to 200 demountable stumps in one apiary, and 150 to 300 non-demountable stumps, because with such a number of stumps one apiary can be established to perform all activities as conveniently as possible, and only for the duration of the swarm. and honey harvesting needs people to help, and such a number of trunks will be able to use the flight area most advantageously if there are plenty of honey plants nearby. One beekeeper is needed for each apiary, and for larger numbers of apiaries there should be one chief beekeeper, in charge of everything and responsible for all the apiaries. In worse areas, you can either establish smaller apiaries, or during the main honey harvest, you need to move the apiary to several places, placing the trunks as close as possible to each beneficiary.

In any case, it is very advantageous to have at least two apiaries at a distance of 2 to 3 kilometers from each other, because then you can easily help each other both when making swarms and in other cases.

The more difficult question is to answer:

How many apiaries can be established in which area? because it depends strictly on the abundance of melliferous plants. As a general rule, it can be assumed that in a good area there will not be too many apiaries, if they are far from each other, so that for each apiary there will be a circle from 1x / 2 to 2 kilometers in radius, i.e. when one apiary will be 3 to 4 kilometers from the other. kilometers away. So far, we can safely say that nowhere in our country has the land been completely exploited yet and we do not yet have overpopulation of apiaries, but if this were to happen, it is obvious that a struggle for existence would begin, which would always result in apiaries will emerge victorious and will be cared for more carefully.

Multiplying the apiary and the resources needed for this. The most disastrous flaw that especially beginner beekeepers are subject to is the desire to multiply their apiary as quickly as possible; This desire has already caused significant losses for many people, so it will be helpful if we give some advice and warnings here. First of all, we must always remember that only a strong trunk can bring us benefit, while a weak trunk will not only provide no benefit, but will also cause loss. During a friendly honey harvest, a strong trunk will not only carry supplies for its own wintering, but will also accumulate a significant surplus of them, which can or even should be taken away from it at the right time, and whose value is often equal to the value of the trunk itself. A weak trunk, however, will not be able to sustain supplies for its own overwintering nest even in a very favorable year and in a good area, because during a heavy honey harvest there will be relatively many broods in such a trunk and few workers, so that in the best case scenario it will regain its proper strength at the end of the summer, but it will be poor in honey, so if you want to overwinter it, you will have to add extra supplies for the winter, which means you will have to spend a penny unnecessarily to keep it alive.

In a larger apiary, one or another weak trunk is less likely to be damaged, as it can be strengthened with bees or brood from other stronger trunks at the appropriate time; however, in a small apiary it is difficult to deal with this problem without harming other, stronger trunks.

This means that only if you have strong trunks you can expand your apiary with impunity, while if you have weak trunks you should avoid expanding your apiary like the plague. Whoever wants to follow a certain path should only increase the apiary to the extent that the apiary itself provides the means to do so, and whoever increases the apiary regardless of the income it brings, only with the help of constant new contributions, can be prepared for this. that as quickly as he multiplied it, and usually even faster, he would later have to reduce it when, after long vain efforts, it was shown that such a number of trunks had no reason to exist in the given area.

Increasing the number of trunks is not an art at all given today's progress in science, because nothing is easier than creating a new bee colony using one of the numerous methods of making swarms; but to create a new settlement, i.e. a stump, so that it was built at your own expense and could not only sustain itself through your own work, but also bring income to the beekeeper for the effort put into it, that is, the true art of beekeeping. It is completely irrelevant whether we multiply the apiary using natural or artificial hives; It is true that when multiplying by natural swarms the danger is usually smaller, as only well-equipped trunks swarm naturally, but in fact, even if careless efforts are made, the apiary can be ruined by enlarging it too suddenly by means of natural or artificial swarms.

It is best if, after a few years of rushing with the multiplication of the apiary, we stop further increasing the number of trunks for a year or two and wait to see what the apiary can bring to the area without any increase. If the result turns out to be favorable, we can use the income obtained to make further contributions to expand the apiary.

By following this path, we never expose ourselves to losses or unpleasant disappointment, and without having to make any further contributions from the box, apart from those we made for the purchase of the first bee stumps and hives for the first year for the colony, we will find in beekeeping a pleasant pastime and a real source of income, which is an even more important lever for the farm because, with appropriate knowledge, it requires only an extremely small amount of cash.

§. 2. About beehives.

Providing the bees with appropriate housing, i.e. hives, is just as important as properly arranging the apiary. It is true that in a good area, with excellent knowledge, skill and diligence, an experienced beekeeper can take advantage of the bees even in bad conditions; However, an apiary with bad hives will look sad when either the natural conditions or the knowledge, dexterity and diligence of the apiary are not good. Therefore, one of the most important conditions for the good functioning of an apiary will always be a good hive; Therefore, it is the duty of every person who sets up an apiary: to provide the most appropriate hives.

Conditions for a good hive. A good hive must have the following qualities: 1) it should be cheap, 2) durable, 3) of as simple a structure as possible, 4) light, 5) warm, 6) reasonably large, ) comfortable for the bees and the beekeeper.

The cheapness is one of the very important advantages of the hive, especially when breeding bees on a larger scale - for profit, which is what we are talking about here; because whoever keeps bees in a small number of trunks for his own pleasure and entertainment may not care about this condition in the hives at all. The cheaper the hives are, and the conditions are appropriate for bee breeding, the greater the income we will have from the apiary. Due to the fact that the bees provide their own supplies and take care of their own reproduction, the intelligent expansion of the apiary costs us almost nothing more than a little effort and what we spend on the preparation of hives; it is also clear that the more luxurious and expensive the hives are, the relatively lower income from bees we will have.

Let's take the example of three beekeepers who have different structures in their hives and calculate how much income they will have from their bees under equal conditions. One of the niclas breeds bees in bottomless bees or baskets, costing at most 50 cents each, and also has 100 dismountable hives, very cheap, 1 flor. each, in which he places strong swarms only during the honey harvest, i.e. one hive with two baskets. herded, and after harvesting the honey, she deletes these swarms in demountable hives and puts the remaining bees in non-demountable stumps; — the apiary costs a total of 200 tonnes. Dragi has an apiary in the beehive of Slavic straw or wooden beehives, the price of which will be from 2 fl. up to 3 fl.; this one has capital in the apiary of about 600 IU. The third one breeds bees in hives that open from above, the much more expensive device of which costs at least 7 to 8 fl. per piece, so he has up to 1,600 fl trapped in his apiary. Assuming equal income in honey in these apiaries, probably only in fl. from the trunk, i.e. 1.(00 fl. from 200 trunks, the first one will have 500°/ 0, the second 166°/ 0, and the third 62 1/2°/ 0 gross income from the capital invested in the apiary in cash. From and bees bred in all hives that are opened from above will not produce more honey than bees in Slavic hives if they are cared for, for this we solemnly guarantee. will give, if not higher, then certainly under equal conditions the same income as the economy in the demountable hives themselves. Therefore, the above calculation is completely justified.

The relative durability of the hives is also an important condition, because what about hives that could fall apart or be damaged in the event of being knocked over, hit or transported in such a way that the bees would suffer as a result. The most durable hives will be those made from a healthy tree; hives well made of straw and covered with varnish will also be not much less durable; the least durable are hives made of rotten wood.

The construction of the hive as simple as possible is an indispensable condition, because the simpler the structure of the hive, the cheaper and more durable it will be, the more accessible it will be for bees and the beekeeper, the less time it will take to care for bees in it - and time is money.

A good hive should be lightweight so that it can be easily moved from one place to another at any time; and in the apiary there is often a need for this, either when making swarms, when transporting trunks for use, or for wintering in a lockstitch, or exceptionally during raids. If the hive is so heavy that it requires two people to move it, we will often experience great sadness because of it.

The hive should be warm enough so that the bee colony living in it is not exposed to sudden changes in temperature, i.e., so that it can maintain the same temperature without any intensity, regardless of the different heat conditions outside the hive. is needed for proper development at the relevant time; that is, during brooding, about 35° C., and during wintering, about 10° C. This condition will be achieved in the hive when it has walls of such thickness and made of such material that it will be possible to exchange the heat inside and outside the hive only through the eye. , and not straight through the walls. This feature will be especially present in hives made of finely porous bodies, first of all from straw, from rotten wood, and finally from soft wood, especially double-walled hives, the walls of which may be either completely empty or filled with straw, chaff, shives, etc. Since warm air rises lighter, hives opened from the side will always be warmer than those opened from the top. In order to ensure uniformity of heat in the hive, all walls of the hive should be constructed equally, so the mistake is made by those who provide thinner roofs in the hives than the sides, for this reason

Therefore, you should avoid any devices that you can. cause the hives to cool down too much or cause drafts, such as double valves; only the floor in the hive can be made thinner or less airtight, because cool air always accumulates below the pond, and a handful of litter may make the floor warmer.

The hive should be large enough so that the entire activity of the hive can develop properly there. If the hive is too small, then the mother in a good hive will fill almost all the cells with brood in the right season, and the bees will have nowhere to store their supplies for the winter, so they will just sit and brood in vain in front of the pond for some time, until finally, when the When the forces multiply, they will leave the overpopulated abode as a swarm. For this reason, bees in small hives are very prone to swarming, but they collect too little honey.

Although a hive that is too large is not as bad as a hive that is too small, because the bees can always develop their full productive power there, the only thing that may happen is that if the area of the hive is not reduced appropriately for the winter, the bees will be in such large hives do not winter well and, above all, they consume an unnecessary amount of honey in them during the winter. It follows that in the summer the hive should be of such a size that the bees can work properly, and in the winter it should be only so large that the bees sitting in a cluster can maintain uniform warmth in a given space as easily as possible, while having the entire space above them. a supply of honey needed for the winter. Since building unnecessarily large hives would only be a waste, because they would be too expensive and too heavy, we need to determine what size hives are most appropriate to build.

We know from the science of bee nature that during the hottest season, a queen can lay about 2,000 eggs a day,

On average, it must be assumed that over a longer period of time, the brood in the summer lays from 1,500 to 1,800 eggs, and that worker bees need 21 days to develop, so a good queen in a strong trunk needs to have at her disposal about 37,800 cells, i.e. almost six bee-worked combs, 20 cm wide. and at 40 ctm. long; if the queen has so much space for reding, she will completely exhaust all her reproductive power, because having reddened the last cells, she can return to the first ones, which will then be empty of bees. To this space we must also add the number of cells needed to deposit a sufficient supply of honey for the winter, i.e. counting from the end of the honey harvest to the end of May 12, up to 15 kilos, and this amount of honey will fit approximately on six combs 20 ctm. wide, and 40 cm. long ones. Whereas ordinary bee-worked combs are 2.6 cm in size. thick, and they are 1.3 cm apart. therefore, if 12 combs are needed, the depth of the hive would be approximately 48 cm, and if we multiply the width with the height and depth, i.e. 20X40X48 cm, we will get a space of 38 ? / 2 liters, which means that in a hive of such a space the bees will be able to fulfill their task, multiplying properly and collecting the supplies needed for themselves; However, since we breed bees so that they can bear something for us, we must add to the space each trunk needs for its own room, in which the bees themselves and the swarm can comfortably accommodate themselves before they separate from the mother, and honeycombs intended for us as income; For this purpose, you should add at least 10-15 liters. Therefore, a hive can be considered relatively large when it has at least 50 liters of space.

Experience shows that these sizes of hives are indeed sufficient, and only if we count on exceptionally favorable years and hot summer temperatures, it is a good idea to increase the size of the hive to 70 liters so that the bees can have a comfortable room in it. To build even larger hives would be an obvious waste, because even the strongest swarm would not be able to properly use the larger space, and for the sake of cooling in the summer heat it would be impractical to build larger hives, because this can be better achieved by proper ventilation, e.g. .

The hive should be comfortable for the bee and the beekeeper because if we were to build the hives only with the comfort of one side in mind, the other would have to suffer as a result, and in the rational breeding of bees we must also care about not using artificial devices. restrict the free development and innate willingness to work of the bee family, and we should also take care to ensure that we can control the bees' innate tendencies without disturbing them.

The most comfortable place for bees to live is definitely a hole in a living tree, because here they can devote themselves with equal freedom to the multiplication of their colony and to the work of collecting resources, because in the summer they have the desired coolness, and in the winter they can maintain a uniform temperature; Moreover, the uniformity of the combs running from top to bottom without interruption contributes greatly to the favorable distribution of brood and honey. For this reason, the best place for bees to live in is a beehive in a living tree, a beehive in general, and all hives whose advantages are most similar to those of a bee, such as bottomless beehives and straw baskets, or not too large hives in which the combs run uniformly from top to bottom, and whose space is most extended in the direction of height, and in the direction of width and depth almost equal in size. More or less all ulestojaks are like this.

Hives in which the internal space is the largest in terms of depth and smaller in terms of width and height, i.e. the so-called deckchairs, are less favorable for the development of bees, but they accumulate bees in the hive when left to themselves, under equal conditions. , larger honey supplies than in stand hives. This is due to the fact that in deckchairs, due to the short combs and the cold that prevails near the nest extending into the depth, the mother brood is much smaller than in the stand, especially since the bees early on limit the nest by pouring honey over the combs immediately adjacent to it, and even more In a natural way, they stop the mother from growing more red in the honey-friendly season. However, for this reason, bee hives and loungers are less suitable for bee hibernation and breeding than stands.

Therefore, when building beehives, or bee management, we should take care to combine the advantages of the stands and the conditions that make the beehives more beautiful, so that we can get the highest possible benefit from the bees. To achieve this, we only need to arrange the hives in such a way that we can confine the queen in them during the honey harvest, cool the inside of the trunk properly during hot weather, and provide the bees with a sufficient number of combs for honey storage. The first condition can be easily achieved, either by completely removing the queen for the time of the most important use, or by confining her only to a certain space in the hive for this time; we can achieve the second condition by providing an empty, cool space in the hive, and by adequately ventilating the hive using a plug in the ceiling; Finally, we will create the third condition without excessively enlarging the space of the hive by removing the honeycombs filled with honey from the hive and replacing them with empty ones into which the bees will be able to deposit honey again, and for this purpose we will use the most appropriate method of emptying the honey from the honeycombs using honey extractors.

Due to the above-mentioned activities, we should arrange our hives in such a way that we can easily check the condition of each bee and at the same time make changes to the trunk that we consider advisable at a given moment. The less we disturb the bees and the easier we can carry out these activities in the trunk, the more beneficial it will be for the bees and for us. We can achieve this goal most conveniently with demountable hives, i.e. those from which we can easily remove each comb, inspect it and do with it, as well as with the bees, what we deem appropriate. But even in non-demountable hives, with proper arrangement - as we will see later - you can sufficiently control the bees and turn their work to your advantage. However, one would be mistaken who, when arranging demountable hives, would only take into account the convenience for the beekeeper, and not at the same time take into account a place that would be comfortable for the bees in every respect; on the contrary, the comfort of bees should come first in all hives, and only the comfort of the beekeeper come second.

Therefore, the most suitable will be demountable hives that are as close as possible to a beehive made in a living tree, i.e. stands with long, uniform combs that can be removed without unnecessary disturbance to the bees, for this reason the combs must be placed in frames and not be they are only glued at the top to the snozes, i.e. the slats, which take them out together. Snozowy hives, or the so-called Dzierzonów hives, are now a thing of history, and that is why we will not talk about them here at all, because they have as much rights in relation to frame hives as the mud hut built in the ground by our ancestors has in relation to comfortable apartments in palaces.

Material for beehives. The best material for beehives is undoubtedly straw, because it contains air in each of its blades and is the worst conductor of heat and cold; Therefore, hives made of straw do not heat up as quickly as others in the summer, and in the winter it is easiest for the bees to keep the proper warmth there, and therefore straw hives are the most comfortable for the bees. There is only one valid criticism of straw hives, that is, they wear out faster than others, but when we consider the cheapness of the material and the ease of making such hives, this fact does not matter; all the more so because by boarding the outer walls, or only the edges, these hives can be made durable; and if we are not forced to transport the apiary for use, it is enough to stretch the straw outside with varnish to make it more durable. The fact that straw hives are not smooth inside does not matter, because the bees will stretch the walls with putty and smooth them as much as they need. Some people accuse straw hives of being more accessible to mice, but there is some truth in this, although if mice have access to the hives at all, they will tear holes in the tree as easily as in the straw. Straw used to make beehives should be cleaned of ears and twigs.

After straw ones, wooden hives are the best, but empty ones. or double walls filled with straw or other material; Wooden hives with uniform walls are incomparably worse, because they are too cold in winter and too hot in summer, and in any case too heavy. The wood used for beehives should be aged and dried as much as possible, which is why boards from the ceilings of old buildings are very good. Of our domestic trees, the best are needle trees such as: fir, larch, spruce or smerek, and finally also pine, as long as it is not pitch-black; and the deciduous trees praised by many authors, such as linden, poplar, willow, aspen, turned out to be less good in my practice, because the walls of hives made of such wood absorb a lot of moisture in winter, which causes them to sweat and swell; alder, birch, ash, maple, beech, oak are even less suitable.

Many people also praise decayed wood as a very useful material for beehives, but I cannot agree with this opinion, because such a tree also absorbs moisture and swells a lot, only in this case when it comes to making single walls, not double ones, maybe a decayed tree may be used more advantageously than a healthy tree.

Any other materials that are poor conductors of heat, such as cork, pulp, peat, etc., are also good for making beehives, but they are out of the question for large-scale production; materials that are good conductors of heat, such as clay, brick, stone, are downright harmful to the development of bees.

The location and size of the mesh also influence the goodness of the hive; Yes, even a well-built hive may be unsuitable for bees if it has a hole in the wrong place or is of the wrong size. The location of the pond is most favorable if bees can be in its vicinity in spring, autumn and winter, and experience shows that this will happen when the pond is 25 to 30 cm high. away from the ceiling of the hive, because at this distance from the ceiling the bees tend to spread out with the main nest, even when the eye is placed much lower.

The stay of bees in the vicinity of the pond is very desirable for many reasons; firstly, during the spring cold, they can more easily regulate the need for warmth in the hive, either by covering the pond with their bodies or by fanning it in it, then they can more easily protect themselves against pests such as wasps, moths, flukes and defend themselves against the robbery of other bees, o which is not difficult in poor areas, especially in the season when there is no honey harvest; finally, such a location of the pond has a very positive effect not only on the development of the brood, which needs fresh but warm air for its development, which is why we always find the brood in the immediate vicinity of the pond, but also on the overwintering of bees for reasons that are discussed in part I, We have explained beekeeping on pages 171, 184, 209. We can easily see that the bees themselves prefer to choose their own place to fly, if they are given the freedom to choose at all. In a beehive that has a valve along its entire height, i.e. the so-called gap, let's close the pond tightly in spring and leave the gap open for 1 cm. wide along the entire length and wind the bar so that the gap falls towards the former eyelet; we will soon see that the bees will get used to flying out of this gap, obviously at first mainly at the same height as the former pond, soon they will start to fill up this gap in several places, leaving several holes at different heights, but after honey harvesting in the fall, almost all the holes will be sealed. leaving one main one or several small ones, which are almost always located 25 to 30 cm away. from the ceiling.

As for the question: what position should the eye be in considering the course of the combs, we can also find the answer to this in the arrangement of the bees themselves; and so, when we look at the non-detachable hives in which they themselves began to draw wax, we will see that the combs run either completely perpendicular to the eye or diagonally, and the position of the mesh on the side of the combs is only seen time and time again in hives in which the stitch is made very low. We learn from this that the stitch should always be placed so that it reaches the edge of the slices. Some people are in favor of placing a hole on the top of the combs, reasoning that the bees are warmer in winter because the cold air does not get directly into the nest; However, if we consider that with such a position of the pond, the exchange of fresh air in the hive is difficult, and that the bees cannot sit in such a pond, which is desirable for the reasons given above, we will admit that the most convenient and best for the development of the bees is to place the pond on the edge. patches.

All we need to do is find out how far from the rear wall of the hive the eyelet should be. The main factor here is our comfort and the good wintering of bees. If we leave the bees to themselves, they will always arrange themselves in such a way that they will build a nest with brood in the immediate vicinity of the pond, which will later become a winter hibernation bed, and upstairs, at the back and on the sides, they will set up a honey store, right next to this nest, so that the brood nest always has the outline of an elongated ball, i.e. an ellipsoid, which means that when the mesh is placed on the edge of the combs, there will be less honey on the combs that touch the mesh, and more on the combs located further from the mesh. A very strong trunk, about five combs, will occupy the winter bed, so the center of the mesh should preferably lie on the fourth comb, i.e., it should be 12.5 centimeters away from the rear wall, so that the bees can set up the bed on both sides of the mesh equally. stretch out and have at least one honeycomb on both sides of the nest. However, since in winter it is necessary to compress the trunk relatively tightly into a smaller number of combs, in order to obtain a strong trunk, it should be expected that we will cover it with seven combs, i.e. in a space almost as deep as it is wide, with the eye being almost in the middle, bees so under these conditions they will winter best, and whether they go one way or the other for honey during the winter, they will always have a sufficient supply of it, as long as we left them the amount needed for wintering, i.e. about 12 kilos, on these seven combs. With this position of the pond, we will also have the advantage that in spring we will almost always find honey on the last comb from the opening, because the bees usually follow the honey to the back of the hive, where there should be no opening, and therefore it is warmer and quieter there, during inspection. so in spring there will be no need to dismantle the nest and disturb the bees. Some people advise to make a second hole in the hive right next to the floor, which opens only during honeycombing and hot weather, and is mainly used to make it easier for the bees to clean the hive and for cooling, but there is almost no benefit from it, because the hive belongs to the hive anyway. sweep it from time to time, and you can cool the trunk more easily by removing the plug in the fall.

The size of the mesh should be proportional to the strength of the trunk; the stronger the trunk, the larger the mesh; the weaker it is, the smaller it should be; in spring, autumn and winter the meshes should also be smaller than in summer. Since the mesh itself cannot be changed, it must be made of the size it should be at the time when it is to be the largest, and in other cases it should be made smaller using an appropriate device. For a strong trunk during the densest flight, about 16 cm is enough. hole surface; We will achieve this when we make a circular stitch of 4.5 cm. diameter, or when we cut a four-sided mesh measuring 8 cm. length, and 2 cm. height. It is more convenient to make a round eye, because by selecting the appropriate center drill (Gentrumbohrer), you can quickly drill the eye in wooden hives, and carve out the eye in straw hives using a round chisel. 58. shows, bees fly into a round pond more easily because they regulate their flight so that they leave with the upper half and arrive with the lower half. Moreover, there is no difference of such importance as to goodness between the two most commonly used forms of stitches that we should particularly recommend one or the other.

To reduce the size of the meshes, it is best to use appropriately adapted blocks, and each mesh should also have a latch, made of sheet metal or a board, with holes so large that the bee's head cannot get through them, because of the holes, we call this latch a strainer in beekeeping language. ; in the case of round meshes, the strainer should be slid from the top down, and in the case of elongated meshes, from the side. The attached figure 59 will tell us how to arrange such a strainer; A bench should be attached just below the pond, on which the bees returning from the field could sit, which is why we call such a bench a saddle. The saddle can be attached with two nails so that it can be easily attached and removed when necessary (e.g. when transporting tree trunks). If the trunks are wintered on a trellis, it is very convenient to make saddles from two pieces, folded together with hinges as shown in Figure 60, so that one half of the tree can be tilted over the eyelet and thus cover the eyelet during the wintering period. With saddles arranged in this way, you will avoid placing curtains in front of the eyes, which are usually blown away by the wind. Less practical are saddles that reach down to the ground up to the pond in the form of long boards.

Dig. 60. Folding saddle. Construction of beehives.

There are two types of hives, namely: non-removable and removable, i.e. those from which the patches cannot be removed and those from which each patch can be removed and reinserted without damage. Demountable hives are undoubtedly more perfect and more suitable for a skillful apiary, because in them it is easier to control the bees and exploit their work better, but they do not deserve contempt and non-demountable hives, as long as they are properly arranged, because even in them an expert beekeeper can benefit greatly breed bees, and especially if he skillfully combines both of these systems in his apiary, he can achieve the highest benefits with less work and money, as we will show in the following section.

Ul6 non-demountable. The best of the non-demountable hives is, as we have already said above, a beehive built in a live tree, because the sap circulating in the tree during the summer heat protects the bees from excessive heat of the hive walls, and in winter the life processes that occur at this time taking place in a living tree, which results in the slow oxidation of organic matter, protects the interior from the penetration of sharp frosts, and thus makes it easier for bees to maintain a uniform, cool temperature in the nest without much effort. However, a beehive made of a cut tree log does not have these features because it does not allow the beekeeper to have a sufficient insight into the bee farm and is not a special place for bees. Among the many varieties of non-demountable hives, the only ones worth mentioning are those made of straw without bottoms and baskets, as they have almost all the features that a good hive should have, they are the cheapest, of the simplest construction, quite durable, the lightest, the warmest, extremely comfortable for the bees, and very comfortable for the beekeeper. and quite comfortable, at least more comfortable than any other non-demountable hives. And so, without a bottom or a basket, filled with bees, as they are very light, lift them enough to check the honey reserves, and with such skill, you can even assess the amount of honey quite precisely by weighing them on your knee, and the closer you move your knee towards the head to maintain the balance of the bottom of the hive, the relatively larger supply of honey is located under the ceiling. One look from underneath, between the slices, which can even be slightly opened if necessary, will tell us about the strength and condition of the trunk at any time of the year. Activities in an apiary with such complex hives are almost limited to supervision, and only during swarming do they become hectic; the operation is so simplified that one beekeeper is enough for several hundred trunks, which will only need helpers for short periods of time. Abuse or neglect, although not impossible in such an apiary, is so difficult that it rarely happens, even on a small scale, and can be noticed more easily than in other hives. After all, the costs of establishing an apiary in such hives are very low, because straw is almost the cheapest material, and the operation of these hives is very easy. Straw trays can be of various shapes and sizes; they can be either wider at the top than at the bottom, or, conversely, narrower at the top and wider at the bottom, or completely regularly cylindrical. as the attached figure shows. The ceiling of bottomless ceilings is made separately from a board or straw and attached with oak pins. Since these hives, as the name suggests, do not have a bottom, they are placed either on a board, the so-called bottom, or on a shield also made of straw; less careful beekeepers place such hives directly on the ground or on a handful of straw, which is bad, because then the lower rings of straw rot quickly. The bottom is made of straw by taking a handful of straw, pressing it from the side of the ears with the left hand, and with the right hand wrapping the bunch relatively densely with twine or other material, making a roll sufficiently hard; this roller bends immediately during wrapping, so that the straw does not break when making the first circle. Once we have made the roll so long that, when bent in a circle, it gives a circle of appropriate circumference, we sew the beginning of the roll, flattening it to the rest of the roll, as the enclosed drawing shows, and we pierce the roll in 1/3 or half of its thickness with an awl and insert the twine. through the hole made and pull strongly, making sure that one coil adheres to the other as best as possible; In the same way, the roller is made up and sewn further and further, gradually adding new straw, while ensuring that the roller's thickness remains uniform, which can be easily adjusted by squeezing with the hand. When adding straw, be careful to add it partially and not in large portions at once, because then it is difficult to keep the roller uniform; the ears of corn hide inside the roller, there is no need to cut them. When finishing sewing the bottom, you should gradually reduce the thickness of the roller, and after flattening the end so that the last circle falls out evenly, spread it flat and sew it on, taking the stitch a little deeper, as this will result in a greater flattening of the last circle. When you have finished sewing, clean the protruding ends of the straw with a sharp knife or lightly burn the straw. Then, at the end where the head of the hive is to be, a hoop is inserted, which is attached by sewing so deep from the surface that the planted top of the bottom does not touch the hoop. Then, appropriately trimmed snozes, which are 3 cm in diameter, are placed on this hoop. wide, and have nails stuck on the sides, spaced 5 millimeters apart, protruding. Beads of earwax are stuck to the snoses and sealed from above with pins stuck in the straw.

The eye erupts at 25 to 30 cm. from the ceiling with a round chisel so that it reaches the edge of the slices. If you want, you can insert a wooden sleeve into the eyelet and attach a latch to it. Moreover, to narrow the eyes, it is enough to use adapted suppositories with appropriate holes cut out.

Throughout the bottom, in several places, long wooden pins run through the bottom, towards the perpendicular shafts, and serve as a support for the honeycombs. These pins are called snoziki. There should not be too many of them, as they would disturb the bees in their work. One at 25 cm intervals is enough.

The floor of the bottoms should be equipped with a tenon, which may have a rectangular shape in the case of a wooden ceiling, and preferably round in the case of a straw roof. The straw roof is sewn in the same way as the beehive, turning the first turn around the prepared tenon to create an appropriate opening for it.

If we want to make a straw bottom under the bottom, we start sewing it from the inside, first making a thin roll so that it can be bent more easily into small coils, and then a thicker roll towards the circumference. Straw bottoms should be lined with clay mixed with cowwort or plaster to make them smooth, otherwise they will accumulate wax waste, which will create a nest for the fluke. Wooden bottoms are better than straw ones and should be tightened with the floors so that they do not warp.

When sewing bottomless bottoms, rolls of about 5 cm should be made. diameter, and when sewing, be careful to ensure that the roll adheres widely to the roll, which is achieved by squeezing and sewing quite a large part of the previous roll. If, despite this, there are significant depressions between the coils, the bottom of the bottom can be covered with clay mixed with cowstone or plaster from the outside. However, it is better to avoid this, because it will result in heavier bottoms. The bottom should not be smeared with anything inside, because the bees will pull it with putty as thickly as they need. You can also make the rolls thinner and give the icli two layers, which will make the bottom end incomparably warmer and stronger. When making bottoms free-hand in this way, not everyone will be able to finish them neatly, so it is better to prepare an appropriate board on which all bottoms are made of uniform sizes, even and cylindrical.

The most appropriate size of the bottom will be 27 cm. in internal diameter and in height about 75 cm. i.e. when it will have an internal space of approximately 42 liters.

Dig. 63. A tree for sewing bottomless bottoms.

The board for making bottomless boards is made as follows: two round boards are prepared, one of which should be 25 cm. and the second one 24 and a half cm. diameter and 16 posts made of smoothly planed hardwood, 2 cm high. width, cm. thickness, and about cm. length, then posts are nailed to the perimeter of these boards as much as possible at equal intervals so that they stick out at one end by about 10 cm. above a larger board, i.e. 25 cm. diameter, as shown in the attached drawing. In this way, a cage is created on which the bottom is sewn. Sewing is carried out on the protruding ends of the posts, and the sewn bottom circles are slid onto the lower part of the shoe tree. To prevent the straw from getting caught when sliding, the posts must be smooth and protrude above the perimeter of the boards like ribs, for this reason the posts are not sunk into the boards but nailed to their perimeter. Due to the fact that the shoe tree is tighter at the bottom, the sewn bottom can slide off easily. Finally, it doesn't matter if we can accommodate one or two fewer posts in the tree. The posts should be nailed perpendicularly to each board with two nails so that they stand securely and the board does not warp. The first Rothe used similar rules for sewing bottomless bottoms.

Dig. 64. Straw basket a) spigot, b) eye, c) bottom.

The baskets are made in exactly the same way as the bottomless ones, but differ only in that they have a vaulted ceiling and are lower than the bottomless ones, but they are wider, so that their overall outline resembles the shape of a bell, as the enclosed drawing shows. The basket should have at least 150 liters of internal space, and if the bees completely enclose it and it turns out to be too small, then separate straw rings are placed under it, which are attached with iron pins made of thick wire in the shape of [, or with wooden pins. Baskets, as they have no bottom, are placed in the same way as bottomless baskets on wooden or straw bottoms. It is best to place the mesh at 25 to 30 cm. from the top, although the baskets used in the area of the Lineburg moors (Hanoveranja) have holes of only 10 cm. away from the top. The tenon at the top of the basket is also very desirable.

Finally, we should say a few words about the materials used for sewing straw beehives. As for the straw itself, it should be thin, cherry, therefore rye straw is the best, especially from poorer soils, and it can be used either dry or slightly moistened, in the latter case After sewing, the hives should be dried well to prevent them from getting moldy. There is no need to pick the ears of corn, they should always be placed inside the roller so that they do not fall outside, but before use it is a good idea to comb the straw with a long, strong comb to remove weeds and strip the leaf sheaths from the straw blades, as a beehive is made of the combed straw. looks more beautiful. The comb can be made of hardwood, horn, or, preferably, buy an iron one, as shown in the engraving attached here.

You comb the straw a handful at a time, not taking too much at once; having placed a bunch of straw on his knee, he holds the ears firmly with his left hand, and then slowly pulls them with a comb and combs them in pieces, starting from the ears of corn downwards; When combing quickly and carelessly, the straw can easily break, tear or tear.

To sew straw, you can use either medium-thick twine, which should be well-stretched with wax to make it more durable, or dipped in bone and dried, or you can take splits of Spanish reed, which they use to weave chairs, and you can buy them everywhere. Reed splits from the outer part are the best, because they are naturally coated with a silica coating and are therefore the most durable, but splits from the inner parts can be used, which are much cheaper as they are used less for various products. If you cannot get such splits ready-made, you can make them yourself from Spanish reed, which can be purchased in every store. For this purpose, you take rods about the thickness of a finger, split them into two halves with a knife, and then from each half you split off two peripheral strips and one middle outer one, and the middle itself is split again into two inferior strips, because they no longer have outer coating; This way, with enough skill, you can make 10 strips from one rod. You can also use split willow rods to sew beehives, which should be cut in autumn or winter, and which should be wet just before use so that they do not break. Strips from the roots of various trees, especially pine, are also equally useful, but they crumble more easily than others in older hives. Iron wire, when burnt and coated with wax, is also good, but less suitable than the previously mentioned materials.

Bottomless and basket with a movable comb.*) The tangible advantages of the straw bottom and basket, which we have already mentioned, and which we will discuss in more detail in §. 5, where I will try to show how it is possible to simplify the management of a larger apiary in a beneficial way by combining these hives with Slavic demountable hives, which have long made me think about how these ancient dwellings of our bees could be adapted to meet the modern needs of beekeepers.

First of all, I wanted to arrange these hives in such a way that, if necessary, they could be easily and reliably inspected to check the quality of the brood - the mother - and to precisely measure the smaller stocks of honey, as is the case, for example, in spring.

*) I described these hives for the first time in Bartnik progressive in 1881, no. 9. this may be necessary, because larger reserves can be easily assessed by the weight of the trunk itself; and finally, they can be conveniently made into artificial swarms by knocking them out.

After various tests, I came to the conclusion that the bottom and the basket can meet the above requirements if the middle comb can be removed from them without too much difficulty, because there cannot be an agreement on the use of all combs, unless we want them to be simple and therefore practical. replace the structure with any complicated one.

In 1874, I made my first attempts in this direction, which were so successful that the next year I was able to present a bottomless top with an activated middle comb at the Lviv exhibition, planted with bees and completely profitable.

In order to facilitate the combination of bottoms or baskets with Slavic ides in the apiary, it will be most appropriate if they are strictly adapted to the size of the Slavic hive. And so, given this condition, it will be most appropriate if the straw bottom is sewn evenly in a cylindrical shape from top to bottom, not in the way bottoms are most often made, i.e. wider at the bottom and narrower at the top, although even with such bottoms it is possible, as finally we will say, use the middle patch for removal.

Dig. 66. Bottomless with a movable middle patch.

As the attached engraving of such a bottom shows - in which the upper part is cut in half so that its internal arrangement can be seen - it is equally spacious both at the top and at the bottom; the diameter of its space, measured in the center from wall to wall, is 27 cm; its height is 65 or 75 cm; stitch a, comes at 25 ctm. from the ceiling; the same as in the Slavic hive. At the top, under the first roll of straw, there is a ring bc on which there are placed snoziki with spaced nails to attach the patches, as you can better see in the attached second drawing of the basket.

Such a wide bottom will accommodate 7 patches, 5 of which will be larger, and the two extreme ones will be very narrow but thick. The central, largest patch is arranged for removal as follows. First, an exact frame is prepared, which would have 24 ctm inside from e to d and from g to f. space, and was high inside from d to f from e to g 25 cm. Two tiny three-cornered bars, marked in the drawing with the letters l and i, are nailed to the lower strip of the frame, then the frame is lowered into the bottom of the frame, the temporarily nailed upper strip g is torn off, and the sides of it are nailed to the frame bc, making sure that the frame it goes to the very center of the hive and so that it stands perpendicularly, then it is attached at the bottom at the eid with pins or nails inserted into the holes already drilled in its side slats. In this way, we will achieve that the frame will be rectangular and will be positioned exactly in the center of the hive, both at the top and at the bottom, preferably so that the mesh a will fall on its edge. We will call this frame sheath, because it is to serve as a sheath in which the actual frame with the plaster of class will be closed. This frame of class will be 22-7 cm wide and 24 cm high, so it will be as wide as the frame in Slavic hive, and half as high, because the frame of the Slavic hive is 48 cm. high. Whoever uses Slavic hives with hanging frames will place an upper bar with whiskers next to this frame - as with any hanging frame, and these whiskers will rest on the rim bc, while whoever uses standing frames in a Slavic hive will make a smooth frame without protruding whiskers. Two straps should be nailed to the upper bar of this frame so that the frame can be easily pulled out. Two nails with a white, porcelain, semi-circular head are driven into the side slats of this frame from the outside, the type used to nail upholstered furniture, and which can be found in every hardware store. The heads of these nails are marked with small knobs in the drawing, and they serve to ensure that the frame pushed into the sheath has an appropriate distance from it, otherwise the bees would attach the frame's slat to the sheath's slat and it would not be possible to remove it. The frame, recessed into the scabbard, will rest on the bottom on the two triangular ridges nailed to the lower strip of the scabbard, which should be 6 millimeters. high so that the bees have the necessary space to move around and do not stick the frame to the sheath.

If we arrange the sheath and the frame in the hive carefully and without defects only once, we will be comfortable forever, because the frame can be easily pulled up. However, it is also important that the frame always runs in the middle of the sheath when being put in and taken out, and does not move to this or that side to the second comb, as this could damage the queen, the bees or the brood, or at least irritate the bees. For this purpose, after fixing the sheath on each side, 4 wooden pins are driven diagonally into the walls of the hive, next to the slats of the sheath, so that they constitute a path for the moving frame (see the figure at o, p, and below) because between The frame will always fit into the frame easily when the pins are inserted, and these do not allow it to slide either to one side or the other, but always keep it within the boundaries of the sheath.

If the bottom is wider at the bottom than at the top, then you can also use the middle comb in the same way, but you need to be careful to attach the sheath frame precisely at the bottom, which can be easily done by planting a snoop in a suitable place throughout the hive, to the the sheath will then be attached to the bottom, and the space between the sheath frame and the wall of the hive will be filled with wax by the bees. The same can be done in bottoms with a diameter of more than 27 cm. diameter of the middle plaster to be removed, always making sure that the sheath frame is attached perpendicularly and rectangularly in the middle, and that the frame with the plaster always has an appropriate distance from the slat of the sheath frame.

Similarly to the bottom, there is a basket with a movable middle layer, but it only needs to be changed so that it has a convex lid, sewn separately for removal, as shown in the enclosed drawing at A and B. At the top of the lower part of the basket B, in the same way as in the bottom, a wooden hoop is attached, to which a wooden frame is attached, and onto which the hoop is placed, in the same way as in the bottom, with appropriately welded beams, provided with spacing nails on the side. The lid A is attached to the lower part B with pins made of thick wire in the shape of ]. The eyelet of such a beetle should not be lower than the ceiling for 25 cm, because too low a position of the eyelet is definitely harmful to the wintering of bees, as numerous experiments have shown. Lid A can be easily removed from the basket at any time, because bees rarely make combs when the lid is pulled to the snozes, but if this happens, just run a thin wire through the joint, as we usually do when cutting soap, and the combs they will be cut without damage, but you just need to make sure that the wire cuts the slices to the edge; and not on a flat surface, otherwise they could get crushed and the bees would suffocate.

When arranging a swarm in such a bottomless or bottomless shape with a movable comb, you should only be careful to always insert a completely finished comb into the central frame, and stick the beginnings to the snarls so that the bees pull the combs regularly, otherwise it can easily become damaged. maybe they will attach a side slice diagonally to the frame and thus make it impossible to pull it out. In this case, it is best to proceed in such a way that you already have the beginnings of sticking to the snoses, and when the swarm to be placed is already in the basket, you take out a ready-made frame from another well-built bottom, put another one, even an empty one, in its place, and this frame After sweeping away the bees, the brood with brood is placed in the prepared bottom and the swarm is let into it. Thanks to this, we will achieve several things, namely: a) a swarm with brood will settle down faster, b) if its mother dies, it will have enough to raise another one, c) it will find some honey on the comb, which will be used to draw wax faster; d) and most importantly, he will pull the rest of the combs regularly parallel to the one placed in the middle and build the hive in the greatest order.

Everyone will admit that such a movable frame will provide great services in the apiary with non-demountable hives. What is easier than to remove the lid (headrest) and, by extending the frame a little upwards, check whether the bees still have some honey in the spring, whether they have healthy brood or perhaps hunchbacked brood? A review of such a single central frame will give us a complete idea of the condition of the entire trunk at any time of the year, because apart from the fact that this slice, being the middle one and right next to the eye, always presents a picture of the entire trunk, both in terms of supplies and brood, we can also after completely removing this plaster, it is convenient to examine the two adjacent plasters, and if that is not enough for someone, they can also remove these two adjacent plasters together with the snoses, a little towards the center into the empty place, - having previously carefully cut them off from the wall with a knife, - and so the entire trunk above should be subjected to a strict inspection. Besides, this is completely unnecessary, because a review of the middle slice will inform us sufficiently about everything.

Using this movable frame, you can control the bees in a bottomless box or a box in the same way as in a demountable hive. Any repair of an orphaned trunk, whether by adding brood or a nursery stock, can be easily accomplished here. You can also easily replace this comb with another one, richer in honey, in case the trunk is fended in spring.

An extremely important service is provided by such a framework for the economy that we will describe in §. 5th, especially when making roja by tapping. If, after removing the lid, I take out the frame carefully, I will very often find a queen on it, and in any case I have a lot of bees and brood on it, so when I attach this frame with these nailed straps to the bottom of the upturned basket, which I then place in the open position. bottomless and I start knocking from below - having done some dusting - the bees will immediately flock to the basket, following the sound of the bees on the comb attached to the basket.

Knocking out the swarms from the baskets will be done in the same way as in the bottom, with the only difference being that after removing the lid, I first take out the central frame, then immediately replace it with another one, either completely empty or built-in, then attach the lid and open the spigot, which should always be in the lid, I place a high basket in which the removed frame with the brood and bees is attached so that when it is placed on the basket, it will lie right next to the osop hole, and I start knocking out. Finally, I would like to mention that the height of this movable frame in the bottom and the bottom was therefore assumed to be 24 cm, and the higher frame would be very laborious to remove - as I found out for myself when I first tried to insert the entire Slavic frame - and the shorter frame would not us so certain about the condition of the trunk, because it could be completely full of honey, and the mother could only brood deeper. With such a high frame, removing it is still easy and convenient, and there will always be brood on it, because it sticks right to the pond, and finally, two such frames placed on top of each other will create one Slavic frame, which, as we will see later, is a very convenient thing. when settling swarms, from these hives to break hives. The lid of the bottom A shown in the figure may be made of straw or wood, and is attached to the last roll of straw with wooden pins; in any case, it should have a tenon, either of a circular or angular shape.

Demountable hives. In more recent times, when beekeeping has become almost a fashionable activity, there is a strange tendency to invent new and supposedly better dismountable hives. Amateur beekeepers, who most often keep only a few stumps or use other people's hands to work, wonder how to make dismountable hives the most accessible and convenient for themselves, but what they would be like for the bees themselves is usually of little interest. care, it is the ultimate dream of theirs to be able to unfold the trunk with the pressure of a spring so that all its contents lie in the palm of your hand. They have already exhausted all the concepts, because they put into operation all the walls that the hive can have, both the side walls and the top and bottom, they divided the nest with small frames so that each of its parts can be viewed and rearranged individually, but they are not yet satisfied, they constantly sigh for something better, more perfect.

And so: some dismantled hives open from two abutment sides at the same time, so that you can see through the hive as if through a barn door; in others, the hives open from the side to the edge of the combs, so that you can play the frames like a keyboard; in these cases, the bottom of the hive opens and after turning it over, the combs are removed; in those the ceiling opens and the slices are brought up; there are also hives in which both the top and the sides open so that you can get to the combs one way or another; Finally, there are also hives in which five walls of the hive are removed at once, and only the scaffolding remains on the floor, full of tiny frames.

We do not list here all the varieties of demountable hives and the names of their immortal creators, who are always most convinced of the perfection of their idea, because according to our own experience, which we have paid dearly by trying almost every of the praised systems, all these hives have this in common: are convenient for the beekeeper, they are more or less bad for the bees, and especially they are not suitable for hibernating bees in our harsh climate.

Based on many years of tests, we can conscientiously recommend only one demountable hive for breeding bees for profit on a larger scale, i.e. the Uls ?owia?ski hive. This hive meets all the conditions that we place on good hives, and only in terms of convenience for the beekeeper it is somewhat superior to it (that is, only when it accommodates weak or medium swarms) to hives that open upwards and those in which the wall opens. lateral to the edge of the combs, but in terms of comfort for the bees, and especially the certainty of wintering, they are much lower than the ulas ?owi?ski .

To be impartial, we will briefly point out the advantages and disadvantages of both.

When the hives are opened upwards, it is convenient that all activities can be carried out in them standing, and furthermore, when dismantling the nest, you can leave the frames (if the box is larger) moved inside the hive, as a result of which you do not run the risk of the bees or the queen falling to the ground, and that when you take the frames for the honey extractor, you can conveniently sweep the bees straight into the hive box. However, this type of hives have the following inconveniences: a) when dismantling the nest, when the trunk is strong, they hit the bees directly in the eyes of the worker, spread upwards over the frames and then make it very difficult to remove them; b) opening the hive from the top cools down the entire nest very quickly, which may have bad consequences, especially in spring; c) in such hives, the beams of the frames must be so wide to maintain heat that they fit together as far as possible on the sides and top, or at least on the top, when pushed together; if they are not so wide, the gaps between the frames must be closed appropriately wide slats, and the consequence is that frames that fit together in this way attract bees very strongly; the inconvenience of this strong skidding is less noticeable in summer, but in spring and autumn you have to use a lot of force to move the frames apart, which unnecessarily disturbs the bees, and what's worse, when assembling the frames, the putty has to be moved away first if you want the frames to those fit together without any gaps; for this reason, it is generally harmful to dismantle the nest in such hives in late summer, because the bees will no longer nest in the remaining gaps, and the result will be a very poor wintering period and a significant depletion of bees during the winter; d) when such frames are pushed together, many bees get crushed despite the best attention, and the queen can easily succumb to this fate if she accidentally steps onto the edge of the frame bar; e) the nest in such hives must be covered very carefully from the side and above in winter, which is time-consuming and expensive; f) shaking out honey from combs in such frames (especially if they have wide upper and side bars) is very difficult because they break off easily, firstly because the combs in such frames are attached to the eye side in only a few places, and then that due to the protruding bars, they do not adhere to the honey extractor mesh; this defect disappears when all sides of the frame are only as wide as the slice itself is thick; g) the most important disadvantage of hives that open upwards is that their roofs, even if they are carefully made, after some time they get gaps here and there, through which melting water can seep into the interior in winter, seep through the litter or cushions and trickle down between the gaps in the frames for the combs. , as a result of which both honey and combs spoil, and it is not uncommon for water to leak onto a comb on which the bees have settled down for the winter, then the cluster of bees moves away from the leaking comb and is divided into two parts, of which in the most favorable cases, one of them dies, and not rarely both groups of bees divided in this way die for this reason; hibernation of bees in these hives is therefore exposed to more harmful ailments than in any other hives. Finally, a very important disadvantage of these hives is that they must be very expensive, heavy and, due to their complex construction, not durable, which is especially true for their roofs after several years of use.

The same applies to hives that open from the side to the edge of the combs, i.e. frames. Supporters of these hives boast that by opening the flap, i.e. the valve, they can look through the nest without removing the frames, only moving the frames to the side, and further that they can freely remove any frame from the center of the nest without disturbing the others. This brood looks more beautiful on paper and on an empty hive, as in an apiary in trunks properly provided with flies, brood and honey. In this type of hives, there must be a second valve after the first valve, otherwise the hive will be too cold, but this second internal valve will not completely prevent the bad situation, because it is difficult to properly adapt the board to such a large space and there will always be significant cracks which, although the bees will fill in, but when the hive opens in late summer, they will not be able to completely patch out the putty before winter. Therefore, such hives, despite the most careful covering, will be too cold in winter and spring. In these hives, there must also be a second valve board adapted to the side of the combs, which will serve to compress or properly close the nest; this gate board cannot be adapted to the movable internal valve in such a way that it closes tightly enough, and moreover, moving such a gate board, pegged to the walls and thresholds of the hive, is extremely difficult.

And now let's imagine that we are opening such a hive; so we remove the external valve and pry off the internal valve, which, after being placed in a large space with such a force, springs back, we open the entire nest at once, the bees come out of all the streets from between the combs and greet us, usually not necessarily pleasantly. We look into the socket, but there is nothing visible only the side slats of the frames, so we need to move them apart a little, and for this purpose we need to move the rear valve slat away from the frames, which is not easy due to the sticking and awkward position; finally it's done. The frames in these hives are almost always standing, because hanging ones are difficult to adjust; so we move them apart, but again, we don't want to crush the bees and risk the frames falling over, so we have to fasten them with the clinics up. We moved the nest apart and quickly saw what was going on inside, and we cooled down the entire nest quite a bit.

Now we are going to start the laudable removal of any frame from the inside; at the same time, we must pull out such a frame with great care, otherwise, by the slightest tilt, we will crush the bees entering our path, and it may happen that the mother will also meet a similar fate; we finally took out the frame, did what we had to do with it and are starting to put it back in, this manipulation is a bit more difficult than pulling it out, because if we don't want to massacre the bees on the back wall, we have to use double attention and care, and because of the protruding spacer nails this will end there. that if you want to properly insert such a removed frame, you need to move the adjacent frames completely aside on one side and then arrange everything properly. This manipulation can be easily done in an empty hive, but when the frames are loaded with honeycombs and bees are present, such a process of spreading the frames, taking them out and then organizing them is very difficult. Ilameks also do not stand very securely in such a hive, despite barriers and clinics, and therefore you can never be careful enough when transporting such trunks.

From what we have said here, it follows that such hives are not more comfortable than hives that open from the base, i.e. from which the combs are taken out, and are more expensive due to their more complicated equipment, and, most importantly, too cold in winter and spring.

But also for hives opening from the bridgehead, various combinations have been invented, which we will not describe here, because we do not intend to write a history of demountable hives, but we only want to give a description of the hive, which, as many years of tests and experiences have shown, is in our opinion the most appropriate, and no one has ever it will not expose you to any losses, but it will bring you benefits that cannot be achieved in any other demountable hive with such little effort and effort; and such a hive is definitely the Slavic hive.

It is completely unnecessary to dwell on the need to popularize beehives of uniform size in the country; Every owner of a large apiary feels this need only too keenly, and this is proven by the numerous voices that raise this issue at almost every meeting, both here and abroad.

Who is unaware of the difficulties and troubles experienced by those who, by a coincidence, are forced to sell a larger apiary? In such a case, it is difficult to find a buyer, because one wants to buy hives of this type, the other wants to buy that system, and usually it ends with the bees having to be killed for honey, and the hives on which a lot of money was spent used for fuel or sold for next to nothing. . Therefore, keeping bees in hives of various designs is simply a constant loss of capital, in which our country is already too poor. This is not enough to acknowledge the selflessness of beekeepers who, although they used various hives, sacrificed all their imaginations and beliefs for the good of the whole and the country, agreeing to a hive of uniform size and uniform arrangement.

While it is undoubtedly a great merit if someone has invented a good hive and the most appropriate one for his own manipulation, he who sacrifices everything for unity and brotherhood, which he stubbornly insisted on, is incomparably higher in society, since most of the experts and experienced people agreed otherwise. Our history is full of examples of tender fathers sacrificing their most beloved children for the good of the country; the names of such men are preserved forever in grateful offspring; A similar fate will be shared by the history of domestic beekeeping and those who sacrifice beloved children of their own invention for the sake of brotherly harmony, unity and progress.

To satisfy the ambitions and prejudices that, unfortunately, each of us mortals has to a greater or lesser extent, we will also mention that the Slavic hive was never used (as it is) by anyone, either in the country or abroad; rather, it is a work that combines all the good sides of various systems, experienced through many years of practice and supported by theory.

In the autumn of 1875, the General Meeting of the "Galician Beekeeping and Horticultural Society" agreed to present a separate committee selected for this purpose, consisting of Dr. Teofil Ciesielski, the late Konstanty Kluczenko and the late Ferdynand Ku?akowski, after long consultations to adopt a normal beehive, which we called the "Society hive", and later the beehive called the Liski m applicable not only to the members of the Society, to our compatriots in other districts, but also to our Slavic kinsmen.

When recommending the normal hive for distribution, the Society was motivated by the following considerations:

First of all, the recommended hive was to be inexpensive, as simple as possible in its construction, durable, good for wintering and exploiting the work of bees, and facilitating all the work in the apiary that today's progress in bee keeping requires. There is no doubt that by keeping bees in smaller numbers and having a considerable amount of knowledge, skill and time at his disposal, a beekeeper will be able to run an apiary profitably in almost every hive; However, the situation will be different if you have to go around a large apiary and also use helpers. Well, the "Slavic hive", as many years of testing have shown, has fully met all the requirements placed on it and therefore it can be confidently recommended to anyone. Apiaries in such hives, or completely similar ones, number in the thousands and all of them produce the best possible fruit.

The Slavic hive must have the following basic conditions:

1) It is to be a stand with long, uniform frames.

2) Its internal width is to be 24 cm.

3) Internal height of the hive: 64 cm.

4) The height of the frames, including their upper and lower strips, is 48 cm.

5) Width of frames including side slats 22"7 cm. (22 cm and 7 millimeters).

6) The mesh is placed 25 cm from the ceiling. (at the most 30 cm.) closer to the back wall like the valve (e.g. 12'5 cm. from the stove).

7) The hive opens from the bridgehead, i.e. onto the flat of the combs.

Additionally, it is recommended:

8) Giving only one valve, with an overlap, i.e. a rebate.

9) A penstock with a grate plate, which can be closed when not needed. ) Cushion for reducing the socket. ) Pivot in the ceiling. ) Depth of the hive 41 cm. i.e. for ten frames.

What material the hive will be made of is completely irrelevant, in some areas it will be cheaper to make wood, in others to make straw; likewise, the various ways of producing it do not constitute any distinction, as long as the above dimensions are indicated by experience and theory as the most appropriate ones. However, the most convenient beehive will be made of straw, a tree with double walls (filled with straw or other material), or a hollow tree.

The product of this hive is, of course, the same as all four-cornered hives, the so-called Dzierzonów hives. The attached drawing shows us an open Slavic hive.

Dig. 68. Open Slavic hive, with double walls.

Justification of the conditions of the Slavic hive.

Recommended by the Society xii (en is to gain: 1) A stand with long uniform frames. As we know, bees grow stronger in a stand much faster than in a deckchair, because the heat in a stand is uniform, so the queen broods a lot, and the bees can warm up the brood easily; Therefore, with an equal number of bees, the beechair is always more honey, because in a long, large nest the queen will be able to produce less brood, and as a result, on the one hand, less honey will be produced to feed the brood, and on the other hand, there will be more space for making honey. However, we can easily achieve this benefit of the deckchair in a stand if, when the bees are already strong enough, we limit the queen's brood in some way, and we try to make room for the honey storage by shaking the collected honey from the combs with a honey extractor, which will also stimulate the bees to be more energetic. work. Since the use of a honey extractor is necessary if we want to get more profit from the apiary, they cannot be made of snoze combs, but of frames, long and uniform, so that each trunk can be easily examined at a given time and the honey can be quickly shaken out. because everyone will admit that all work can be done easier and faster in a hive with 10 long frames, or, for example, with 20 short frames. One could argue that if the combs are short, it may be easier to build a nest in the trunk if necessary, by choosing either combs with honey or just bees, which can often be very desirable, especially in honey-poor areas; but even in poor areas long frames are advantageous, because as soon as we place the swarm on enough frames according to its strength that it can cover them, it will build them even more easily in the first year if it does not have middle divisions in the frames that would the robots were in the way when pulling; and the late colonies, which one might fear that the robots will not finish, should be given honey immediately after planting, and they will undoubtedly cover entire frames. In this way, we will have a good nest with only bee work, and such a nest will have the advantage over a folded one in that the queen will brood without any problems in the spring throughout the entire frame, while in short frames, due to the break, she will be very reluctant to leave the upper ones. it passes to the lower ones, and from there it broods at an incomparably slower rate. If, when arranging the nest for the winter, the necessary amount of honey were divided into more such long frames than we could leave them, then it will be enough to turn one or the other frame upside down, scratch the capped honey, and place it at a small distance from the rest, and the bees will soon they will select the honey (found at the bottom after turning the frame over) and bring it to the designated nest. So we see that long frames are more advantageous than short ones for many reasons.

2) Years of experience have shown that the most appropriate width for a four-corner hive is approximately 9 inches. However, since the width of 9 inches calculated in centimeters would be expressed as a fraction (23.7 cm), a slightly larger width was assumed, i.e. 24 cm. This difference is so small that the frames of old hives can be used for new ones and vice versa without any damage, thus avoiding the inconvenience that has previously resulted from the use of uneven rulers.

3) The height of the hive is 64 cm, so there will be a distance of 14'5 cm to the bottom of the hive under the frames. (because the frame is to be 1'5 cm away from the ceiling and it is 48 cm high, which makes it 49'5 cm in total.) This distance below the frames is very useful, convenient and even necessary for many reasons. During wintering, stale, bad air and moisture accumulates at the bottom of the hive, so the bees (always sitting higher) have clean air, and the combs, being away from the floor, do not mold or rot. In winter, you can add some mulch here, which will absorb moisture, and in spring, all the dirt will be pulled out with it. When sweeping tree trunks, and especially when sweeping bees from combs during the honey harvest, this space provides excellent services, and in the summer heat it is a cool place for powerful forces. The bees will not build this place with any work, because when using a honey extractor, when the trunk becomes stronger, the queen must be fenced off or destroyed, and under these conditions the bees will not think about building, especially since they will always find empty cells for storing honey when shaking the combs frequently. If you do not use a honey extractor, you can place a plank called a slat under the frames, or use slats if the bees want to build combs further; snoses and those with pieces of wax can be advantageously used for the upper beams when making new frames.

4) The height of the frames (external) was assumed to be 48 cm. This is because, on the one hand, such frames will be large enough to simplify work in the hive, because at this size all floors (floors) are unnecessary, and on the other hand pages made in frames of this size will not have any damage, although they will not be separated by a central bar, which could easily happen if the frames were larger; moreover, the number is 48 cm. corresponds to twice the width of the hive, so it is easy to remember; and furthermore, frames of this size are very comfortable during any manipulation, because they correspond to the natural extension of the hands, which, especially when examining the frames more closely, e.g. behind the mothers or the brood, is revealed by the fact that the hands, despite being held in one position for a long time, do not hang.

5) Outer frame width 22-7 cm. falls out by itself from the given hive width. On each side of the frame (between the frame and the wall of the hive), there must be a space that the bees can comfortably pass through, and again, it must be small enough so that they do not cover it with wax. This space, as experience shows, should be six and a half mm. (Ü - 65 cm.), which makes 13 mm on both sides. (1*3 cm), after subtracting this number from the width of the hive, i.e. 24 cm. The outer width of the frame is 22 - 7 cm.

6) The distance of the pond from the ceiling was assumed to be 25 cm. or it may as well be slightly lower, e.g. 30 cm. A very low pond is bad, because in such hives the bees have a very poor wintering experience, as we showed in Part I of Beekeeping, pages 184 and 209. It is recommended to distance the center of the pond from the rear wall by 12'5 cm, for reasons of overwintering. , as well as for the convenience of separating mothers.

7) In practice, the best hives turned out to be those opened from the narrower side, i.e. from the foothold, so that the combs are taken out flat, not onto the edge, or upwards. Hives built in this way are the cheapest, require the least caution and care, and the bees in them winter best and grow stronger most quickly because the heat in them is uniform.

8) In a Slavic hive it is recommended to provide only one valve, although there are those who would prefer to see two valves in these hives. However, there is no practical reason for these two measures, they only result in inconvenience to the bees. Thus, in a hive with two openings located opposite each other, it will always be colder in winter and spring than in a single opening, the opportunity for robbery will be greater, and the desire to disturb the bees by unnecessary peeking will be more frequent, and how many times will it happen in a larger apiary that it will open valve on the wrong side and this will result in unnecessary work. In the past, two valves were necessary for snoose hives, because it was difficult to remove several dozen small combs from the trunk with one side in case of an urgent need, today, when the built-in combs in uniform frames can be removed with great ease, it is possible to easily remove all the combs with one valve if necessary. .

Only for the sake of spare queens, the construction of two valves could be dispensed with, but even then it is better to have single-valve hives, and only a certain percentage, e.g. 10 percent of the hives should be made in an apiary with two valves, dividing these hives with a permanent board board into larger and smaller parts, in the latter will be placed during the honey harvest with two frames with bees and a queen, so that if one or the other queen gets lost in the apiary, the trunks can be saved with these spare queens.

The valve of the hive should be provided with an overlap, i.e. a rebate, to avoid smearing it with clay; it will be even better if the rebate is covered with an ordinary cloth selvedge. It is not good to make holes in the hive itself and let a valve into it, because then it will get crushed when you close the bees, which cannot be seen inside or swept out.

9) and 10) To separate the queens during the honey harvest, a so-called valve is used, it is only 1 cm. a thin board, fastened with slats so that it does not warp and fits tightly into the hive, and at the top and bottom of the valve, space nails are used just like in frames. In the upper half of the valve, a square or round hole is cut into which a grid plate is inserted so that the bees from both parts can pass to each other when the queen is separated. This grating sheet is closed for the winter with a specially made latch or screw cap. When fencing the queen, it is possible to give 12'5 cm if the mesh is placed. from the rear wall, towards the back of the hive, 3 frames with the mother and behind them the gate slides, which then falls almost in the middle of the mesh, and under the frames from the bottom, a thin, thin a board, the so-called support board, after which the mother should be tightly separated on these three slices. and if there are any gaps, they need to be plugged. The rest of the patches are now used as a valve. Days after this operation, the brood will be covered on this side of the valve, so you can take these frames for a honey extractor. When the queen is separated in this way, the bees go with half of the mesh to this side and the other half to the other side, so merging is easy after honey harvesting. In the half separated from the queen, you can also warm the young queen if you want, because then you can only close the grate plate in the gate, and the bees, having no direct communication with the mother, will set up queen cells here. In such a case, to be sure, you need to put a small board or plate over the pond so that it is divided into two unequal parts on the outside, with the larger part of the pond being the one from which the young mother will fly out to the drone. The valve and supporter also provide us with an important service when compressing the nest in weak trunks, and in winter a valve is placed on all trunks to reduce the area of the nest.

11) The plug in the roof of the hive is very useful, because it provides us with great services both in feeding the bees, in adding the queen, and in cooling the trunk in the summer heat. It should be located above the pond, i.e. closer to the rear wall of the hive, i.e. above the nest.

12) The depth of the hive is recommended to be 10 frames, because a smaller number of frames could be too thin for poorer areas - where, as we know, only very strong trunks should be kept - it would be too thin. Building larger hives for 10 frames would only be a waste of material. If, using a honey extractor, we isolate the queen in three combs in medium-sized trunks (because in strong trunks the queen should be killed), there will be seven combs left behind the shaking valve, because out of precaution it is always a good idea to leave one rear comb untouched and only the remaining six from the valve. take it on a honey extractor, so it will be possible to extract all 6 combs from each trunk at once on the honey extractor.

So the hive should be 41 cm. deep, with 10 frames of 35 cm and 3 cm of valve insertion. and 3 cm for the valve to be inserted. In the case of deeper valves, the hive should obviously be made deeper.

By maintaining the above conditions when making hives, we will achieve the advantage that the work in the apiary, since we will have everything uniformly arranged, will be done quickly, that beekeepers trained in one place can be used everywhere without repeated training, and finally, in the event of sale, capital and labor it won't go badly, which unfortunately often happens these days.

about frames and their placement. The frames are made of strips cut from fir, spruce (Smerek) or larch boards, and ultimately from pine boards, but not tar boards. These slats will be quite strong when they are 6-7 millimeters thick and 2*5 cm thick. wide, if you want, you can use slightly thicker strips for the upper and lower beams of the frames, but this is unnecessary, because the frame should be light, shapely and contain little wood. Slats from deciduous trees are less suitable because they are more susceptible to warping.

Frames can be used in the "Slavic hive" either standing or hanging, it depends on the will of everyone; both have their advantages, and therefore, for reasons of unity and harmony, the Society adopted both frame systems on the basis of subsequent continuous discussions, all the more willingly because Replacing one frame with another does not pose the slightest inconvenience, and standing frames can be easily converted into hanging frames and vice versa; hanging frames can be converted into standing frames; therefore, if either the owner himself or a new buyer of the apiary wants to change the frames, he can do it easily at any time.

Standing frames are nailed smoothly as shown in the enclosed drawing; while hanging frames have a longer upper bar so that, after being nailed down, a mustache sticks out from both sides, by which the frame hangs in the hive. These frames will hang either in joints cut into the side walls of the hive, and then the tendril will protrude 1.4 cm on each side, which will be achieved if the upper bar is cut 25.5 cm. long, or they will hang not in the facades but on slats nailed to the side walls of the hive, and then their upper bars will only be 24 cm long. long. The lower bar of the hanging frame should be trimmed a little with a knife so that it is only 23.8 cm long. long enough to leave shorter tendrils at the bottom after compaction, which would keep the sides of the frame at an appropriate distance from the hive wall so that the bees could pass through them. The hanging stone will look like the picture below. The whiskers of hanging frames should be rounded or even slightly slanted at the top, because this will make them easier to remove from the hive.

First of all, these frames should be carefully made so that they can be used for any hive, which can be easily achieved using two simple devices, the so-called shoe trees. The first tree for cutting logs (fig. A.) shows us a long trough, the sides of which from n to c are exactly 48 cm. long, while the bottom d may be slightly longer for comfort; in the side walls of the trays at b there are notches into which the compartment e slides, and its distance from the end of the sides of the tray c should be exactly 227 centimeters when producing standing frames. When making frames hanging on slats, this distance should be 24 cm, while for frames hanging in slats, two such holes will be needed to insert two compartments, one for the upper bars 25'5 cm from the end, the other for the lower bars 25'5 cm away from the end. 24 cm.

If we want to make frames, we first cut the necessary number of shorter bars (upper and lower), which can be easily achieved by sliding the slats to be cut into the tray up to compartment e, then we cut off more bars of the exact size at once with a saw, be it 22 7 cm. or cm. and 255 cm.; To precisely cut the side bars of the frames, first remove the compartment e from the tray and insert the slats that are to be cut into the rear wall of the tray a; if we now burnt these strips at C; After nailing, the frames would be slightly longer, like 48 cm. This is as much longer as the thickness of the combined bottom and upper strips of the frame. For this reason, we need to first place two pieces of the strip from which the upper and lower bars of the frame are made into the trough at the back wall, and only then push the strips (from which the side bars of the frame are to be made) well and press them evenly. at c. The edge of the sides of the tray (at c) can be provided with a plate to prevent the ball from scratching the sides, which would make the device inaccurate over time.

However, since nailing the frames with your free hand is tedious, we provide here a device, i.e. a frame tree (fig. 70 B), which makes it much easier. This device is a precisely made frame, to the edges of which 2-5 to 3 cm are carefully attached. protruding thresholds a, a and b, so that the distance from a to a is exactly 48 cm. the distance from & to b was 22'7 cm, and the central space was exactly rectangular. We insert the bars cut in the first machine (two longer, two shorter) so that they adhere to the frets (fig. B c), then we put wedges e in the middle on both sides, and spread them apart by pressing the third wedge f. Fold in this way method and the frame attached in the device, we nail it in places d, where the slanted corners of the board's sills leave the frame corners exposed. When assembling the frame, you can place it correctly for convenience. The board for nailing hanging frames is the same, only in the side thresholds b, b at d the tree is cut so far that the tendrils of the upper and lower beams fit exactly there.

Frames cut and nailed in this way will be even and precise, and we will also save a lot of work and time.

Spacer nails should be inserted into the frames made in this way so that the thickness of the frame together with the space nail is 3 - 5 cm, of which the thickness of the comb will be approximately 2 - 5 cm (this is the thickness of the comb with covered bee work), on the distance between the slices is approximately 1 cm. With this distance of one frame from the other, the bees do less work to save space, and, as practice has shown, they do not stick one comb to another by extending the cells, which often happens with larger distances. 1 here, when driving spacer nails into frames, a small device, the so-called anvil, with a lip of exactly 3 - 5 cm, provides great services. high (Fig. 70 C). To drive spaced nails, we insert the frame into the anvil and, having previously drilled holes with an awl, we use a hammer blow to drive the nail into the side bar as deep as needed, i.e. up to the height of the protruding lip of the anvil, regardless of whether the frame bar was accidentally wider or narrower.

The space nails are struck alternately, i.e. two on the left side of the frame on one side, two on the right on the other side. It is best to put nails into the side bars of the frames, at a distance of 10 cm. from the upper and lower trabeculae; some people drive the spacing nails into the upper and lower bars, and not into the side ones, but by placing the spacing nails in this way, it is easier for the frame to overlap. Beating the nails alternately is beneficial because it will be possible to place each frame on one side or the other in the hive, which makes the job much easier and is sometimes necessary. Just like in the frames, spacer nails and the valve are inserted alternately on both sides of the valve so that when it is inserted between the tears of the frame, the plasters have the appropriate distance from it.

Spacer nails should be inserted carefully so that they stick straight, and appropriate nails should be selected, as bad nails expose us to constant migraine. The best are spacer nails, cut from wire two millimeters thick, and therefore without heads; they do not get in the way either when inserting frames into the hive or when using a honey extractor. You can get such cut nails ready-made in warehouses, and they should have at least 2 ctrii. length so that they stay firmly in the frame. If you use nails with heads, they should have thick heads, with blunt edges and not sharp edges, otherwise the nail will get caught somewhere while working in the apiary, and this often results in a lot of trouble. Instead of spacer nails, you can also drive spacer clips made of wire into the corners of the frames, but if they are not made and driven very carefully, they are worse than ordinary spacer nails. Some people stick wooden blocks into the corners of the frame to regulate the distance, but this is not convenient because the bees stick the blocks together, and many bees are crushed with such blocks.

Much care must be taken when nailing the spacer nails into the frames, just like when nailing the frames themselves, because once a small inaccuracy is made, it will be repeated during work for many years.

Using standing frames, they are nailed to the side walls of the hive at a distance of 49-5 cm from the ceiling. stripes 2 cm. wide, on which the frames will stand, and the frame is 48 cm. high, there will be a distance of *5 cm above the frames, which is necessary and should not be much larger, because the bees would destroy it with earwax. This distance of the frame from the ceiling of the hive is enough to insert a finger when removing the frames, so you will be able to do without pliers or a hook for the most part.

It is a good idea to nail these thresholds so that they do not stick to the wall, but leave a space of 1 - 5 cm between them and the wall, through which dirt falling from the frames will fall to the bottom of the hive. Then you get three 15 cm blocks. thick, and 7 mm strips are nailed to them. thick, so that their upper edge is 49 5 cm from the ceiling. distant. In order for the standing frames to stand securely and at an appropriate distance from the side walls of the hive, two triangular strips, slightly 7 mm thick, are nailed to the sides of the hive on each side. high (i.e. 7 mm protruding into the center of the hive), one 13 cm away from the ceiling, the other 38 cm. (on both sides of the hive). 0 these slats, leaning against the frame, stand firmly and at an equal distance from the side walls of the hive. Some people use four-cornered spacing strips instead of three-cornered strips, but these are definitely bad because the frame bees stick to them too strongly, while in the case of three-cornered side strips the fixing is weaker, and over time it forms a glue on the side bar of the frame - a kind of crib, which contributes to a more secure fixation of the frames.

When making beehives, it is good to have one frame made to measure, stronger than the others, and reinforced by diagonal strips nailed to its corners; this frame is inserted into each newly made hive and checked to see if it presses against the side slats everywhere; if it is too loose, then the three-cornered slat is slightly lifted from the wall with a knife (the bees will later fill this invisible gap), and if If it was too tight, the space would be gathered on the strip with a knife.

In order for the thresholds and three-cornered spacing bars to be at the same height in all hives, it is a good idea to make a stronger rectangular frame, which, if strictly 24 cm. wide, and 64 cm. high, it can also serve as a tree tree when building beehives; on this frame, places for thresholds and spacing triangular beams are marked by drilling appropriate grooves. According to this frame, * places in each hive are marked for the sills and side three-cornered slats, and this, on the one hand, avoids constant measuring for each hive individually, and on the other hand, it is possible that the frames and valves of all hives can be without the slightest corrections to each other, used alternately.

For hanging frames, joints are cut under the ceiling in both side walls of the hive so that the frames suspended in them by their tendrils are 1*5 cm away from the ceiling, so depending on whether you use thicker or thinner beams for the frames, you must also cut the joint a little lower or higher under the ceiling. The upper edge of the joint should be beveled to make it easier for the frames to overlap, the joint itself should be mm. deep and 8 mm. high. Whoever hangs frames on slats should nail these slats - no thicker than 5 mm - to the side walls of the hive at such a distance from the ceiling that there is a distance of 1*5 cm from the suspended frame to the ceiling.

You need to drive 2 spacing nails into the rear wall of the hive on one side (on the left) because the frames have spacing nails on only one side on each side, and therefore they are not even from the wall, otherwise they would stick out.

In a Slavic hive, as we said above, either standing or hanging frames can be used, and both are equally good, and giving preference to one or the other depends mainly on the habit of the beekeeper; However, if someone asked us which of them would be worth recommending when establishing a new apiary, we would answer: standing ones. Standing frames, provided that the hive is properly constructed and placed vertically in the apiary, can never fall down, just like hanging frames, and combs loaded with honey are more secure in them than in hanging ones, so they are more suitable for transporting trunks, especially that after inserting the pins behind the valve, they cannot move at all. Manipulation in the trunk with standing frames is slightly easier than with hanging frames, because the standing frames are only glued to the side triangular beams, while the hanging frames are strongly glued to the top at the tendrils and are therefore more difficult to remove, especially in spring and late summer. For hanging frames, you cannot do without tongs or a hook, while for standing frames, these tools are almost unnecessary. Putting back frames standing on the trunk is also much easier than hanging frames, because the bees always cluster upwards, both on the frames and under the ceiling of the hive, so you have to be careful when putting the hanging frames back so as not to crush the bees, and peeking is under the ceiling beehive is tiring, and with standing frames you don't have to be careful about it at all. When using a honey extractor, hanging frames are much less comfortable than standing frames due to their protruding tendrils, as they get caught more easily on the wires near the honey extractor gate. What some supporters of hanging frames claim in their defense, that when the hive is not completely vertical, the hive hangs perpendicularly, and therefore the bees pull the combs in the bees more regularly than in standing frames, is wrong, because the hive should always be exactly vertical. , and then because the hanging frames must fit exactly to the rear wall of the hive and to each other, and then there can be no question of any perpendicular sagging, because they rest on the wall and cannot deviate from the direction of the hive at all.

Finally, it will not be out of place to remind you that the hive should always be prepared and arranged as carefully as possible before placing a swarm in it, because a seemingly small inaccuracy will take its toll for many years.

Making Slavic hives. We have no doubt that on the basis of the above-mentioned dimensions, notes, description and drawing, any beekeeper with a plane and a ball will be able to build a good Slavic hive, especially from wood, but it will be more difficult to build straw hives, but even here with good will. and how much skill he has, after a few less successful attempts he will surely be able to do it; However, if we nevertheless provide here some tips for making beehives, both wooden and straw, we do it only to simplify the matter of the product itself and save many people time and even money.

When starting to make beehives, you should first of all remember that the cardinal point of a good Slavic beehive is the precise and precise arrangement of its interior, i.e. it must be exactly rectangular and exactly like the other in size. A good hive will also be built by a skillful beekeeper rather than by a carpenter, because the latter will care more about the appearance of the hive than about its precise execution, and will not have the slightest qualm if the dimensions of the hive are one millimeter in this or that place, or more inaccurate, and such a small inaccuracy in the wrong place can sometimes make the entire hive completely useless.

For this reason, it is best if, when starting to make hives, we first make precise rules, i.e. models, according to which we will be able to trim, assemble and nail all hives equally without any second thoughts. Such boards must be precisely designed so that they cannot change their dimensions either by warping, shrinking or swelling. It is known that a tree is subject to the least changes in size in the longitudinal direction, therefore all trees must be made of slats assembled in the form of strictly rectangular frames, preferably made of ash or oak wood. Boards made in the form of boards are bad because the board warps and shrinks in the transverse direction, from which even inserting another board perpendicular to it will not prevent it. The trees should be light, neat and relatively strong. Anyone who does not know how to use a ball and plane well should have the boards made by a good carpenter from well-dried wood, making sure that the size of the frames must be exactly the same, that they must be strictly rectangular and strongly connected in the corners, i.e. not only at the butts and at the ends. the glue is recessed, but the saws have been tightened in each corner; in a word, fortified in such a way that they cannot undergo any change.

In addition to the boards already described above for cutting and nailing the frames, for marking places for the sills and spacing strips, and for one stronger, typical frame, you also need boards for the internal size of the hive, for the side walls, the ceiling and the bottom, and finally for the cutting tenons, and in the case of straw hives, a tree tree for making walls and door frames. In other words, whoever wants to make beehives quickly and precisely should have a ready-made tree, i.e. a model, made once and for all for each piece that is to be cut or knocked down. With the help of shoe trees, the hives made will be almost identical to each other, and the benefits that will result from this in the apiary farm are invaluable, because without any second thoughts or separate adjustments, most often in the most hectic moments, we will be able to use every component of one hive for another.

It is best to make wooden hives from thin, l 1 / 2 cm. thick boards, which can be purchased in warehouses everywhere; However, these boards should be dried as thoroughly as possible, for this reason it is best to buy the necessary number of them in spring, arrange them under the blade in the aisle, or in a ventilated shed, and finally under the open sky so that the wind can pass freely between them, which will be achieved by translating between one board and the other there are even pieces of wood, 2 to 3 centimeters long. thick. Boards lying under a shed or a shed can be left, as long as the rain does not hit them, until they are ready for production; outdoors, however, they should be cleaned up in the dry season in autumn and placed in a waterproof attic so that they can be easily removed for use in the winter. . Old, thick boards from the roof of barns etc. should be cut into squares some time before use. ffrubfi and nh[^ AT _ And let it dry completely. Fresh boards cannot be used to make hives, and drying them for a short time in the oven is not enough, because not only will they get cracked, but they will only dry up on the outside and become damp on the inside, as a result of which the hive will be made from such boards. it cracks and gets cracks.

To make beehives, you need to choose boards that are even, relatively wide and without knots, and they need to be planed on at least one side, both to make them smooth on the outside and inside, and also to make them as many as possible. possibilities strictly l ? / 2 ctm. thick.

A good wooden hive should have all walls - both side and rear, as well as the ceiling and bottom - double, and the wall thickness will be sufficient when it is 7 cm. was, and the boards used to make them were to be 1 1 j 2 cm. thick, so there will be 4 cm between them. free space; Therefore, to normalize this space, you need to prepare strips, i.e. 4 cm battens. thick, and 3 to 4 cm. wide.

If you want to make wooden beehives quickly, accurately and easily, you should first make the following rules:

A . A rule, i.e. a frame for the internal dimension of the hive, which must be exactly 24 cm from the outside. bone width, and 64 ctm. length, but it may be just a hair's breadth

slimmer than larger. The exact dimensions and rectangularity of the board can be most conveniently checked by unfolding a sheet of paper on which the outline of the board is marked with a pencil and examined with a square and a centimeter. In this way, three narrow notches are made on each side, the first ones spaced apart

13 ctm. from the upper edge, the second at a distance of 38 cm., and the third at a distance of 49-5 cm.; Using these notches, we will then designate places on the side walls of the hive for two side spacer strips and for a threshold for the standing frames.

B. A tree for the ceiling and inner bottom of the hive, strictly 24 cm. wide a 40 cm. long.

C . Tree tree for the inner two side walls of the hive, 40 cm. wide, and 75 cm. long.

D. Tree tree for external parts, tops and bottoms of the hive, 35 cm. wide, and 45 1/2 ctm. long.

E. A tree for the two outer sides of the hive, 45 1/2 cm. wide, and 78 cm. long.

F. Tree for the outer part of the hive, 38 cm. wide, and 78 cm. long.

G . Tenon tree in the ceiling, 10 ctm. wide, and 12 cm. long.

According to these rules, we cut all the walls of the wooden hive precisely at once, so that we will not waste time on measuring and adjusting each piece separately. Since most often we will not have boards wide enough for one to cover the entire width of the wall, the relevant pieces need to be glued together with ordinary isinglass, i.e. carpenter's glue, which can be easily done using bags prepared once and for all, i.e. pieces of beams with appropriate notches into which The glued boards are inserted and the boards stuck together on the sides are pulled down. To join the boards, you can also use putty with very good results, which is made of 20 parts of fresh cheese, i.e. cottage cheese, and one part of freshly slaked lime. The boards will remain in these bags until the glue or putty dries completely.

The pieces intended for ceilings and bottoms must be cut in such a way that the width of the pieces is cut in the direction of the length of the boards, i.e. so that when the hive is assembled, the length of the boards extends across the hive. However, for all side walls, the length of the grain of the boards should be in the direction of the height of the hive.

Once we have all the above pieces cut, glued and carefully planed, we start assembling the hive, which we do as follows: First, we take the two internal side walls of the lila, butted according to the board (7., we place board A on them so that from one and at the other end there is an equal space, 5 x / 2 cm high, and we mark the border of board A. with pencil lines. Then we take the ceiling and the inner bottom, trimmed according to board B., and place them at right angles to the lines marked on the side walls, and nail it so as to create a rectangular box 24 cm wide and 64 cm high; we put the A. board into this box and mark out places according to it for triangular side strips and stripes, on both sides, which we also nail it immediately, making sure that they do not reach one edge by three centimeters, i.e. the edge where the valve will be. Now we nail the bottom to this box, i.e. the board that will constitute the inner wall of the hive furnace; This board does not need to be precisely measured, but when filling it, the inside of the box must be carefully examined with the help of rule A, so that it is strictly rectangular.

Once the inner box of the hive has been compacted, we cut the strips from the prepared strips, which must be exactly 4 cm long. thick, and they can be any width, pieces of 40 cm. long, and 3 pieces of 27 ctm. long. We nail these pieces from... outside into the box so that they regulate the distance of the double walls to 4 cm. and do not extend beyond the edges of the hive walls, i.e. nail two longer pieces at the top and bottom to the side walls and one shorter piece at the top and bottom to the furnace. Now we consider the position of the eyelet. The eyelet should be in the side wall, preferably on the right*) side from the valve, 25 cm. from the ceiling, and 12 J / 2 ctm. away from the furnace, and it is easiest to drill them with a centribore of .5 ctm. wide, so we cut another piece of strip about 10 cm. long and nail it to one of the other two longer strips at a distance of about 8 cm. from the end, thus making part of this strip at least 6 cm. thick to drill an eyelet through it at this point. We nail this reinforced strip to the right side of the hive at a height of 25 cm. from the ceiling, i.e. 30.5 cm. from the upper edge of the wall, so that the nailed piece of strip faces upwards and towards the back. Nail the second longer strip to the left side wall halfway up, and the remaining shorter strip halfway up to the hive furnace. In this way, we have an internal box of the hive surrounded by ribs made of slats, to which we will now nail the prepared external walls of the hive.

To avoid constant measuring, you need to correctly mark the place where you should always nail the reinforced strip for the eyelet, as well as the point where you should drill the eyelet after knocking down the hive.

*) It is also good to have some hives with an eye on the left side.

Before we start nailing the external hive boards, we first cut holes in the floor boards for the tenons. To do this, use a pencil G to mark a place for the tenon on the inner wall, i.e. on the box, at a distance of 12 cm. from the rear wall, and 7 cm. from the side walls of the hive, and on the board intended for the external ceiling at a distance of 17 1/2 cm. from its rear edge, and 12 x / 2 ctm. from its side edges, and having drilled a hole in the corner of the meeting lines with a gimlet the thickness of a goose feather, we put on a knife saw (Stich-sege) and cut holes for a 10 cm tenon according to the marked lines. wide and 12 cm. long, after smoothing the edges with a scraper (rasp), we adjust the two tenon caps, which should be equipped with a small overlap (notch) and a ring on the screw in the middle, for easy removal.

Having done this, we first attach the outer side walls and the back, making sure that they stick out from each end by V/2 cm. above the strips, we temporarily fasten them with a few thin nails, and then insert the outer ceiling and bottom boards between them, we check whether there are any imperfections, which we then correct either with a plane or by placing a chip, and then finally nail the boards external to the strips, and at the edges we sew them with even thinner nails so that they fit together tightly everywhere.

In this way, a compact hive will have all double walls, separated by a 4 cm thick layer of air. Closed air is a very poor conductor of heat, so there is no need to fill the space between the double walls with anything, and such a hive will still be very warm. If you want, you can fill this space with coarsely chopped chaff.

However, there is still an open space on all walls on the side of the valve, so it needs to be covered appropriately. For this purpose, we cut four strips from a 1/j ctm board. thick, namely: two 7 cm. wide and 78 cm. long, and two 7 cm. wide a 24 cm. long. With the first two we close the empty space of the side walls of the hive, and with the second two we close the empty space of the ceiling and bottom. We will nail the strips closing the sides and the bottom of the hive firmly, and the strip closing the space in the ceiling should be nailed lightly, so that we can lift it up and take it out when we want to insert a suitable feeding trough into the empty space in the ceiling, as described in we will talk in another place.

We also need to make a valve for the hive, which should also be a double one, i.e. empty inside or filled with chaff. For this purpose, we make a frame from lithium- ItSW " U1I11. nrrn?nziil) scanned 24 ctm. wide, and 64 cm. high, we check whether it fits tightly and easily to the hive, and then we nail a board on one side, 24 cm wide and 64 cm wide. long, and on the other side a 26 cm board. wide and 66 cm long, protruding about 1 cm. beyond the frame, it will create an overlap, i.e. a rebate. Such a valve will be warm enough and will never warp, and if we attach a cloth selvedge to the rebate, there will be no need to glue it.

After building the hive, we drill a hole in the marked place and make a latch, i.e. a strainer and a saddle, which is best assembled as shown in the attached drawing. For each hive, you need to make a thin board (1 cm thick) for valves, 24 cm thick. wide, and 52 cm. high, with notches for the side three-cornered spacing strips and for the sills. Such a gate should have struts across it to prevent it from warping, and have an opening in the upper half, equipped with a grid plate as described on page 66. Similarly, make a support board for each hive, a small 24 cm. wide, and about 25 cm. long, which in a given case is placed under the bars, and on which the target is nailed at a distance of 1 cm. under the sills there are short triangular slats on which the support can slide.

After driving spacing nails into the rear wall of the hive on the left side and making frames, we have a completely finished Slavic hive, which, if made of spruce or fir wood, weighs at most 25 kilograms.

If it is difficult to prepare the external walls of the hive according to the rules, he may nail the external boards separately to the strips, making sure that they are well glued or glued together on the sides.

Ordinary nails, so-called wire nails, are used to build the beehive, when joining boards with strips and when nailing the inner box of about 5 cm. long, and when sewing external boards together, use thin nails at the edges of the hive, 3 to 4 cm. long ones. The nails are sufficient for this strength, you just need to make sure that each board that is part of a part is nailed with at least three nails at both ends, i.e. two at the edge and one in the middle, otherwise the board may warp and despite being glued to the other stand up and create a gap. When nailing down boards this way, you don't even have to pay attention to the direction of their grain, although it will be better if the concave of the grain always points them towards the slats, i.e. towards the inside of the wall, because then they will be even less exposed to warping.

This way of making hives is the easiest and the hives seem cheap, warm in winter, cool in summer, light and strong, and they will be even more durable and more pleasing to the eye when painted with varnish or oil paint.

The fear that bees would be cold in such hives with double walls and not filled with straw or other material is unfounded, as many years of experience have taught me that in similar hives the bees spent even the harshest winters calmly and hibernated as well as in hives with the thickest straw walls. If, however, gaps were to be created when using boards that were not sufficiently dry, they would obviously need to be covered tightly with thin strips. Hives with empty, double walls are more convenient than hives with filled (filtered) walls because they are incomparably lighter and safer from mice, which sometimes chew through walls filled with straw and build nests there.

Making hives from thick logs, even from the lightest species of wood, is less suitable, because such hives will be heavy, sweaty in winter, and bees will always feel more sensitive to frost or heat in them than in hives with hollow or straw walls.

Hives made from honeycombs, on the other hand, have great advantages for bee breeding, because they are cheap, light, warm in winter and cool in summer, so the bees thrive in them, but they have the disadvantage that they are less durable and that they mice can sneak into them more easily, but a careful beekeeper can easily remedy this.

The methods of making straw hives are very diverse, but we can mainly distinguish two types: making complete hives at once, with only the furnace and valve being adjusted, and hives made of folded mats, in which each wall is made separately on an appropriate board, and only after finishing it is put together. Both methods have their supporters, and it is almost impossible to decide which is better or easier to implement, but it is certain that both methods, when properly performed, produce the best hives for bees.

The production of straw beehives is very popular in our country and has been almost perfected thanks to the work of Fr. Porfiry Ba?a?ski, priest Miko?aj Nazarewicz, Pawe? S zuber, Fr. Adam Witwicki, who made great contributions to our beekeeping industry with their descriptions in various annuals of Beetnik progressive. Based mainly on their descriptions and my own experience, I am compiling these recipes for making perfect straw hives.

The first to start making four-cornered straw hives using a shoe tree, i.e. a machine, in such a way that he received from. once the four walls of the hive were smoothly sewn and only the valves were added to them separately, there was a Czech priest. Jan Oetl described this method for the first time in the year in a Czech magazine devoted to farming and small industry, and then repeated this description with an engraving of his machine in a beekeeping book, which he published under the title: "Klaus, der Bienenvateraus Böhmen".

Against the background of this description, Fr. Ba?a?ski made a Slavic beehive made of straw and published it in Bartnik progressive in 1877, at the same time changing the way of laying straw when making the walls of the hive, so that while Oetl kept laying the straw in a circle, bending it in the corners of the hive, Ba?a?ski arranged it in such a way that the straw of individual walls intersected in the corners, and then he cut off the ends of the straw protruding beyond the corners smoothly. Oetlos' method of laying walls is better for fine, short straw, while Ba?a?ski's is more convenient for thick, long straw, which we have in the fertile areas of Podolia, which is why we will briefly describe both these methods.

When applied to Slavic hives, the Oetl machine for producing complete hives will look as shown in Figure 72. It consists of a table or base A., Z?., O., Z>., in which 32 posts are placed in four rows, so that when we put straw between their spaces, we obtain four walls of the hive at the same time, i.e. two sides, ceiling and floor. Since, as we can see, we obtain here four walls of the hive permanently connected to each other, the dimensions of the board and the spacing of the posts must be such that the internal width of the straw box made in this way is strictly 24 cm, and the internal height is strictly 64 cm. The accuracy of the hives made on the board will depend on the accuracy of the board, so you should pay special attention to making the board, and spare no effort and expense to get it as precisely as possible.

When starting to make this tree, you must first prepare the most carefully dried wood material, oak or ash, for the table and the posts. For the table you need four pieces of S-stone up to 10 cm. thick, and 26 cm. wide; two of these pieces are to be 60 cm each. long, and the second two 1 meter long. From these four pieces of paving, a frame is made at a strictly right angle, joined at the corners with overlaps with glue and fastened with screws, in other words, made so strong that it cannot dislocate in any way, this llama A., 2?, C., Z>., so it will be 60 ctm. wide and 1 meter long, and in its center there will be a four-sided opening e, f, g, 48 cm. long, and 8 cm. wide. On this frame, four lines are drawn with a pencil on each side in the longitudinal direction, the two extreme lines of which will be 10 cm from the edge of the frame. away, and the two middle ones from the oblong hole e, g, h, 8 cm each. distant, i.e. strictly 24 cm from each other. distant at both ends. At these four main lines, 32 small squares are now marked with a pencil, measuring 4 cm on each side, in the position as Figure 72 indicates, that is, at the two extreme lines on the outside, and at the two inner lines on the inside. The distance between individual squares will be exactly 8 cm. both in each row, as well as between each outermost and inner row, and only between the two inner rows, i.e. between the squares of rows 9 and 16, and of rows 17 and 24, will be 16 cm. The distance of all squares from the outer edge of the frame will be cm.

Having marked these squares on both sides of the frame in this way, square holes are made with a chisel in these places, strictly perpendicular across the frame boards, chiseling out one side and the other. We now insert the posts into these square holes so that they stand as perpendicular as possible. Each bar should be exactly 4 cm. thick, and 6 cm. wide, and at one end there is a 4 cm pin. in a thick square, and as long as the thickness of the pavement, a table forming, i.e. 8 or 10 cm., above the tenon there should be a wider post so that a heel is formed after the tenon is cut, which keeps the post more securely in a perpendicular position (Fig. . 73.) These posts are placed in such a way that in the two outer rows their heels look outwards, while in the inner two rows they point towards the central hole. The positioning of the posts must be very precise and strong, so they should be tested in a rectangle and hemmed as carefully as possible, and at the same time make sure that the spacing is such that after placing straw between them, the exact width and height of the hive will be obtained.

When making Slavic hives, these posts should be 60 cm long without the spigot. high (with a tenon, so 68 to 70 cm), and before they are placed, five holes are drilled in each of them from the heel side, the first one at a distance of 12 cm. from the edge of the heel, each further one at a distance of ctm. from each other, and only the upper fifth at a distance of 6 cm. from the previous one. These holes must be large enough for a wire as thick as a goose feather to pass through. In the twelve external corner posts, i.e. 1, 2, 9; 17, 25, 26; 31, 32, 24; and 16, 8, 7, 1/2 cm grooves are made along the entire column. deep and wide so that when making a straw beehive wrapped in a circle, thick boards can be inserted into these grooves, which will not allow the straw in the corner bends to go beyond the area of the street between the posts.

Who would intend to make beehives only in the way of Fr. Ba?a?ski, it is so that the straw intersects in the corners, he does not need to make these notches at all in the corner posts.

However, it is advisable to make small indentations in the posts of the internal rows at the top, so that straw can be planted between the posts * and 18 when laying them down; 11, a 19; 12 a 20; 23 a 21, 14 a 22 and 15 a 23 spacers which would prevent these posts from bending and getting closer to each other, otherwise the hive would become narrower than 24 cm, because when pressing the straw in the streets, these posts must be at least a little towards the center they would have to surrender.

After carefully placing the stakes, you can form four 20- to 30-centimetre legs into the table from the bottom. high.

Based on the rule prepared in this way, we can either use Oetel's method or Ks. Ba?a?ski make straw hives, and each hive will come out with the most accurate dimensions.

When starting to work on the hive, we first make two rectangular frames made of 8 cm thick strips. wide, and g up to 2 cm. thick, as shown in the attached figure 74, which will constitute the doorway of the hive. For this purpose, two 40 cm strips are cut. long, and the second two 80 cm. long, and planing them halfway at the ends, over a space of 8 cm. into a square, a frame is made of them, with a ctm on the outside. width, and 80 cm. length. These frames must be made exactly rectangular so that they fit into the streets between the stakes. On the outer side of the frames, which may be shelved, grooves are made across them with a saw, at least a millimeter deep, in the places marked with snake rulers in Figures 72 and 74; There are 5 such grooves of 12 cm on each side strip of the frame. spaced apart, the first groove should be ctm. away from the hive ceiling, and the last one 10 cm. from the floor ; ceiling and floor strips have two ctm grooves each. distanced from each other, and from the side frame strip to ctm. distant. Instead of grooves, you can drill holes through the frame strips with a thin drill. These grooves or holes will be used to house the wires surrounding the walls of the straw hive. In order not to measure the places for grooves or holes in each frame, it is a good idea to make a stronger frame made of hard wood, on which you will measure the exact places for the grooves once and for all, and then mark them only on the door frames by touching them; this frame can also serve us in pressing the straw, which will be discussed later. In addition, you need to make 30 pieces of wire, the thickness of a goose feather, and 30 plugs, about 16 cm in diameter. long ones, one with a comb for combing the straw, and one end with twisted ears, which will be used to thread through the holes in the posts.

The most suitable straw for making straw hives is rye straw, as other types of cereals are too brittle. The straw should be clean, without weeds, for this purpose it must be picked, and if we want to have a smooth hive, it must be removed from the leaf sheaths. This can be done using a strong comb, shown in Figure 75, which can be purchased commercially, or you can make a similar one by driving nails into a suitable piece of hard wood, or from a beech, hornbeam or birch board by cutting the teeth. If you want to peel straw from leaf sheaths, take a small handful of straw, grab it by the spikes with one hand, and place it on your knee, slowly and carefully drag a comb over it with the other hand, from the spikes to the base. After repeating this several times, the straw is smooth and free of sheaths. Straw cleaned in this way requires approximately one sheaf or oc?ot for one Slavic hive. Straw is the more suitable the less it is broken and crumpled, but if it is too dry and brittle, it should be sprayed with water the day before the hive and stored in a damp place, e.g. in the basement.

After these preparations, we start making the hive. To do this, we insert one of the frames prepared between the posts of the tree tree, with the grooves facing down, push it to the bottom of the alley and start applying straw to the walls of the hive. The straw is placed in small handfuls of 10 to 12 cubic centimeters, i.e. as much as can be covered with the fingers of a bent hand, it is spread evenly between the streets of the tree, bent evenly at the corners, and as the ears of the applied handful end, more is added. a new handful of straw, i.e. the lower part of the straw blades, and in this way a uniformly thick layer of straw is placed in a circle over the frame, i.e. over the door frames, between the posts inserted. You can easily check the uniformity of the straw layer by pressing it with your hand. To prevent the straw from extending beyond the posts in the corners of the hive, prepared slats are gradually slid between the outer corner posts, which should always overlap a little higher, like a layer of applied straw, so it will be most convenient if they are inserted in pieces of 12 cm. wide.

Once we have placed such a layer of straw in small handfuls around the streets so that when pressed well with our hand it reaches the first holes in the posts, then, starting from the corner posts, we press the layer of straw firmly with our hands up to the first holes and put the plugs through the holes of the outer and inner stakes. ; Having gone around all the corners in this way, we press the straw on the sides, ceiling and bottom, and similarly pin it down everywhere with plugs to prevent the layer of straw from rising above the first holes in the posts. In the same way, we continue to put straw in layers up to the second holes and secure it again with plugs; we put them on again, up to the third hole, we take out the plugs, now no longer needed, from the first tier and put them in the third tier; we continue to put straw up to the fourth holes, take out the plugs from the second tier and put them in the fourth tier; we continue to put straw up to almost the top of the posts, now we put on the second frame, i.e. door frames, with the grooves facing upwards, and we press them until we can put the plugs in the fifth tier of holes over these door frames, and we then pull out the plugs from the third and fourth tier. The walls of the hive arranged in this way should be sufficiently hard, i.e. enough so that they do not bend significantly under finger pressure, but if they are too flimsy, more layers of straw should be added under the upper door frames and the pressure will be better. If the worker does not have enough strength to press the straw properly with his hands, he must resort to pressing the straw with a stick. For this purpose, let him place the above-mentioned dimensional frame of hard wood over the upper doorposts, take a chain or rope, folded in two, and fasten it by plugging a piece of wood across the middle hole in the base of the shoe tree, and in the upper part of the eye of the chain or rope let him place a rod and let him use a lever to press the frame created from this rod until the upper door frame is under the fifth hole. We would like to mention, however, that excessive pressure on the straw is not advisable, as the crushed straw blades lose their natural elasticity and cohesion, and therefore the hive walls become weaker. When arranging layers of straw around the walls of the hive, at first it may be difficult to bend it in the corners and spread it out evenly, but once you get some practice, it goes smoothly and quickly, you just need to be careful to hide the spikelets in the layers when applying them. the middle of the hive walls, as this will make the walls smoother and prevent the ends of the straw from falling into the corners. When the straw is thin and slightly damp, the work is even easier.

If you wish, while arranging the layers of straw, you can add one circumferential layer of pond reed, carefully cleaned from the leaf sheaths and cut into pieces as long as the sides of the hive, on the outside of the walls; There is no need to add a layer of reeds to the ceiling and floor. In order to hold this peripheral layer of reed evenly, wooden pins are inserted into the straw behind the reed, which hold this layer of reed in the proper position, and these pins are constantly pushed upwards as the wall of the hive rises, and finally when the upper layers are put on door frames, they are removed either completely or with the exception of a few. Lining the outer wall of the hive in this way with reed not only contributes to the durability of the straw wall, but also gives the hive a beautiful appearance. A little patience, and soon you will gain enough skill that laying a combined wall of reeds and straw will not pose any difficulties.

Having put on the second door frame and secured it with plugs, we now start sewing the walls of the hive. For this purpose, we have prepared two wires: one 1 millimeter thick and the other 1 j 2 millimeter thick. Both wires must first be burned in a fire to make them soft and pliable, and after cooling they are rubbed with linseed oil or wax to make them less susceptible to rusting. Twine or reed splitters are less suitable for sewing such hives. Completely sewing the walls of the hive on a tree would be very inconvenient; for this reason, we only put girdles on the walls on the tree, and we sew them only after removing the girdled hive from the tree. To strap the walls, we use a thicker wire, and by pressing it into the cut grooves (or swallowing it through the holes) of the upper door frames, we bring it down the wall perpendicular to the lower door frames, then again we slide it through the relevant holes or holes at the bottom, we run it perpendicularly upwards, and we turn it both ends of the wire together and cut them to 10 cm. we press them into the center of the wall so that they do not unscrew. These girdles can be placed on the walls on the tree, or in all cut (or drilled) places of the door frames, or only two in the ceiling and at the bottom of the hive in the middle, and in the side walls in three, and only after removing the hive so girded from the tree, the rest of the girds can be placed. ; which is more convenient, especially corner bands, i.e.: at posts 10 to and 9; then at 18 to 17 and to 26; then from 23 to 24, and finally from 15 to 7 and 16, not only are they difficult to use in the tree, but they also interfere with removing the hive from the tree. Once we have placed the main ties of the walls on the tree, we take out the plugs, and after prying off the lower door frames with a chisel, we remove the entire hive from the tree, and now that we have placed the rest of the ties, we start sewing the walls properly. For this purpose, we use thinner wire and a thick upholstery needle, which can be obtained in any ironmonger's shop, or if we don't have one, we can use a piece of broken umbrella rod, which has a hole in one end and has been sharpened on an ordinary turning tool in the other.

When I start sewing, I cut off a piece of thin wire, about 130 cm long, thread it with one end through the needle, and fasten the end with a bend or a band around the doorpost, and then I run the wire with the needle through the wall of the hive to the other side, here I go around the opposite strapping wire with the needle, go back through the straw to the original side, directing the needle slightly obliquely so that I go out by about 2 or 3 cm. below the first seam, here I go around the wrapping wire again, thread it through to the other side and so on until I reach the opposite door frame, then I turn the end of the wire and hide it in the straw of the wall. This sewing is aimed at pulling each strapping together and attaching the straw to it. Therefore, when sewing, the thinner wire should be pulled moderately enough so that its bends do not protrude outside the strapping wire, and again, it does not need to be pulled too strongly, as this would create kinks. in the wall.

Once we have removed all the bands in this way, we have sewn the four walls of the hive, so it is still a matter of making a furnace and a valve. To sew the back of the hive, place the straw in the tree on one side only, i.e. between the stakes 1, 2, 8 and 9, 10, 16, in layers evenly, pressing well, up to the second holes, i.e. to a height of 24 cm., fasten with plugs, then Five wire bands are given as on the side wall of the hive, with the only difference that the bands are placed not right next to the posts but a little further, i.e. halfway between the relevant posts. Having finished the strapping, we sew them with wire in the same way as we sewed the walls of the hive, and then cut the protruding ends of the mat so sewn at posts 2, 10 and 7, 15 evenly from the outside, so that the cut mat has exactly 64 cm. length. Now we place this mat on one side between the sewn sides of the hive so that it forms its back, and to keep it in this position constantly, we pin it with a few wooden pins, which we place so that they go through the side walls of the hive and reach quite deep into the mat. five. If the mat was sewn well and expanded properly after insertion, the back will adhere to the walls of the hive so that there will be no gaps anywhere, and if any appear anywhere, they should be smeared with putty or clay mixed with cowhide. For a more secure attachment of the stove, you can also nail strips to the top and bottom of the hive door so that they partially overlap the inserted back.

To make the valve, we prepare two 8 cm strips. wide, 60 cm. long, and 1 1/2 to 2 ctm. thick. In these strips, we cut 5 grooves 1 millimeter deep with a ball, or we drill 5 holes in the places where the straps will be placed. Then we insert one strip into the side street of the tree so that the grooves are directed downwards and the strip ends flush with posts 2, 10 and 7, 15, then we apply straw evenly, pressing well enough so that when placed on top the second strip, with its grooves facing upwards, allowed the straw to be pressed together with the strip to the second holes into which we insert the plugs. We also press small clinics of about 1/2 cm under the plugs. thick enough for the valve width to be just 24 cm. Now we insert the strapping wire into the joints of the strips and sew the strapping wire and the straw through to each other using the strapping method described above. After finishing sewing, we cut off the protruding ends of the straw at the tree posts as long as the slats are long. The valve removed from the board is only a scant 24 cm. wide, but it is only 60 cm. long, and it has to be a meager 64 cm. length, so we nail two ctm strips. wide, 23.8 cm. long, and 1.8 cm. (scantly 2 ctm.) thick on both sides to the front of the side slats and we have a valve of exactly 23.8 ctm. wide and scantily 64 cm. high and therefore comfortably overlapping the hive. To prevent the straw from fraying at the upper and lower strips, we nail them to each other from the outside and inside, two x/cm. into a square with thick slats so that they hold the ends of the straw. It is also advisable to nail the valve strips around one edge, 1 cm. thick slats into a square, which will create an overlap, i.e. a rebate.

The eye is cut out in the straw hive using a round chisel with a diameter of 4.5 cm. as Figure 76 shows, at a distance of 12 1/2 cm. from the stove, and from the ceiling 25 cm., drilling it perpendicular to the wall of the hive, either to the right or to the left. A latch made of two pieces of sheet metal is sewn onto the eyelet, which anyone can make themselves, as shown in Figure 77. There is no need to fill the eyes with anything, as the bees will later smooth them out with putty. In the case of standing frames, they are sewn to the side walls of the hive at a distance of cm. and 38 cm. from the ceiling on both sides there are triangular slats of 7 millimeters extending into the interior of the hive, which regulate the distance of the frames from the walls of the hive. It is enough to sew each strip in 3 places with a wire running through the wall, because the gap will be about 7 cm. extended into the interior of the hive, so the slats were 7 cm high. They must end at the edge of the hive, and at the back they should reach the furnaces. At a distance of 49.5 cm. from the ceiling, a groove of about 2 cm is made on both side walls of the hive before the furnace is set in place. wide and as deep with a sharp knife, cutting these cuts through the front and rear door frames. A threshold for standing frames, i.e. a 2 cm strip, is then inserted into each of these grooves. thick, 4 cm. wide, and 54 cm. long, inserting it into the grooves of the door frames and nailing it to them with studs; in addition, these thresholds need to be sewn in the middle in two or three places with a wire running through the walls. Because the grooves are only 2 cm long. depth, therefore from those seasoned with them, and 4 cm. wide thresholds, a part of about 10 cm will protrude inside the hive. lifting, and the frames will rest on it; In order to prevent the protruding part of the sills from getting in the way when the furnace is lowered into the hive and when the valve is closed, the sill strips are cut at both ends to a length of 8 cm. to cm width. so that this part will be completely flush with the wall of the hive and will not get in the way when closing the furnace or the valve. If you want, you can provide threshold strips with a small rebate to hold the cut ends of the straw, or you can insert the thresholds smoothly with the walls of the hive, and nail the threshold strips sticking out from the wall to them using three blocks placed underneath.

For hanging frames, a similar groove is cut at the top of the hive at a distance of 1 cm. from the ceiling, into which strips with a groove for the mustaches of the hanging frames are placed in the same way, and the groove should be adjusted so that a distance of .5 cm remains above the upper bar of the hanging frames. The hive is ready to accept the frames, it just needs to be cleaned of the ends of straw sticking out here and there and the bottom should be smeared from the inside with clay and plaster or plaster to make it easier to sweep the dirt out of it. Instead of polishing the floor, you can also nail a well-adjusted board to the bottom from the inside, as recommended by Mr. Szuber, which helps keep the hive clean even better. A new hive like this is quite strong and stays rectangular, but over time, when the straw loses its elasticity, it gives in and becomes crooked, so it is advisable for many reasons to make it stronger again by nailing a few strips from the outside. Namely, it is worth using at least two strips of approximately 10 cm. wide on both sides, underneath the floor, so that the hive stands firmly on the foundation and does not sag, and two similar strips up, either from the ceiling side, or on the sides right next to the ceiling. These strips are nailed to the door frame.

Walls should never be smeared with clay, neither from the outside nor from the inside; at most, they can be painted from the outside with clean varnish or some varnish paint. Tar is less useful for this purpose, because under its coating the straw rots more quickly, especially if gas tar, i.e. gas goo, is used.

Since evenly arranging straw around the walls of the hive is quite troublesome when dealing with thick and hard straw, Fr. Ba?a?ski, another way of laying straw, namely, laying the layers of straw on a tree so that they intersect in the corners. After inserting the door frame between the alleys of the tree, first lay layers of straw along the side walls of the hive so that they extend beyond the posts at both ends, then add a second layer of straw to the alley of the ceiling, then add the same layer to the alley constituting the floor. the hive, then start the same operation in the first side wall and proceed in the same way further around the streets of the hive until there are enough layers of straw that, when well pressed, it reaches the first holes in the posts, then put on the plugs and repeat the same process, until you reach the second floor of holes; and here, too, after pressing the straw, we proceed from floor to floor until we reach the highest floor, then we press the straw well, put on the second door frame and hold it in place with plugs placed in the last layer of holes. When applying this, you need to be careful to ensure that the layers of straw are even, which can be achieved most easily by always taking small handfuls of straw, at most such that you can wrap them around the fingers of one hand, and spreading them evenly in the alley. The straw layers of side streets must always intersect in the corners with the layers of straw on the ceiling and bottom, and care must be taken to ensure that the thinner part of the layer, i.e. the one where the spikelets are, gets onto the thicker part of the previous layer, i.e. where the lower part of the blades is, i.e. , because only in this way the walls of the hive will be uniformly even. Since two layers of straw always intersect in the corners, the layer of straw will be twice as thick as in the rest of the walls, so the straw should be compacted more strongly in these corners so that their thickness is equal to the thickness of the rest of the walls. Simply pressing the straw is not enough here, and you have to resort to tamping the straw in the corners with an axe. With this method of arranging the straw, the layers will bind together in the corners of the hive into zinc joints, i.e. joints, and the ends will stick out in the corners of the hive beyond the posts, as shown in Figure 72 in the corner near posts 1, 1 and 2. The protruding ends of the straw are cut off evenly after the hive is sewn, as is visible in Figure 72 in the other three corners; an ordinary sharp kitchen knife, or one made from an old scythe, is very suitable for this purpose, but it needs to be sharpened constantly because it becomes dull quickly on straw, which contains a lot of silica on its surface.

The further procedure after applying the straw is the same as described above, the pst is banded, removed from the tree and sewn in the same way as the beehive walls made of straw are laid around. The back, the valve and the entire internal device for the frames are made in the same way as in the previously described hive.

In order to avoid double layers of straw crossing each other in the corners of the hive, Fr. Paszkowski has a slightly different way of laying straw. Namely, he divides each handful of straw into two halves and puts them in the streets so that he pushes the thicker ends of the straw, i.e. the knowie, only to the corner and does not push them to the corner itself, and lets the ear part down the street through the corner, and does the same with the other half. handfuls of straw in the opposite direction. This way, the straw in the corners is only as thick as in the walls themselves, but not all the straw layers are tied together and they can fray more easily in the corners of the hive.

Fr. Bazanski does not cover his hives with any boards, he only recommends covering the outside corners with split hazel or willow rods, sewn to the corner seams, to prevent the straw from fraying. However, experience shows that such a hive only holds up well until the straw loses its elasticity, and after two or three years it becomes crooked and unstable, so it is advisable to upholster it in all corners, both on the floor side and also the ceilings, and on both sides at the top and bottom with 10 cm wide strips, made of boards 1 to 2 cm thick. These strips will cover the cut ends of the straw, so we will protect them from spoiling due to the effects of wet weather, and the hive itself will be greatly strengthened and strengthened. Whoever adds such strips to these hives may even save 8 seams in the corners of each hive, because the straw placed in joints in the corners, strongly compressed and held from the outside by strips, will not fray, even if there are no seams, and on the inside, the corners will also be smooth and strong, because the straw bound into the joints cannot slide out. Such a straw hive without seams in the corners, upholstered with slats, equipped with a floor made of boards and a valve composed of two parts, namely the upper part reaching up to the threshold, standing frames, and the second part from the threshold to the floor, intended for removal when sweeping, It was first exhibited by Pawe? Szuber at the beekeeping exhibition in 1891, which was generally liked due to its great care. When creating such valves from two foldable parts, there is no need to insert the thresholds into the recesses of the side walls, because the thresholds of 2 cm are sufficient. We will nail the thick and equally wide ones only to the front and rear door frames, and we will also sew them in three or four places to the uncoated side walls through and through. In the mat used to make the hive oven, you can make notches corresponding to the thickness of the thresholds, and the upper part of the valve will rest on the thresholds, and the lower part, made of a two-inch board to facilitate work, will cover the thresholds nailed to the door frames with an appropriate notch.

You can also sew the thresholds to the walls of the hive themselves, without nailing them to the doorframes, but in this case they need to be sewn more densely and stronger, remembering that they should be attached so strongly that the weight of the frames, in this case approximately He could hold 20 kilos.

Straw hives framed with slats at the corners will be slightly more expensive, but they will gain so much in appearance and durability that this slight increase in price will be worth it a hundredfold; and there is no need to worry about the straw getting wet under the slats.

In our opinion, the production of uniform straw hives is more reliable, because once a well-made tree, with the skill of the worker, produces all hives equal, even if the person making them has little knowledge of the conditions of a good hive. However, those who cannot make such a tree themselves, due to the considerable cost (because no craftsman can make such a tree for less than PLN 15 a year), can make a cheaper tree for making straw hives from folded mats, which was described by the first Fr. Miko?aj Nazarewicz in Bartnik in 1879.

This rule (fig. 78) is made from board 28 to ctm. wide, about 90 cm. long, and 8 or 10 cm. fat. Two pencil lines are marked on this board, spaced 8 cm apart. from each other, and then from these lines outside, 5 opposite squares, 4 cm, are marked. in each side, so that the left side of the first square is strictly 64 cm away from the rightmost side of the fifth square, that is, the height of the mats for the side walls of the hive; the left side of the second square should be strictly 40 cm away from the right side of the fourth square, because this is how long the mats for the floor and ceiling of the hive must be if its internal width is to be 24 cm and the wall thickness is to be 8 cm. , so there should be a space of 8 cm between the first and second squares. and between the fourth and fifth squares there is also a space of 8 cm, while the third square will be placed in the very center, i.e. 14 cm from the second and fourth squares. distant. "The posts should be made the same as in the previously described tree tree and drill 5 holes in them in the same way (see Fig. 73). Fig. 78. A tree tree for making hives from folded mats. The board shows the mat intended for the side wall of the hive, but not yet cut, c, d, e, f, door frame strips, ll stakes for cutting the valves, i, k, l, m, w, o, s, irons for bending the thicker wire for the straps.

After punching strictly perpendicular holes in the brickwork, in places marked with squares, posts are placed in them with the heels facing outwards, so that there is an 8 cm street between the posts. wide. The top is used to tie the posts of the first and second rows together from the outside with a strip (fig. 78 g., h.), and if it turns out that when pressing the straw, the posts are spreading apart despite the heels left at the top, they should be removed after applying the straw, but before pressing it, secure it upwards, preferably by putting on appropriate iron rings. From the bottom, four legs of about 40 cm are placed in a tree for convenience. high, just like a regular bench.

When starting to make a hive using this tree, we first prepare 2 square meters of wood from a board. thick, four slats on two side hive mats 80 cm. long, and 8 cm. wide, and four slats for mats, ceilings and bottoms after ctm. long, and 8 cm. wide. On all these strips, we collect an 8 cm piece at their ends (always on one side). square to half the thickness so that when we later connect these strips in the corners of the hive, the resulting door frames will be equally thick throughout their entire space. In long strips, use a drill to drill holes for straps crosswise at intervals, starting from either end, 12 cm., 12 cm., 10 cm., 12 cm., 10 cm. ctm.; in shorter strips at intervals of 8 cm, 10 cm, cm. starting from one end. This unequal distance between the holes in the top and bottom strips is indicated because if the dimensions were equal, the middle strap would fall on the middle post and sewing the mat in the tree tree itself would be impossible.

Instead of holes in the strips, you can also make holes from the outside, 1 millimeter wide and just as deep.

When making side mats, we put a strip of jean on the bottom of the street in a tree, with its butchered side up, so that its butchered ends fall flush with the first * and fifth pair of posts, then we put the prepared straw in handfuls, once with the ears in this direction, the other time in the opposite direction, until we reach the first row of holes in the posts, now we press the straw and hold it with plugs, we put it in the same way to the second row of holes, we press and plug it again and continue like this until we reach the highest row, only now we put the second side strip, butting towards bottom (fig. ), we press it to the last row of holes and secure it with plugs. Then we make 6 bands of thicker wire and sew them with thinner wire, without removing the mat from the tree. After sewing, we cut the straw smoothly on the outer side of the first and fifth pair of posts, so we will get a mat with two strips of 64 cm. long, and 54 cm. one side wall of the hive wide. We make a second mat in the same way for the other side wall. Now we start sewing two smaller mats for the ceiling and the bottom of the hive. To do this, we insert one strip into the bottom of the tree tree so that it is facing downwards and comes out flush with the second and fourth pair of posts; We apply the straw in the same way up to the last row of holes in the posts and finish by placing the second strip with the notch facing upwards. We make three ties, sew and cut off the protruding ends of the straw on the outside of the second and fourth pair of posts. These mats for the ceiling and bottom of the hive will look like the attached figure 79.

Having sewn triangular slats and sills at appropriate intervals to the two mats intended for the side walls, and having cut a hole in one of them, we start assembling the hive. In order for all the hives to be of the exact dimensions, it would be best to make two strictly rectangular frames, cm. wide and scantily 64 cm. high. Therefore, we place one such frame on the floor, surround it with sewn mats in a circle, insert the butchered ends of the slats in the corners of the hive between each other, adjust the upper opening of the hive with the second frame, placed in the doorway, and nail the slats together in the corners using three or five nails, how to engrave. 80 presents. For safety and convenience, you can remove the hive mats with the pins a, b and measure them with a rectangle c. Having made the mats in the same way and on the other side, we make a mat for the back and valve in the same way as we described when making the previous hive; we insert and attach the back, adjust the valve and the beehive is ready in front of us. But this hive will also be durable only if we strengthen it with slats on the sides above and below, as well as with slats under the floor on which it can stand securely, as shown in the attached figure 81. A beehive made of folded mats is undoubtedly easier to make than a solid one, but anyone who is not careful and scrupulous when putting the mats together can also botch it more easily; and nothing takes revenge in an apiary like bungling of hives.

Using the boards described above, both beehives and mats can be made, but only with a uniform thickness of 8 cm. However, sometimes it may be useful to make thinner mats, such as for gates, door mats and roofs, so Fr. Adam Witwicki used two types of rules for this purpose, which he described for the first time in Bartnik in 1888, and then for the second time in 1892.

These trees are designed for making individual mats for the walls of the hive, and differ from ordinary ones in that they do not have posts permanently mounted on the base, but on the contrary, each pair of posts can be moved to any place on the base, and moreover, the path between the posts can be narrowed by appropriate preparations.

Dig. 82. A tree with extensions with a uniform base. a) Base, b) Poles 4 cm. thick, 6 cm. wide, 110 cm. long. The length of the stake is 6 cm. for the lower tenon l 1 ^ cm. for the lower spindle hole, 8 ctm. for the indentation for the base, l'/j ctm. for the upper spindle hole, 82 ctm. to the width of the mat. ctm. lifts, c) Spindles 25 ctm. long, al 1 ^ ctm. thick square, d) Extensions 94'| 2 ctm. long, 4 cm. wide, and 2 cm. thick, e) Extension slats 18 cm. long, 5 cm. wide and 2 cm. thick, and holes drilled in them at 1 otm intervals, f) Handlebars 85 cm. long, 4 cm. wide, and 2 cm. thick, g) Wire pins placed at 24 cm intervals. 38 ctm, 54 ctm and 84 ctm. counting from the upper spindle. I and II two pairs of posts.

The first type of shoe tree (fig. 82). has a fixed base a, 13 cm. wide, 8 cm. thick, and 85 ctm. long, on which there is a centimeter scale placed for convenience. Four or five pairs of posts & are attached to this base in any places, of which only two pairs are shown in Figure 82. These posts have indentations at the bottom, which cover the base, as is visible in Figures 82 and 83. The posts are attached to the base using spindles c, which are inserted under and above the base through appropriate holes and strengthened at the ends with plugs 7). It is better to use iron spindles, fastened with screws or nuts. At the top, the posts are kept in a straight line by means of vanes that engage in the joints of the posts. In order to be able to make mats of any thickness on the board made in this way, Fr. Witwicki has an extension d for each pair of stakes, which is movably attached to the posts of one row using three strips e, marked at centimeter intervals. By appropriately extending these extensions, fixed in the drilled holes with the help of pins, the path between the posts can be freely adjusted and thus thicker or thinner mats can be made as desired. The explanations provided in the attached figures 82 and 83 explain this sufficiently, so there is no need to describe this rule in more detail. When making mats, if necessary, place iron or wooden supports on top of the posts so that the posts do not bend when pressed.

However, due to the fact that such a tree with extensions is somewhat complicated and therefore more expensive to produce, Fr. A. Witwicki followed by a tree with a complex base and movable stakes, which, being much simpler in its construction, is more convenient and cheaper, as it costs about PLN 8 when fully furnished. r.

This board can be used to easily produce mats of any thickness, from cm to 10 cm, with the appropriate combination of base. up to 8 cm., and even thicker if you wanted. The principle of this rule is that instead of a base made of uniform cobblestone, he used Ks. Witwicki - a base consisting of several inserts connected to each other in the width direction, so that by removing one or the other insert, the width of the base can be freely adjusted, and thus the width of the street between the posts.

It will be most appropriate to use 5 strips for the base, i.e. inserts, namely two 3 cm thick strips, two 2 cm thick strips and one 1 cm thick strip, their width must be equal, but it can be any; the most comfortable one will be 8 cm. Putting these inserts together like a carving. 84 shows, we will get a composite base of 11 ctm. wide, to which we then attach the posts using spindles with screws, in exactly the same way as with the previously described board. The explanation given under the attached figure frees us from further description of this rule; let us only add that the distance of the holes in the posts is measured only from the upper spindles, and not from the base, because the door frame strips placed in the street will rest on the spindles. For convenience, when setting the posts, a centimeter measure is provided on one of the inserts and on one of the handlebars.

Dig. 84. A tree with a folded base and movable posts. and II. two pairs of posts with holes for pins p; 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, inserts that make up the base. Iron spindles that pull the posts down and up with screws (nuts). K handlebars C centimeter measure on the base and handlebars.

Due to the services that a plug placed on the side of the wall often provides in an apiary, you can also make a plug on straw hives by cutting out the straw, and you can either put it on the stove side, keeping the middle seam in the wall, or instead of one seam, put it in the wall. two, and leave a seam-free space in the middle, part of which will be occupied by the tenon hole. The tenon itself can be made either from straw or from a piece of thick board.

Farm hives. Due to the fact that hives are wooden. not very accessible to peasants, because most often they make their own. they don't know how to make it themselves, and in any case, they have to spend money on materials, which they rarely have in abundance, and straw hives such as those described above require a greater outlay on the tree, i.e. the machine, as well as a certain skill and precision in execution, which many beekeepers have tried to come up with an easier and cheaper way to make straw hives.

Dig. 85. tree tree for making farm hives. The width of the box measured from the outside should be just 24 cm, i.e. 23.8 cm. and the length is only 64 etm, so 63.8 ctm.

However, all these efforts did not lead to the desired goal, and we must openly admit that whoever wants to have a good beehive must spend either a little money or some work and effort, because nowhere else does such an old proverb: "dogs eat meat for cheap money" , does not check as in the case of bee breeding, because a poor hive will be a constant nuisance to the beekeeper. However, in order to satisfy the supporters of absolute cheapness, we provide here two trees that can be used to make very cheap hives. Fig. 86. A tree for making cheap straw hives. without door frames. The post e is installed as needed, h the first initial turn.

Figure 85 attached below shows the principle of Fr.'s idea. P . B a? a?ski, described in Bartnik r. This board consists of a box with a small dimensions of the interior of a Slavic hive and is placed on a bench, the edges of which protrude 10 cm on all sides of the box.

After making the two door frames for the hive, described in more detail on page 90, the first door frame is placed on the box and moved to the base, then the wires to be used to gird the hive are threaded through the door frames and their ends are inserted through the slots on the box shown so that They didn't get in the way while working. Now he advises Fr. Ba?a?ski made of long straw, 2 J / 2 ctm. thick and wrap it around the box up to the top, finish here and sew it so that it does not fray. Then start winding the second and third layers of the same coil from the bottom, sewing the last coil of each coil at the top, this will create a hive wall of 7 1 ctm. fat. Finally, the upper door frames are put on, the walls are wrapped with wires, and after being carefully removed from the box, they are stitched in the same way as described for the production of broken beehives. The back and the valve are made separately using the method described on page 97.

The teacher L. Lewicki described in Bartnik in 1881 the production of a straw hive without doorframes, for which the hive uses a shoe tree shown in Figure 86. The structure of this rule will be easily understood by anyone from the figure, so we will not describe it. P. Lewicki advises to build a hive without a door frame and also with ropes, with the only difference that the ropes are their own, i.e. the straw roll is 4 cm long. thick, and immediately sews one roll to the other, just like ordinary s?omianniki, i.e. kószki, are made. He wraps the first lower roller in a circle, either with wire, bast or twine for durability. If you want, you can sew a second, identical layer of straw on top of the first one.

After sewing the walls of the hive in this way, the upper slats of the tree are removed and the hive is removed from the grower. Mr. Lewicki advises to make the back and the valve without frames, using the cutter shown in Figure 87, then sew the straw roll one to the other, and then after the obtained width of 24 cm. at the extreme pillars c, c, evenly sawn; In this way, mats are actually obtained, one of which is dressed as a back for the hive, and the other is used as a valve.

In our opinion, it will be possible to make similar straw hives more easily and precisely, either on one or the other, if instead of round ropes, i.e. cylindrical ones, long braids of straw are made and these are wound on the trees in several layers and then sewn together appropriately. . Fr. once mentioned such braids in Bartnik. P. Wereszko, and later P. Szuber, stating their usefulness. Hives made of such braids will have more even and stronger walls, and a long braid is easier to braid evenly than to wind long braids.

Dig. 87. Correct for making a furnace and a valve.

Very cheap and at the same time comfortable are hives made of thin boards, which are wrapped on top with braided straw braids. These braids are sewn together so that they cover the back, sides, ceiling and bottom of the hive. When wrapping the braid around the hive, start wrapping the furnace from the middle, nailing the first coil to the middle line of the furnace so that its ends are at the top and bottom of the hive as far apart as the sides of the braid are away from the side edges of the furnace, and then proceed from there to side walls. There is no need to secure the valve as you can place a mat inside the hive. If we cover the edges of such a hive with strips, it will be very good and durable.

Twins and hives for spare queens. So far, we have been talking about single Slavic hives, equipped with only one valve from the abutment, because providing two valves in an ordinary hive is not only superfluous, but sometimes even harmful. It was different in the past, when snoze hives were still used, then it was necessary to provide two openings, because it was extremely difficult to remove all the combs with one opening. Nowadays, when we have 10 long frames in the hive, it is a game to dismantle the entire trunk through one hole, up to the last frame, without almost the slightest bees' mitre.

Single hives are definitely the most convenient in the apiary, because twins, even if carefully made, have the disadvantages of being heavier, sometimes making this or that activity more difficult, often making the existence of one stump dependent on the other, and in many cases becoming the reason for combining them. two swarms together against the beekeeper's will. However, whoever is a supporter of double hives, i.e. twins, can also give this form to Slavic hives, just like to other hives systems. Twins can be made in two ways, i.e. either by connecting two hives with one side wall or by connecting them with a back wall. The production of a twin with a common side wall is cheaper, but such a hive is less reliable for wintering, because the bees are more easily disturbed by each other and suffer from heat more quickly than in a twin with a common rear wall.

In only two cases can twins provide a significant service, that is, in storing weak roes, or rather swarms, with spare queens and in producing honey in combs for sale. For the first purpose, it will be good if we have up to 15 percent of hives in each apiary arranged in the manner of twins, but these do not need to be actual twins, but rather only hives arranged in such a way that they have two eyes, two valves and two separate spaces for housing frames. , of which one space for the actual swarm may be larger, while the other for the spare queen will be large enough to accommodate three or four frames; these will be so-called semi-twins. Such a semi-twin will be most suitable if we make it exactly like a single hive, but we only give it a greater depth, e.g. 60 cm. and two valves on the side of both abutments. At a distance of 16 to 18 cm. we then attach the partition board permanently from one edge, making sure that it adheres tightly to the walls of the hive everywhere. The smaller space fenced off with this board, for which a hole can be placed either in the side wall or in the opening, will serve us as a place for a hive with a spare queen, both during the honey harvest or in the winter, because the appropriate number of bees on three frames will be sufficient. honey, lined in this way under a stronger trunk, will certainly survive the winter.

We strongly advise against creating separate small streets for spare queens, as it is both more expensive and impractical.

For the second purpose, i.e. for the production of unleavened honey, i.e. honey sewn into glowing combs, it will be appropriate to build proper twins with a common rear wall, in which there will be a sliding opening, equipped with a grating sheet. Such a twin does not need to be twice as large as a single hive, it is enough if each half of it can fit 8 frames. The eyelet in each half of the twin should be placed to the right of the valve in the side wall at 12 1/1 cm. from the common septal wall, and by 25 cm. away from the ceiling, i.e. there will be one eye on both sides of the hive, in a completely equal position. In order to build such twins of completely uniform size, we will prepare wooden hives made of 1 1 J 2 cm. thick boards following shoe trees with a wall thickness of 7 cm. : :

1) The rule for the internal dimension of the hive will remain the same as for single hives. This rule will also be used to precisely form the internal partition wall.

2) Tree tree for the ceiling and inner bottom of the hive 24 cm. wide, and 68 cm. long.

3) Tree tree for the outer ceiling and bottom of the hive 35 cm. wide, and 68 cm. long.

4) A tree for the internal side walls of the hive, 75 cm. high, and 68 cm. wide.

5) A tree for the outer walls of the hive, 78 cm. high, and 68 cm. wide.

A semi-detached house will be built from carefully cut boards according to these rules in the same way as a single hive, only that on both side walls we will put middle battens, i.e. strips, regulating the distance of the double walls from each other, at the same height from the ceiling, i.e. 25 cm, with nailed pieces in the places where the eyes are to be placed. The tenon should be placed in the very center of the ceiling so that one half of it overlaps with this half of the semi-detached house and the other with that one. The depth of the entire hive will be 71 cm.

Summer hives for milking non-removable trunks. In order to achieve the highest possible income from an apiary run in non-demountable hives, you should proceed as in §. We will describe 5. under B, 10, but for this purpose summer hives with single walls are needed, as they are only used for honey harvesting. These hives are made of 3 cm or even 1/2 cm boards, exactly according to the size of Slavic hives, for which we only need one tree for the internal dimension of the hive. In addition to the tenon in the ceiling, you can also add another tenon in the floor, which is opened on hot days to cool the trunk. *)

Although roofs are not an actual component of beehives, it is necessary to briefly talk about the product of beehives. A roof will be good if it is cheap, durable, protects against wet weather, and can be easily moved with the hive. The first condition will most likely be satisfied by roofs made of straw, the second by roofs made of shingles, the third by both the first and the second equally well, and the fourth condition by only foldable roofs. This means that roofs made of straw or shingles are the most suitable as they can be dismantled and reassembled and thus easily transported in large quantities and conveniently stored in winter.

Dig. 88. A tree for making uniform straw roofs, a, b, c, d, e, f, g, stakes; D. cladding; h. seams.

*) I have given here various ways of making Slavic beehives according to my best belief and experience; and to those who can easily criticize everything, I advise that, like me, they should first try out various beehive systems, that they should first practice each method of making beehives practically, as I did, and only then sit down to write criticism and start giving advice to others.

Apart from the usual straw roofs, which - like hats well known to every Bartnik - are made of long straw by tying them twice, and which are very suitable for baskets and in general for round (cylindrical) hives, it is necessary to use boards made similarly to those used for making hives when making straw roofs for detachable hives. For non-removable straw roofs, the most appropriate rule will be the one described in Bartnik in 1878 by Fr. A. Paszkowski, whose engraving (88) is given here; for removable roofs, the board described by P. Szuber in Bartnik in 1885 (fig. 89) is sufficient, or they can also be made on the board used for making straw beehives, as described in more detail by Fr. A. Witwicki in Bartnik, 1892, and the description of which includes figures 90 and 91 attached.

Dig. 89.

Tree tree for foldable straw roofs 1 1, 2 2, 3 3, 4 4 stakes; hoses mark seams.

For Slavic hives, the roof should be about 82 cm wide to properly protect the abutments, and the height of its flaps will be about 40 cm for one and about 53 cm for the other. It is best to spread the sheets either at an angle of 135°, i.e. one and a half right angles, or at a right angle, i.e. 90°, in which case the production of a foldable straw canopy is even easier, and the canopy itself is more durable because it is less damaged by rain and snow.

Dig. 90. Folding straw roof. 1, 2, 3, and, facings; . 5 strips nailed to the edges of straw; A. lower lobe; B. upper lobe; 6, 7, strips on which the roof is supported; o, opening angle; 8 string or wire tightening the roof panels; 9. seams; 10th street

Dig. 91. Form of cladding for a foldable straw roof. 1. lower sheet lining. upper panel lining, d, c, g, b, outline of the lower panel lining, f, h, direction of cutting the lower panel, h, f, g, b, protruding whiskers. i, j, m, l, outline of the upper sand lining, ag = ge = eh, which will search for point h.

The width of the roof shows that the posts on the roof trees must be at least 84 cm. high and have 2 to 3 holes evenly spaced, the last one at 82 cm. comes to properly secure the applied and pressed straw with plugs. The roofs will be made of straw. quite durable when they are 4 cm. thick, so the street between the stakes must be wide. When starting to make straw roofs, we first prepare facings from 4 cm slats. wide, 2 to 3 cm. thick and long sheets depending on the height. In the case of a foldable roof, which is to be spanned at an angle of 135°, the lower facings (of the overlapping sheet, Fig. 91-1) from d to g are 42 cm, and from c to b, 44 cm, and the upper facings (of the overlapping sheet, Fig. 91-2) on side i, m ctm., on side j, l 53 ctm. The panel leading up to the roof (see Fig. 90 A) will be only 40 cm long. so there will remain protruding pieces of lining about 4 cm high on both sides of it, which will be placed as tendrils on the upper lining (fig. 90 B) and attached to it with a pin. ' In order for these tendrils to overlap and cover the linings of the upper sheet, either the lower sheet should be made wider by the thickness of the linings, or the tendrils of the lower sheet linings should be gathered from the inside to half their thickness, and in a suitable place, i.e. 40 cm. from the lower end) make indentations in the lining of the upper sheet from the outside so that the whiskers fit into them.

Mats, i.e. sheets for roofs, are sewn in the same way as we described when making beehives; after sewing, they are cut as needed and put together. The roof assembled in this way is now ready, but to make it stronger, you still need to nail a strip at the bottom of each sheet to the end of the cladding, which would cover the ends of the straw and prevent it from slipping out, which always happens with older roofs, and you also need to nail it to each sheet. from the bottom, the strip is about 4 cm. in a square, approximately 15 cm thick. from the lower bank, and this is for this purpose. so that the roof rests well on the hive. To be sure, you can also connect the roof panels under the gable with hooks, or tighten them with string.

It is much easier to make a roof made of shingles. For this purpose, it is best to use larger shingles, 48 to 50 cm. long ones. By attaching two 4 cm strips to each roof panel. in a thick square, and about 82 ctm. long, we place them parallel to each other at a distance of 16 cm, and nail the shingles on them so that on one side they will extend beyond the batten by 4 cm, and on the other side by 20 to 22 cm. according to their length. It is enough to attach the shingles to the battens in one layer only, as long as they overlap tightly. In this way, we will obtain completely even sheets of roofs, which we then arrange in pairs on the hives so that the sides where the shingles extend beyond the batten by 4 cm will meet each other at the top, overlapping one another, and the other pairs of strips will be pushed together. on the hive and they will not allow the roof to be removed or moved apart. If we also fasten the gable strips of the roofs together with hooks, wire or string, the roof will effectively resist the wind. These types of canopies are extremely convenient because they can be easily dismantled, transported and folded, and if they are not needed, they can be stored in stacks.

Roofs made of boards or planks without grooves are less good because they crack and leak easily.

Mats are indispensable in every well-managed apiary because they provide great services both during winter and spring. They can be made of various materials that are poor conductors of heat, such as moss, paper, hay, etc., but the most comfortable are straw mats. In winter and spring, the mats are placed on the trunks just behind the valve, which makes it easier to keep the bees in a uniform temperature. Stuffing the empty space in the hive between the valve and the valve with straw or hay will never replace mats, because apart from the inevitable contamination of the apiary, which can sometimes even cause a fire, we will encounter this type of continuous supply when sweeping the trunks in spring. difficulties and inconveniences. Therefore, let no one regret this little effort to purchase good and durable mats. The mat will be most suitable when it does not reach the entire height of the hive, but only as far as the frames reach, i.e. from the ceiling to the lower bars, i.e. when it is 49 to 51 cm high. high, and in width it should be 24 cm., so that it fits tightly in the hive, the thickness of the mats will be sufficient for 4 cm., although thicker mats can also be advantageously used in the Slavic hive.

When it comes to making mats, you can use specially made small boards, with posts less than 24 cm in diameter. high, or sew them on ordinary trees used for making straw beehives, and you can, either by inserting an insert or in another way, narrow the path between the posts to 4 cm. To sew mats, either split reed or twine dipped in wax dissolved in turpentine is used; Splits prepared in this way are very durable. Wire for sewing mats is bad because it rusts and eats straw.

Mats made of moss are also excellent. For this purpose, moss is collected, dried perfectly, and then sewn from canvas, e.g. from old bellows, 29 cm bags. wide a 55 cm. long. These bags are stuffed with dry moss to a thickness of 4 cm. and sews them through their thickness to create, as it were, 4 cm mattresses. thick, abundant 24 cm. wide, and 50 cm. long. Mats made of moss in this way are very warm, do not mold and can be easily dried and stored.

§. 3. Tools and utensils.

Every apiary requires certain tools and utensils, and we will only describe the most practical ones. Amateur beekeepers, i.e. those who have fun with beekeeping, use many different instruments and even consider it a pride, and in some sense a duty, to be able to show off some little thing of their own invention, so foreign beekeeping exhibitions are full of these inventions, which, like Mushrooms grow after the rain, but most often they disappear sooner.

One of the most important tools, without which a wisely run apiary cannot exist, is:

A honey extractor, thanks to it, only activates the combs in the hive becomes valuable, while without it it would be much more advantageous to keep the bees in simple, non-demountable hives. The honey extractor was invented, or rather used a centrifuge in the sugar industry used for beekeeping, by the first major Kruszka, living in Legnano near Venice, in 1865. Hruszka presented his, supposedly original, invention in the autumn of 1865 at the beekeepers' congress in Bern, Moravia, and although previously, in his article of June 1, 1865 in the Bienenzeitung, he mentioned the centrifuge used in sugar refineries for a similar purpose, at this meeting he presented the idea of the honey extractor as original, drawn from his own experience. Did he gain more fame as a result? we doubt it.

A honey extractor is a device that allows you to remove honey from honeycombs without damaging them. So if we consider how many treatments are needed to ensure that there are only working slices in the trunk without drone slices; further, how large a hive would be needed so that the strong trunk would have a place to deposit honey in case of abundant harvesting, and so that when the honey flows from the flowers, the bees would not need to build vessels (combs) in which to deposit it, we can easily understand that it is invaluable that with the help of a honey extractor we can, once we have a stock made by bee work, not destroy this work at all, and still extract the accumulated honey, and thus, without enlarging the area of the hive, and without forcing the bees to waste time on pulling combs, provide they constantly have vessels to store this golden liquid.

It is true that one could accuse the honey extractor of the fact that this ease of extracting honey from the trunk may, in the hands of a greedy and careless beekeeper, be the reason for the destruction of the trunk, especially when, having selected honey, he leaves too little for the bees to stock up for the winter. However, such an accident cannot be taken into account, just as one cannot avoid traveling by train because someone somewhere had an accident while traveling by train. Whoever uses a honey extractor and does not take care to leave the bees with the necessary supply of honey for the winter, i.e. 12 to 15 kilos, will be exposed, if not to loss, then at least to severe poverty next spring, and having learned this lesson once, he will be more careful in the future . Who has ever seen that because there are people who are greedy, greedy and uninstructable, they avoid using something that could bring great benefits to other sensible and prudent people?

There are also those who claim that it is not worth buying a honey extractor for several bees, because it is expensive. But even this accusation will not withstand criticism. A honey extractor for a large apiary should be as perfect as possible, and this is quite expensive, costing from PLN 20 to PLN 32; but for several trunks, a simple honey extractor, meeting all requirements, is enough, and it costs PLN 5 at most. So we ask whether a few bee trunks worth several dozen zlotys. It is not advisable to spend PLN 5. for a honey extractor that will enable us to fully exploit the labor force of hardworking bees, and which will provide us with pure honey without the laborious smelting and spoiling of the earwax that is expensive for them?

Some people complain that honey shaken out with a honey extractor is not as good as honey pressed from combs; However, it is quite the opposite, because extracted honey is definitely purer than pressed honey, because the latter always contains more or less pollen and small remains of earwax, and therefore extracted honey is tastier and healthier. However, extracted honey is always slightly thinner than pressed honey, because it contains a little more water and usually comes from cells that have not yet been sewn. However, whoever wanted to obtain honey as thick as pressed honey could easily achieve this by waiting to shake the honey until it was sewn into the chambers, or by placing the shaken honey in the oven after baking the bread until the water evaporated. However, both are completely unnecessary, because shaken honey is so thick that it does not spoil as long as it is stored in a non-wet place, and it crystallizes in the same way as pressed honey. Shaked honey is only too thin when unscrupulous people rinse the honey extractor after each extraction and pour the rinses into the obtained honey. Such behavior is even more punishable because it discredits honey from honey extractors and thus harms other honest producers.

The great advantage of a honey extractor is that by shaking the honey from the combs more often, we stimulate the bees to work hard; therefore, you should not wait until the bees have collected the honey, but while there is good use, shake it out of the combs even if they are not yet full of it. Experience shows that when the harvest is abundant, a stump taken with a honey extractor will collect much more honey than a stump from which no honey has been extracted. There are examples where a strong trunk with a limited amount of honey and the use of a honey extractor produced three times as much honey as the same trunk in the same conditions, but without a limitation of the honey and without the use of a honey extractor.

Using a honey extractor, you can also easily separate different types of honey from different plants; for example, you can shake out and store separately honey from the flowers of fruit trees, turnip, acacia, sainfoin, white or pink clover, linden, chert, saradel, heather, etc. Similar sorting of honey can be very beneficial, because not every honey is suitable for everything is equally suitable; and so honey from fruit trees, acacia, sainfoin, clover is very good for storing various fruits, for eating raw, for sick people and for confectioners; linden honey is excellent for rich honey, for the sick and for confectioners; Hreczany honey is sought after by gingerbread and mead makers:

After these general remarks, we proceed to the description of the honey extractor itself. Each honey extractor consists of two main parts: 1) The winch (Fig. 92) and 2) The jar in which the winch is placed (Fig. 93).

A winch is a device in which frames filled with honey are placed and rotated in order to get rid of the honey. A pot is a wooden or tin vessel on the walls of which the honey thrown out from the combs collects and drips to the bottom. The turnstile can be arranged for 4 or 6 slices; for small apiaries, a four-slice reel is sufficient, for larger apiaries, a six-slice reel is recommended. Honey extractors can have 1, or 3 combs, but these are not so convenient. The turnstile consists of a central axis a and a peripheral cage b c. The peripheral cage is made up of as many vertical posts as needed and an equal number of struts (spokes) at the top and bottom. A four-comb honey extractor requires 4, and a six-comb honey extractor requires 6 poles and the same number of struts. The posts around the perimeter of the turnstile must be placed at such distances from each other that the frame can fit comfortably between them, and they must be as high as the frame, i.e. 48 cm. Anyone who wants to make a precise honey extractor should first draw on paper the circumference of the turnstile and the places where the posts are to be placed, and then make the turnstile according to this drawing. For a 4-comb honey extractor, use a compass to draw a circle with a radius of 21V S ctm.; with 6 slices, radius 32Ys to 33 ctm.

In the case of a turnstile with four frames, the diameter of the turnstile wheel, i.e. the distance between two opposite posts, should be 43 cm, and the circumferential distance of two adjacent posts from each other, measured from their center, should be 33 cm. For a 6-frame turnstile, the most appropriate wheel diameter is 65 to 66 cm, and the circumferential distance of the posts from each other is also 33 cm. The thickness of the posts can be such that there is 26 cm left between them. spacing.

Dig. 93. Cross-section of a honey extractor.

The turnstile can be made either as shown or carved. 92 or as shown in the engraving. 94. The turnstile according to Figure 94, made in 4 or 6 slices, is definitely better, because first of all it can be removed from the central iron axis and cleaned at any time, and also because its wooden struts are cm high. data, prevent the slices inserted into the winch from falling down, because at most they can only tilt slightly towards the center of the winch, but they cannot fall down completely by resting on the strut slats.

The above-mentioned volume for a six-post winch also has the advantage that there is just enough space between the struts running radially from the hub to the posts to enable the inserted frames to be conveniently turned over to the other side without having to remove them upwards from the turnstile. In this system of turnstiles, the main base of the turnstile is the lower star, on the circumference of which the posts are fastened, while at the top they are connected only by slat-like struts, which at one end are inserted into the post, and at the other into a disc-shaped spit, through the center of which passes the axle of the turnstile, made of a four-cornered iron bar, 1-7 cm in diameter at most. thick. The quadrangular holes of the lower star and the piazza should be reinforced with nailed sheet metal; and on the axis there is a disc soldered at the bottom, on which the winch is mounted.

The circumference of the turnstile is covered with either burnt iron wire at a distance of 1 cm. coil from coil, or with wire mesh. Those who use spacer nails with heads for frames will do better to cover the winch with wire*), and those who have spacer nails without heads can use a net. The inserted patches rest against this wire or mesh when the turnstile rotates. The winch is placed in the very center of the jar on a raised spigot so that the honey collecting from the bottom does not reach the winch; at the top, the winch axis is inserted into the pin located in the transverse floor of the jar.

In the case of farm honey extractors intended for smaller apiaries, a handle can be placed directly on the axis of the reel, which is used to set the reel in a whirl. Honey extractors arranged in this way will rotate slower, but completely sufficient to shake the honey from the cells. In honey extractors for larger apiaries, a smaller wheel is placed on the reel axis, which is set into faster rotation by turning the second larger wheel. These rings can be connected to each other or by a rope or belt, as in a drawing. 93./4., or by means of teeth, in which case they may stand either horizontally with each other, or at right angles, as in a burrow. 95 and 96. There are those who turn the reel by means of a string twisting around the axle, others by means of a handle on a curved axle, others by rubbing the axle with a long strip, others by means of two smooth wheels, the larger of which is rubbed with its rubberized edge a smaller wheel, mounted on the axis, turns it, and with it the entire wheel - the gate. The best are honey extractors with toothed wheels, and those with the rotating wheel standing perpendicularly are better (figs. 95 and 96). The jar in which the reel is mounted should be so wide that the reel can rotate comfortably in it, but it should be at least 2 cm wide. in the perimeter of free space; the height of the jar should be such that its edge is at least 12 to 15 cm. it stuck out above the winch, because otherwise the honey would splash out over the edge of the jar. The jar may be equipped with a cover composed of two halves, one of which may remain intact even when extracting honey; such covers contribute greatly to cleanliness. The pot may be either wooden (in the case of farm honey extractors, even an ordinary barrel) or made of tin. The best wooden one is made of pine or fir wood, only painted outside; The best one is made of black iron sheet, painted outside and tinned inside. The watermelon can stand or dig on three legs. 93 and 96 or on crampons, like burrowing. 95. Right at the bottom there is a coil through which honey drips into the vessel placed under it. In my apiaries, I use a tin honey extractor, like the one you dig into. 96 presents.

*) In such a case, the wire must be wound around the nails at certain intervals, so that if the wire breaks, the entire coil will not be damaged.

Dig. 96. Honey extractor with a tin jar, driven by a vertical wheel.

Fr. Nazarewicz advised making jars in the form of a water can, i.e. wider at the bottom than at the top, completely without legs and without a coil. Its jar is so high that there is a large space under the winch in which over 50 liters of honey can be collected. Such a jar stands strong, and the honey pours out of it over the top by tilting it.

To shake the honey with a honey extractor, place the honeycombs between the winch posts so that the earwax sticks to the covered wire or mesh, and vice versa, i.e. with the upper slat of the frame down; After placing the slices in all compartments, or if there are not so many of them, placing them opposite each other so that they balance each other, turn the crank and set the winch in uniform motion. vortex. As a result of the rapid rotation of the winch, the honeycombs first adhere to the mesh or wire, and then honey bursts out of their cells and settles on the wall of the jar, from where it drips down. This spattering occurs due to the action of centrifugal force, i.e. momentum, just as mud is chipped off from the circumference of the wheels of a fast-moving car. When starting the honey extractor, it should be turned slowly at first, not suddenly, and gradually accelerate the rotation, while stopping the reel and slowing down one step at a time, otherwise the honeycombs could burst. If you rotate it carefully, you can shake the honey out of even completely fresh wax without damaging it.

Only raw honey will come out of the combs in the honey extractor; Therefore, if honey were sewn into the combs, then the cells would have to be uncovered first. This is most easily achieved by using a crooked knife, as shown in Figure 94 below d. To do this, rest the frame on the edge of the bowl in which the waste is collected, or better yet, on a board placed on it, and lightly pull the top of the cells with a knife, cutting off a thin sheet of the covers. To make sure the knife runs smoothly across the slice, dip it in a pot of water next to it before each stroke. Any other means of discovering sewn cells are an empty toy. Anyone who immediately extracts honey at the best time of harvest is rarely exposed to the risk of discovering the sewn cells.

If the honey has not yet been sewn, there is no need to set the spindle into a very fast vortex and the honey will flow out of the cells into drops; with thick honey that has already been sewn, you need to rotate it a little more strongly. Since the honey will flow out of the comb only from those cells that face outside the perimeter, it should then be turned over and the honey from the other cells must be squeezed out in the same way. When shaking out fresh, white earwax, you need to be very careful, and it is best not to use it in the honey extractor at all, especially if it already contains honey; Anyone who would like to extract honey from such wax should do so by first turning the combs slowly after inserting them carefully to remove only part of the honey from the cells on one side of the comb, then turning the comb over to the other side and completely twisting out the honey from the cells on one side of the comb. , and then turn the comb over to the first side again to discard the rest of the honey from those first cells. Otherwise, sometimes when the wax is so fresh, the honey lying in the cells from the center of the wheel, when rotated faster and with stronger pressure, breaks the middle walls of the cells and thus spoils the honeycomb.

After honey harvesting is finished, the reel and jar are rinsed with water and the rinsing is placed in trays for the trunks to be removed overnight. The honey extractor is left alone outside for the bees to lick it completely.

Some people make various alleged corrections when extracting honey, so that the combs do not fall off, or so that they can be easily turned to the other side in the spinning wheel. These are, honestly, we can only say apparent improvements, and whoever makes a honey extractor with exactly the same winch dimensions as we have given above will not need all these caps, hinges, nets, etc.

In recent times, honey extractors have been manufactured in such a way that when the crank handle is turned in the opposite direction, the combs rotate immediately to the other side, which saves time as there is no need to turn each comb separately to extract honey from both sides. . This is undoubtedly a beautiful idea and consists in the fact that, as a result of the drive, when the turnstile suddenly stops, the slices placed in the boxes, covered with a net on both sides, are turned by the force of the drive using the pins, mounted in the lower double cross, to the other side. However, this movement is too sudden and its violence often causes cracks and the combs to fall off, which is why we cannot conscientiously recommend such iniodars to anyone, at least in the arrangement in which we saw them at exhibitions.

Net and gloves. All work in the apiary should usually be carried out without protecting the worker from being stung, because in such a case he works more carefully in the trunk and tries to disturb the bees as little as possible in his own interest. After all, there are times and circumstances that force us to resort to protective measures.

Especially a beginner in the profession of beekeeping needs some protection at first, until his body slowly gets used to the venom of the bee sting, otherwise he will only work around bees with great reluctance and self-control.

Dig. 97. Armored Beekeeper Beginner.

For beginners, we consider the clothes included as the most appropriate cover. 97 presents. It consists of a wire mesh bent into a tube so wide that it can be comfortably placed over the head. One hole in the pipe is sewn with a cloth, which serves as a headgear, and a large T-shirt made of white or gray linen, with large sleeves, is sewn to the other hole. The hands come with large gloves made of thin cloth, having only one finger. The T-shirt is tied tightly around the waist with a sewn-in tape, and the gloves are tied similarly to the sleeves of the T-shirt. If a bee worker puts his trouser legs in his shoes or ties them tightly, that is, it is sufficiently protected against stings by armor. If you want an elegant mesh, you can put glasses or mica plates in it for the eyes, and make a hole in front of the mouth closed with a cap to insert a pipe or a cigar.

You might think that mittens would be uncomfortable while working, but they are the best, as long as they are very spacious; because in a large canvas, each finger has complete freedom and can be used as if there was nothing on the hand. Some people recommend thick woolen, leather or rubber gloves, but these are completely impractical because they only irritate the bees. Whenever a bee stings, it hangs with its stinger, becomes angry, buzzes and attracts more others. Meanwhile, thin linen gloves, if they are very large, become puffed up on the hands while working, and even though the bee stings, the stinger does not reach the body, and the bee, having easily pulled it out, stops being angry. If, however, it happens that the sting reaches the body through the cloth, the sting is less painful because the sting, passing through the cloth, has rubbed off some of the venom and lost it, so the worker will slowly get used to the venom and the effects of the sting. It is also important that the bee does not need to lose its stinger, because all you need to do is grab the cloth with the glove and lift it a little, and the stinger will come out of the body and the bee will fly away, placated.

But even the most skilled beekeeper may be in such a situation that he cannot expose himself to stings, because it is difficult to demand that someone employed in the public eye should be able to appear even with traces of dropsy under the eye, on the nose or lips, and these are the parts of the body that are present even in accustomed beekeepers. to venom, slightly sensitive to it; It is also difficult to expect a beekeeper to allow himself to be cut mercilessly when the bees are very angry for any reason. For experienced beekeepers, a wire half-mask is sufficient protection, covering only the eyes, nose and part of the mouth, and allowing comfortable use of a pipe or cigar.

We do not list or describe various other nets here, because everyone can easily make them according to their own ideas, we only provide here a further description and drawing of the net, which we described for the first time in "Bartnik" in 1875, p. , and which cost a dozen or so cents. anyone can prepare it easily.

For this purpose, you take ordinary gauze, also called organza, approximately 1 meter (80 cm is enough for a hat with narrower wings) and sew it into a bag as long as the gauze is wide; A rubber string is pulled from one opening of the bag to make the opening narrower, and the net is ready. This net can be folded and carried conveniently in a pocket, and if necessary, it can be placed over a hat so that the side with the rubber string covers it tightly above the wings, while the other edge of the net can be placed under the clothes and closed so that the bees cannot approach it. When sewing a mesh bag, it is best to sew it only halfway up, because the mesh sewn in this way can be more easily caught under the clothes when the zipper is turned towards the back than when it is completely sewn (Fig. 97).

For such a mesh, choose the thinnest possible gauze, black or gray in color, because it is difficult to see through the white gauze. The best gauze for mesh is thin, black silk gauze, which doesn't bother the eyes at all. Silk net costs up to 50 cents, and regular gauze costs up to 10 cents. So what could be cheaper and more convenient?

A simple application of honey or water in which a little honey has been dissolved can also be used to protect against bee stings. This has such a strangely soothing effect on the bees that they will probably sting in such a smeared place when they are very irritated or when they are inadvertently pressed.

A certain measure against bee stings is a certain courage and habit, which is followed by peace, uniformity of movements and caution when dealing with bees.

For this reason, phlegmatic people are less susceptible to bee stings than sanguine people, who are also usually very sensitive to bee venom. However, the most sensitive body, over time, gets used to bee venom so much that it does not swell at all, or very little, so you just need a lot of patience to deal with bees and the painful effects of their sting. Anyone who lacks patience will never be a beekeeper.

If a bee stings, remove the sting as quickly as possible by prying it from the side with your fingernail, but do not grab it with your fingers and pull it out, as this squeezes all the venom from the sting capsule into the wound. After removing the sting, you can rub the stung area with a solution of iodine in glycerin or iodine in potassium iodide, which is repeated every hour or two until the swelling subsides. Iodine tincture in glycerin is better than regular iodine tincture because it does not cause any stains on the skin and absorbs into the interior more easily. A solution of iodine in glycerin is made from iodine tincture by mixing it half and half with ordinary glycerin. Both can be purchased for a few cents at any pharmacy.

Against bee stings, they also often recommend pipe or cigar juice, ammonia, onion juice, horseradish juice and many other remedies; However, all of them probably help only when the body gets used to the bee venom, and this will happen over time even to those who, after being stung, initially swell not only at the site of the sting, but even in the entire adjacent part of the body. Bee venom itself, which is sometimes used in Homeopathy as Apis, is also effective against bee stings in some people (see Part I, p. 273).

In people not accustomed to bee stings, swelling increases until the third day, and then it begins to subside on its own; in more accustomed people, the pricked area will tingle immediately, but after a dozen or so hours the swelling disappears; However, in people who have been well shot with a stinger, there is no swelling at all, or only a very slight one. However, there are people who do not swell from bee stings and claim that they are prone to rheumatism. In people with heart disease, a sting can cause very serious consequences.

Vacuum cleaner. The skillful use of chicken dust makes work in the apiary much easier. Smaller inspections of the trunk can be carried out without dusting, but for each major activity you need to prepare a chicken coop to show your superiority to the bees with smoke and to curb any whims of indignation before the explosion.

How and when to use chicken is difficult to provide fixed rules, only our own experience can teach us about it. The rule could be to disturb the bees as little as possible with smoke, that is, never to. do not overuse the stubble, but have it close at hand for every emergency. A gust of smoke used properly means more than whole clouds of smoke released at the wrong time. When opening the trunk, you should first blow some smoke into the hive through the eyelet, and then, after opening the valve, blow some smoke into the crack, which often harms the bees for the entire duration of the operation, if you are careful; the smoke should be continued with each stronger shock to immediately humiliate the first bees that emerge, otherwise chaos will arise which cannot be calmed down by dust, because instead of being tamed, the bees become more and more angry.

Even the mildest tree trunk can become furious with too much dust, especially if it is allowed to curl up inside the nest, so that the bees cannot find any protection from the smoke. You should dust only from the edge, so that the bees have shelter from the smoke towards the center, and then they will be calm.

In addition to the skillful use of smoke, a lot depends on the good device of the vacuum cleaner, which should provide sufficient smoke when called, and when not in use it should smolder slowly, but never go out. Our ordinary vacuum cleaners rarely have these advantages to the desired extent, which is why we come across various forms of them in apiaries, starting from a piece of humus or tinder, held in the bare hand, to strange vacuum cleaners with bellows and springs, used by clever Germans. The easiest way to smoke is undoubtedly to use a pipe or a cigar; A pipe provides excellent services especially if it has a flexible bowl and a cap on the head, extended into a slightly longer tube, through which the smoke can be easily directed to the desired place at any time, even without using your hands. For this purpose, you can use any pipe you find and have the cap made by a tinsmith, just like you would for a carving. 99. presents.

However, when working in the apiary for a longer period of time, smoking becomes impossible, because only a passionate smoker can smoke tobacco continuously for several hours in a row, while most mortals do not have this - not at all enviable - advantage, for them

Therefore, as well as for those who do not smoke tobacco, a good vacuum cleaner is very desirable.

At beekeeping exhibitions in Germany, I saw various vacuum cleaners, often of intricate and intricate design, but none of them met the requirements in practice, for this reason alone.

In my apiaries, I prefer to use a vacuum cleaner like the one shown in Figure 100. Its construction is as follows: In an ordinary vacuum cleaner pot made of thick sheet metal, a disc with holes about 5 cm high is attached. from the bottom, coals and dust come to this disc. Ash and unburnt parts fall under the disc and can be shaken out at any time through the side door & which moves easily in the latch; these doors also serve to prevent drafts. Therefore, when you do not blow into the vacuum cleaner, you raise them up so that the air flows into the dust collector, and when you blow into the vacuum cleaner through the handle, you lower them so that the smoke does not escape, or if they are not open much, then there is no need to drain them. A slightly overlapping lid is placed on the top of the vacuum cleaner, drawn into a tube, through which the smoke comes out when blown. On the side of the vacuum cleaner there is a sheath d placed in the area of a roughly perforated disc, in which a wooden handle is inserted, with a hole through it. It is very desirable that the vacuum cleaner has three legs, otherwise it will often fall over when placed on uneven ground.

This type of vacuum cleaner meets all requirements because it burns for a long time, evenly, at any command

it provides easily abundant and well-directed smoke and protects against fire accidents. Similar vacuum cleaners can also be made from clay at the potter's, which have the advantage of costing only a few cents, but like all clay vessels, they will break easily, which can be effectively remedied by completely unwiring the vacuum cleaner. Pliers, or forceps, provide an invaluable service when dismantling the trunk, because it sometimes happens, especially in the case of hanging frames, that one or another frame cannot be pulled out with bare fingers. The pliers should have a handle that is curved enough so that after hooking the upper strip of the frame, you can conveniently squeeze the arms of the handle without touching the ceiling of the hive and pull out the frame as if digging. 101. presents.

Pliers are necessary when using hanging frames or when the distance between the upper slats of the frames and the ceiling is less than 1 1/2 cm, as it is too difficult to pull the frames out with your fingers. Instead of pliers, you can use a hook, which is, however, less convenient, because after moving the frame from the base with the hook, you have to put it down and remove the frame with your fingers, while when using forceps, the frame is not only lifted up, but even completely removed from the hive. The hook can be made of ordinary wire, the thickness of a duck's wing feather, or you can make a ring for attaching it as a ring for the middle finger of the right hand, in which case you don't have to let go of it at all, but just hide it by bending the finger towards your hand. a catch when it is unnecessary. You can also make a hook-like cut at the end of the knife to uncover the sewn patches, as shown in the figure below d.

As for the use of pliers or a hook, it should be noted that they should always be placed upwards in one corner of the frame, because there the plasters are usually not attached to the slats, and otherwise perforating the plaster in this place is the least harmful. Therefore, we place a hook or pliers at the top of the frame, place our other hand on the door frame of the hive, and resting the hand holding the hook or pliers on the other hand resting on the door frame, we pull slowly and steadily so as not to pull the comb too suddenly, this way the comb is only moved so much as much as needed, and pulls it out without any severe shock, which can never be done with just one hand. It's best to have pliers or a hook on a string next to a button on your coat or around your neck, so you don't have to look for them when you need them.

Dig. 102. Crooked knife for uncovering sewn patches.

Knives. In an apiary with removable hives, you mainly need one knife, with a blade (saw blade) bent twice at a right angle, like a carving knife. 94 under d, or engraving. 102. presents. Such a knife is used for uncovering combs made using a honey extractor, and for cutting off the drone's cap, which last step should be avoided if possible and remedied by removing the drone's work from the trunks where the mother brood is. For straight hives, beehives or bottomless beehives, you need a long knife, bent at a right angle at one end and sharpened with a chisel at the other end, the so-called butcher. 103. for carving slices upwards; this knife should be narrow so that it can be inserted into the space between two slices up to the top (i.e. where the slice is to be cut off), then the knife is turned at a right angle (90 degrees) and the slice is cut off as far as possible. needs; and with the other, chisel-sharp end, slices are cut off from the walls of the hive. This cutter helps us cut straight trunks, renovate them and cut out drone slices.

Dig. 103. Butcher.

In some cases, as when trimming combs, cutting out and inserting nurseries, etc., an ordinary, sharp pocket knife can be of good use, and a beekeeper, like a gardener, should always be armed with it.

Dig. 104. Kitten.

Kitten. When sweeping and cleaning tree trunks, the cat tree provides us with a great service, the most appropriate form of which is the burrowing tree. 104. It is a parallelogram cut out of thick sheet metal, 10 cm. long, and about 5 cm. high, in the middle of which a wire about 50 cm thick is embedded. long and with a wooden handle at the opposite end. With such a brush you can not only sweep the trunk with a few strokes, but also scrape the walls of the hive and pull out the fluff's strands from corners.

Dig. 105 Toothbrush.

Toothbrush and pens. A brush or feathers are needed both for sweeping tree trunks and for sweeping bees from combs in various cases, especially during honey harvesting. A toothbrush will be most comfortable when it has a handle of approximately 30 cm. long, and part with soft bristles, in one or two rows, about cm. long. fly. 105. Wider toothbrushes or those with shorter handles are impractical. Anyone can make a perfect toothbrush by taking a straight rod of about 1 cm. thick, up to 50 cm. long from any stronger tree, e.g. oak, hazel, Persian lilac or lilac, etc., split it from one end into 20 cm. and in this gap he will plant ordinary bristles, taken from the back of a horned pig, in a thin but evenly distributed layer, and then he will pull the split halves together with a wire and nail them together with nails. A toothbrush with bristles protruding equally on both sides of the rod will be even better if it is made by a brushmaker according to all the rules of the art.

As for feathers, the most suitable for this purpose are feathers from the wings of large birds, such as storks, bustards, turkeys, eagles, hawks, geese, etc. These feathers are used individually, whole wings should not be used, as it irritates unnecessarily bees that bite and sting the large planes of the wings without mercy, and thus disturb the beekeeper. When sweeping the bees, dip a brush or pen in water and move it in such a way that the bees are pulled from the head towards the abdomen, because then they become less angry.

The wax tray also occupies an important place in the apiary. Although pieces of earwax intended for the beginning of plasters can be glued to frames by heating them in the sun, this method is too laborious and uncertain. It is much more economical to make a trough from 25 cm sheet metal. long, cm. wide, and 3 to 4 cm. high, into which either the wax itself or the wax with 1/3 of the resin is added, and then placed on a kitchen tray or a well-heated brick, and after the wax has melted, the pieces of slices are dipped and stuck to the frames heated on the tray at the same time . Anyone who wants to have such a trough suitable for all conditions should place it above the spirit lamp in the way they find most convenient.

Feeding trough. We feed the bees for two purposes: either out of necessity, in which case they should be given large portions of thick honey at once, or speculatively, i.e. to stimulate the queen to become more vigorous, in which case we give them diluted or full honey in small portions. The last method of feeding is called stoking. The beekeeper should have two troughs for these two feeding tasks. The most suitable are trays made of tinned or whitewashed iron sheets, as they are the most durable, while those made of wood, clay or tin sheets are less good. For feeding, you need large troughs that can hold at least a pound of honey at a time, because that's how much a good trunk will comfortably extract during the night. When feeding inside the hive, .5 cm troughs are used. long, 12 cm. wide, and 10 cm. deep, which are placed in the hive next to the standing frames, just behind the frames or between them, on the upper pair of three-cornered slats. Anyone who has a double, empty roof in the hive, equipped with an internal and external spigot, will do best to arrange feeding troughs in the empty space of the roof. For this purpose, flat troughs of 38 cm are made. long, .5 cm. wide a 3.5 cm. high, and in the middle of such a trough there is a 7 cm square hole cut out. long, 6 cm. wide a 3.5 cm. high so that the bees coming out through the internal spigot could get through this opening to the honey in the trough. See burrow. 106. In these channels, floats are made, preferably from thin strips such as those used for frames, nailing them together with crossbars using thin nails. See dig. 107. The floats must move freely in the trough so that they can fall down as the honey is selected, and they must also have small gaps between the slats so that the bees can pick out the honey and not be able to get under the float themselves. The float should be placed on the honey in such a way that its transverse ridges are turned upwards, otherwise the bees will drown when they come under the float after removing the honey and when we want to pour the honey again without removing the float.

Dig. 106. A feeding trough in an empty ceiling.

Dig. 107. A float made of slats.

To feed the bees you can either use the same larger troughs, giving only the right small portions, or you can have separate small 23.5 ctm troughs. long, 6 cm. wide a 4 cm. high, which can be placed on the upper pair of three-cornered slats in the hive. And it is better to have floats for these small troughs, and use chaff or chopped straw to protect the bees from drowning. When feeding hungry bees in the cold season, you can use a frame divided crosswise into several compartments by nailed slats, as shown in the figure. to introduce. Small trays, used for storing, or deep and narrow trays, are placed on these slats separating the frame. If we place such a frame with troughs in the center of the nest, right next to the brood, even the trunk, which is weak in the cold season, will collect honey or sugar syrup from the brood.

To feed the bees or supply them with water, some people use specially made bottles, from which the liquid only leaks out as much as the bees need it. Such a device can be made from each bottle in the following way. You take any bottle, pour it with the appropriate liquid, plug it with a cork and cut a hole in the side, preferably the size of a goose feather. If we turn the bottle upside down, the liquid will flow out slowly through the hole as air enters through the hole. If we want the liquid to flow from the bottle only as much as the bees need it, we insert the bottle with the neck into a small trough in which there is a float. If so much liquid flows from the bottle into the trough that it covers the hole in the cork, the liquid will no longer come out of the bottle, because the liquid in the trough will block the access of air to the inside of the bottle, and when the bees will remove the liquid from the trough, If the hole in the cork is above the surface of the liquid, air will start to press into the bottle again and the liquid will flow out again. You can feed the bees with such a bottle either inside the hive or in front of the pond, for example by inserting a small trough into the pond so that part of it protrudes outside so much that the neck of the bottle can be sunk into it. You just need to attach the bottle so that it cannot tilt or tip over.

A convenient trough for feeding or watering bees in front of the pond is shown in Figure 109. This device consists of a trough with a hood so that when it is hung over the pond, the bees can choose water or be fed without being exposed to a cold gust of wind. There must be an indentation on the side of the hood so that the bees can go outside and come back.

Stolnica, i.e. the bridge. When sweeping up bees, pouring in swarms and performing other work in the apiary, the bee board provides a great service. The board is made of a thin board of 30 to 40 cm. long, and scantly 24 cm. wide, so that it can enter the middle of the hive, its edge is covered on three sides with slats of the kind used to make frames, leaving the fourth side completely free, and the pieces of side edges adjoining it are free from slats for about 5 cm. This side allows you to insert the board, i.e. the platform, into the hive. If you want, you can attach a hinged leg to the inside of the table so that when you insert it into the beehive, it rests on it; However, since such a leg breaks off very easily, the beekeeper can support the beehive board either with a separate rod or rest it on a protruding knee.

Dig. 110. A stooge of Szuber's idea.

Dig. 111. Stooge.

A stake is also a very useful piece of equipment in the apiary, because although in Slavic hives you can in many cases do without it in summer by placing frames in front of the pond resting on the hive itself, but when dismantling the trunk it is more thorough, especially in the cold season and when it is useful there is none, so when the bees are prone to robbing, a henchman is almost indispensable. Of the numerous forms of bollards that we had the opportunity to see in various apiaries, we recommend as the most appropriate the bollard described by PJ Szuber in Bartnik, whose structure anyone from the attached drawing 110 will understand, including the bollard I use in my apiary, shown in the engraving. 111. This bollard has the advantage that the lower board, made in the shape of a board, allows you to conveniently sweep bees into the hive that fall from the frames. Its height is 30 cm, width 24 cm, and length 40 cm, i.e. 10 frames. At the bottom there are two triangular strips nailed lengthwise on which the frames stand (so that the bees do not crush them) and in the middle there are a row of 10 nails (without heads) at intervals of 4 cm to prevent the frames from moving, while on the upper one There are also 10 headless nails sticking out on the side, on which the frames are placed. The three side walls can also be covered with cloth, which will protect the brood from catching cold in spring.

Dig. 112. Frame stretchers.

Frame stretchers. In large apiaries, when harvesting honey, stretchers for frames are needed to transport a larger number of honeycombs at once to the honey extractor and back without damage. The stretcher shown in Figure 112, which I use in my apiary, is best suited for this purpose. For this purpose, a 26 cm strong board is used. wide, and up to ctm. long, in the middle a gallows up to 50 cm high is placed across it. high with handle. Strong wires are stretched from the gallows to the end of the board on both sides. They serve, on the one hand, to strengthen the stretchers and, on the other hand, as side supports for the inserted frames, so they must have about 23 cm between them. spacing. Nails are nailed to the bottom of the board in one middle row so that the frames, placed diagonally against the gallows, cannot close. The stretcher shown in Figure 113 is also very comfortable and its structure can be easily understood by anyone from the drawing. Both stretchers can also be used instead of a trestle.

Dig. 113. Double-sided stretcher.

Scoop. In many cases, such as when pouring swarms, removing bees from the hive, etc., a shovel made of sheet metal, the so-called scoop, can provide excellent services. In an apiary with removable, quadrangular hives, the most convenient is a scoop with a rectangular edge (Fig. 114.), while in beehives and hives with a rounded interior, the scoop should also have a rounded edge. (Fig. 115.) Wooden scoops are less convenient.

Dig. 114. Bucket for Slavic hives.

Dig. 115. Bucket for baskets and bottoms.

A queen cage may have two purposes, either it is intended to temporarily enclose the queen in order to prevent her from breeding, and then it is most convenient to make it from the so-called gridded sheet metal, used to separate the queens (Fig. 116.), or it is also intended to serve to protect the queen enclosed in it against unfriendly bees, and then it must be made in such a way that the bees cannot get into the enclosed queen. The cages of the first type can be made larger, and it will not hurt to make them so large that either all or part of the comb can be accommodated in them, and thus the mother in the cage can breed.

Cages used to protect queens from attackers, e.g. when adding a queen to a foreign swarm, are only made large enough to accommodate the queen with several workers and hide so that her stingers cannot be reached by bees attacking from outside. The cheapest such cages are made of lilac coils, as the old beekeepers used to make them (Fig. 117). For this purpose, you take a coil of lilac the thickness of a finger, about 10 centimeters long, and plug it at both ends with a soul, i.e. with a lilac core, or a pin, and in the center a slit is cut along the top with a knife over a space of about 5 cm. This cage is very convenient because it can be inserted anywhere between the patches. In the case of straw baskets or bottomless bottoms, one end of the coil intended for the cage can be cut diagonally into a spike, as shown in the attached drawing 117, which makes it easier to insert the cage somewhere into the wall of the hive between the combs. Anyone who wants to have a neat-looking cage should make it from a carved block and insert wires into it, as shown in the attached drawing 118.

The cover serves, similarly to a cage, to temporarily enclose the queen, whether when adding queens, watering the bees, or finally when inspecting the trunk, when we want the queen on the comb not to die. Sometimes it is also used to protect the added nursery stock against damage. The cap shown in Figure 119 is woven either from thin wire or by bending a thin mesh on a cylindrical block of about 4 cm. thick. If the queen, hidden under the cover, is to be protected from her enemy bees for a long time, then it must be closed on the older comb and the cover should be pushed up to the middle wall of the comb, otherwise the bees will bite the comb and cut off the queen.

The swarm bag is of great service when collecting swarms, especially when the swarm is tied up high in a tree. Its structure may be various, but the one shown in Figure 120 is the simplest and most convenient. Such a bag made of thin canvas is attached to two semicircular, bent iron hoops, which turn on axles so that one can overlap the other, the end of one hoop is extended into a handle (Fig. 120 a) bent accordingly so that it is attached to it the string (Fig. 120 c) causes, when pulled, one half of the hoop to overlap the other, thus closing the bag attached to these half hoops. A half-hook without a handle is attached with one side to a sheet metal scabbard (Fig. 120), which is attached to a pole of any length. The bag itself is open and only its other end is tied when the swarm is collected. The collected swarm is poured out by untying the other end of the bag.

Baskets for swarms are made of straw in a similar way as we described for baskets, you just need to make sure that the straw rolls are no more than the thickness of your little finger, and thus make the basket as light as possible. It is good if such a basket has two ears attached to the side above it, so that a pole can be inserted into them, or if we add a fork-shaped device to it, in which the basket can be placed, with a long fence in the middle, on which the basket can be placed rotate so that it hangs perpendicularly in each fork position (Fig. 121). No less excellent are light baskets made of wicker or spruce, i.e. from bark stripped from young trees.

Rojnica, also called a transport box, is a light box, preferably 22 cm. wide, 40 cm. long, up to 25 cm. high, made of thin boards, unplaned from the inside, closed with a lid, slowly sliding into the groove. There is a hole of approximately 15 cm in the lid. wide a 30 cm. long, covered with a thin mesh nailed to it. There are several small holes or large slits on the side walls to facilitate air circulation. It is good if there is an opening of about 5 cm in one of the higher side walls. diameter, closed with a plate or board, which can be used to insert a large funnel through which bees can be swept into the box in batches (e.g. in swarms). The given size of the swarm is the most convenient, because by tilting the hive a little you can easily insert the swarm into it and pour the swarm out of it with a few strokes of your hand.

PryskaCZ, i.e. the simpler the sprayer, the better it is, and it often provides great services in the apiary. Engraving attached. 122 shows a sprinkler made of sheet metal. The liquid poured into the watering can a flows upwards through the tube &, almost reaching the bottom, and by blowing into the tube c it rises higher and scatters into small drops.

An ordinary hand waterer, as long as it has a long range, is a very useful tool in the apiary, because by throwing a stream of water upwards over the swarming bees, you can force the swarm to form a bond faster, and thus sometimes stop it from running away.

A comfortable stool is necessary in a larger apiary, because working around the trunks for a long time in a kneeling or slowly sitting position (on a tip) is very burdensome. The best option is a small stool with four legs, with a trough attached to the side (a small drawer) for small tools so that they are always at hand. The three-legged stool, and all its supposedly clever improvements, are less suitable in practice.

A stretcher for carrying trunks is most convenient if two webbing or leather straps 1 M. 50 ctm are attached to two oak poles. long, and we will connect both these belts in the middle with two 25 cm crossbars. distant from each other. If we spread such a stretcher on the ground, place the hive on these two crossbars, and then grab the poles and lift them up, they will grip the hive above half its height as if in pincers, and there will be no need to hold the hive or take any special care, so that it doesn't tilt while being carried.

We will talk about the utensils needed for making artificial hose, for melting wax, and about grate plates for dividing the mothers, so as not to bore the reader with monotony. From describing accessories such as: a trap for drones, various queen forts, shell and gauze bags for bees in the room or for catching an emerging swarm right in front of the pond, various feeding troughs, bottles for watering bees in winter, a roller stuffed with spikes to discovering sewn combs and similar things, not at all clever but completely unnecessary, - by teaching bee breeding for profit, not for fun, - we are free.

§. 4. Caring for bees in spring.

The period of time from hibernation of bees to swarming is the most important for a beekeeper; here he has the opportunity to direct everything so that he can then obtain the highest yield from the apiary at the right time; what he neglects at this time, he will often be unable to catch up with with the greatest care later. Careful care of bees in spring is even more important because you need to make the most of every moment, because it often happens that one beautiful day determines the life of many trunks and the successful development of the entire apiary.

A beekeeper whose trunks fall off in winter is a bad one, because a well-wintered trunk cannot die, but a truly criminal and a bungler unworthy of the name beekeeper is the one who, after wintering, even one trunk falls off, because this proves either carelessness or ignorance, and such a person should rather herd, how to take care of bees.

Overwintering of bees begins when the bees make their main spring flight; that is, when there is a period of at least a few days so warm that snow and ice disappear, and the thermometer shows at least 8° R. (10° C.) in the shade at noon. In the case of tree trunks wintering outdoors, it sometimes happens that during the winter, when there is still snow and ice, on clear and warm days the bees will cover themselves and throw out the feces that have been accumulating there during the winter, which is called cleaning. bees. This is undoubtedly very beneficial for the health of the bees themselves, but for the beekeeper such an early flight is not always absolutely beneficial. After a flight, even in winter, the bees become more vigorous, they start doing their housework, they start to move around, clean their cells, and as a result of more vigorous movement, they also produce more heat in the nest, and the queen starts to brood more profusely, and the more numerous brood leads to further rising temperature in the nest, greater honey consumption and the need for a larger amount of water. If the warm season continued, nothing so bad would come of it, but when a longer period of frost comes again, the trunks may suffer significantly, firstly because the widely spread brood, when the bees need to gather together, will get cold and die; further, because of the significantly increased temperature in the nest, the bees will feel a lack of water, as a result of which they will start splashing out of the hive and die miserably in front of the pond, so the trunks will weaken; and finally, that the consumption of honey in such trunks will be much greater. However, despite this, bees should not be prevented from having such an early winter flight, as it will often protect them from a fatal catch. Therefore, we only need to try to eliminate the bad consequences of such an early flight, and this can be achieved by cooling the trunk a bit immediately after such an early flight, for which purpose it is enough if we completely open the previously closed eyes, and thus let in the cooler air. we will enlarge the air to the trunk. Opening your eyes wide at this time will do no harm, because robbery is out of the question now. If severe frosts occur again, the meshes can be moved back after a few days. Trunks with their eyes facing north are less exposed to such early flight, as they are most often lured prematurely by the bright rays of sunlight that enter the hive through the eye.

Bees may be exposed to the above-mentioned inconveniences also after the main spring flight, i.e. after wintering, because in our climate this often happens after a period of very beautiful and warm spring days. a longer cold period ensues, but then we must try to remedy the problem in another way, as we will say later.

Removing the trunks from the lockstitch. While it is not always possible, or even advisable, to stop bees from flying when wintering in a lockstitch, when overwintering in a lockstitch, one should not, for the reasons given above, rush to overwinter the bees, i.e. expose them to toque.

In a good lockstitch, bees consume much less honey, and when they hibernate outdoors, less feces accumulates in their cavities, and therefore they can survive longer without being brooded. Therefore, as long as the bees are sitting calmly, do not riot and do not splash out of the holes, they can be kept in the lockstitch, but in any case, care should be taken to keep the bees safe by properly cooling and ventilating the lockstitch, and especially by giving the trunks water in spring. hold it until warmer days come and when you can count on the fact that greater cold will not return. It is necessary to accelerate the removal of the trunks from the lockstitch only when there is a risk that they will get wet, or when they have already started, when they have little honey reserves so that they need to be fed, when the lockthouse is not dark, or when a constant, cool temperature is not possible in it. keep it below 8° K. (10° C.), in such cases you should not hesitate, but on the first warmer day, when the thermometer in the shade around noon shows 8° K. (10° C.), put the trunks out as soon as possible .

In a good lockstitch, well-overwintered bees can be kept, just like when buried in the ground, sometimes until the second half of April, but as a rule it is best to expose the stumps at the end of March or in the first days of April, because then the earlier ones begin to bloom. flowers, such as iwa and other species of willow, wattle, Lungwort, etc., so bees will have employment on nice days, and what is the use?

To put the trunks out of the lockstitch, you need to choose a beautiful and warm day, have several stretchers prepared, made of two poles and two belts, some mixed clay, wet moss and a few workers to complete the activity as quickly as possible. In the evening of the previous day, you should open the vents or even the door in the lockstitch and leave it open overnight to encourage the bees to come to the nest by cooling down. When starting to remove the bees, you must first cover the eyes with wet moss and close the valves, if any were open. The bottoms can be removed carefully without tying the bottom, unless the distance between the apiary and the lockstitch is greater, or if the bees are restless and fly out, they should be tied with ties, i.e. cloth.

The trunks placed on the track are not allowed to be inspected immediately, but wait until they are all set and the bees calm down, which happens approximately 1/2 hour after exposure, especially if there is wet moss in the holes, from which the bees are eager for water. they suck. After the bees calm down, the eyes are slowly opened wide and the bees are free to decide whether they want to fly or not. If it suddenly gets colder, or if an approaching black cloud tells us to expect a sharp change in the air, then we should not let the bees fly at all, but sprinkle plenty of water on the moss in their eyes, and they will calm down and take off, and they will fly only when the time will be friendlier. If the trunks are carelessly taken out of the lockstitch and the bees are suddenly released to fly around, great confusion may arise in a larger apiary, the bees will scatter irregularly around the hives, because, having not carefully marked the place where their trunk stands, they gather in places where the noise and clang are louder, as a result of some trunks become very weak, others become overcrowded, and sometimes even the mother, due to such anxiety, is cut down in this or that trunk.

To avoid this, it is a good idea to place the trunks when leaving the lockstitch in the same order on the top as they stood last year, because the bees remember their former place, and although they orient themselves well when slowly flying around and return to their trunk again, When flying in crowds, they sometimes hit their old places and fly into a tree trunk that stands in their former position. This can be easily confirmed by someone who has one or another trunk with Italian bees in his apiary, when he changes these trunks with others before the flight.

The first flight of bees is one of the most pleasant and at the same time most important moments for a beekeeper, so it should always take place under his supervision. By carefully observing the movement of bees flying around, he can easily get an idea of the condition of almost every trunk, because the more vigorous the movement of bees and the more frequent the flight, the healthier and stronger the trunk is, and the lazier and rarer it is, the weaker the trunk is, and in every If so, he should be suspected of some abnormal disposition of the bee family. Therefore, during the first inspection, the beekeeper should immediately mark the trunks with chalk near the pond, so that later, without a long search, he can find the trunks that showed some irregularity during the inspection, because he must examine them before all others, and as soon as possible, to check whether are really defective and in this case they can be corrected immediately.

If the hives are equal and have the same mesh position, the judgment about the condition of the trunk based on the bees' inspection will rarely be wrong; It's another thing when the hives have eyes of different heights or are of unequal sizes.

Bees should be released for the first flight only when the thermometer in the shade shows at least 8° K, and the air is calm and neither the wind nor black clouds cause any fear of any sudden change in the air, which is not the case here in spring. Hard frozen snow is not harmful during the first fall, but freshly fallen snow is harmful for bees, because when they sit on it, they get stuck in it and solidify. Therefore, freshly fallen snow should be cleared from the vicinity of the hives, or, unless there are important reasons, wait until it disappears before checking it.

During the first flight, the bees throw out their feces, therefore the clothes of a beekeeper walking among them should be appropriate for this purpose, and there should be no objects nearby that could be soiled, as stains from this feces are very difficult to obtain. is to lure out. During this first flight, the bees limit themselves to a cheerful dance in the immediate vicinity of the trunk, then they gather inside the hive and sit quietly, emitting a booming sound of satisfaction, and only one or the other will sneak out a glimpse of God's world to bring water or a trout of pearls.

Trunks that fly lazily may be either weak in the fly, or hungry, or barren, or moist. A trunk that sits silently while all the others are being flown is most often a defective one, although sometimes it happens that even a very good trunk does not bother to be flown when it does not feel the need to do so; you should knock on such a trunk and put your ear to the pond, if it makes a short and strong noise, it is healthy and good, but if the bees inside it make a long rustling sound, i.e. a hissing sound, or if a fly comes out of it slowly in front of the pond and falls weakened on the soil, such a trunk dies of hunger, so it should be immediately opened and saved by giving honey; and the trunk of which the fly sits restlessly in the evening after flying around, wanders around in front of the pond, running around the hive here and there, is most often orphaned or heavily mothballed.

Sometimes it happens that many bees congeal during their first flight, because they congealed after landing on the wet and cold ground. Most often, these are sickly bees which, either because there is too much feces in their stools or for some other reason, are unable to fly, but sometimes it happens, especially when there is a cold gust of wind and the sun suddenly disappears behind the clouds, that even the healthiest bees freeze, Therefore, after the inspection, you should go around the hive and collect the clotted bees from the meshes into a glass, take them to the room to warm up, and when they come to, give them a bit of honey to feed them and sprinkle them on some of the weaker trunks, which is best done over the top by spigot hole.

Saving tree trunks that have just fallen. Immediately after completing the inspection, you should start examining the trunks. First, you should immediately, even if the season is not favorable, inspect those trunks that have not flown at all and in which the bees show no sign of life, because it will often happen that such a trunk can still be saved. The largest part of the trunks falls in apiaries due to lack of honey, which can happen even when there is still a significant supply of honey in the outer combs, but there is no honey in the nest, because the bees do not leave the nest during the winter to cool themselves. In a trunk dying of hunger, first the bees perimeter of the nest die, and finally the mother and her team die; therefore, in such a hive there will be a mass of bees that have already fallen to the bottom of the hive due to weakness, showing no signs of life, many cells pressed inside to die, and the small pile covers the mother with their bodies.

If the bees in the trunk that fell from hunger are still fresh and soft, we can hope that they will come to life, and if we find a pile of bees with the mother inside the nest, and if the mother, taken in our hand and warmed, begins to give signs of life by vibrating her limbs, there is hope of resurrection. mothers with some bees is certain. In such a case, you should take such a trunk immediately to a warm apartment, sprinkle the combs on which the bees are located with warm satie, collect the bees that have fallen on the floor of the hive, put a support under the frames, put the frames back into the hive, put on the valve, sprinkle the collected bees with warm satie and pour them in. put them on the frame from above through the tenon hole; put a well-heated brick or stone into the empty space under the support, close the valve, strain the mesh, seal the gaps, and leave the trunk in a warm, but not hot place. If the bees do not come back to life in a few hours, the rescue was too late, and when they recover, they should be given honey through a plug, kept warm for a day or more and then taken out for inspection only on a warm day. You need to keep a close eye on such a trunk later, because usually only the queen with a handful of bees will survive, and therefore such a weak trunk can easily become a target for robbery.

Such bees cannot be poured directly onto a heated brick or a very warm place (over 30° C.), as the sudden heating will cause them to die; nor should they be sprinkled heavily with water, as they will collapse and perish.

Cleaning up fallen tree trunks. Stumps in which the bees on the combs are dry or covered with mold, or have pulled out proboscises, should be removed from the apiary as soon as possible, the frames should be removed, cleaned with a brush and hung in a well-ventilated place, inaccessible to the bees, to dry; frames with honey, if you are sure that the fallen trunk was not infected with rot, you can give it to other trunks or hide it for times of need; the hive should be cleaned, dried and stored for later use. Once the combs are completely dry, the bees stuck in the cells can be easily pulled out, either by carefully hitting the palm of the comb with the flat of the comb or by pulling the bees out by the wings with a pin, which is the last step that children are eager to perform.

If the trunk has fallen off as a result of water damage, the slices should be rinsed in water and cleaned with a brush, and the hive and frame slats should be scraped and washed cleanly with lye.

Hives that have not been dismantled after fallen bees should be carefully cleaned of bees, swept out of the streets between the bee combs, a piece of sulfur should be burned on coals in each hive, and then the hive should be stored in a ventilated place or in a lockbox, repeating the sulfur treatment of such hives at least every two weeks, otherwise a fluke will nest in them.

Anyone who keeps fallen tree trunks in the apiary will either be at risk of being robbed or, if he keeps them tightly closed, he will lose the combs due to mold and mildew.

Transport of trunks to another place. Immediately after the first flight, the trunks can be transported most conveniently and reliably, either to a nearby or distant place. During the first flight, the bees stay only in the immediate vicinity of their hives, so when they are moved only a few hundred steps, they do not return to the place of their first flight; and since during this first flight they expelled the feces accumulated over the winter, they can then endure longer confinement in the hive, greater disturbance, and therefore a longer journey without harm. Therefore, if we are to divide the bees wintered in the lockstitch into different apiaries, the best thing to do would be to take them out of the lockstitch, let them fly around it, and only then start transporting them. If we transported bees straight from the lockstitch, without first dressing ourselves, they would most likely get scalded, and as a result of mutual excrement, many of them would be wasted.

Transporting trunks in spring is the easiest, because the combs are the strongest then (not softened by heat), there are relatively few bees, brood and honey, so there is no fear of the combs breaking off or the bees suffocating. When transporting tree trunks at this time, you just need to carefully pack them so that there are no gaps through which the bees could escape; so the holes need to be sieved, the larger gaps should be sealed, and the bottoms must be tied with bindings made of ordinary, thin linen. Having placed abundantly torn (tangled) straw on the cart, the trunks are placed one next to the other, in a vertical position, head up, making sure that their slices run parallel to the axis of the cart and that the trunks cannot wobble when standing on the cart. this way and that way. Of course, you should drive slowly with this type of load.

At this time you can transport bees both at night and during the day. The transport of bees should always be accompanied by a beekeeper, so that in the event of any unfortunate accident, he should be able to remedy it immediately, so he should also have soft hay and mixed clay at hand so that any holes in the hive that accidentally occur can be repaired immediately. If we transport stumps by rail, they should be placed in wagons. so that the combs run parallel to the rails, i.e. perpendicular to the axis of the wagon, because then they are least exposed to damage, and the door of the wagon should be ajar so that the bees are not too hot.

First inspection of trunks. After examining the suspected trunks, it is necessary to examine the rest of the trunks as quickly as possible, either to clean and sweep them, or to ensure that they are not lost due to hunger or for some other reason. If the season is very unfavorable, so that a more thorough inspection cannot be carried out, then every morning or evening you should walk around all the trunks and, putting your ear to the eye, listen to the pulse of life inside. If the bees in one of the trunks do not make a cheerful noise caused by fanning, you should briefly tap the hive with your finger and listen to what sound the bees make after tapping; when they say "huuum" in a short but strong voice, you can be sure that everything is fine, and when they make a weak and long voice, rustling psh-sh-ss, it is a sure sign that they are starving, so don't hesitate to get ready immediately to save them, because the next day it will be too late. Similarly, when you see bees emerging from a hive and spreading around the hive, or falling weakened to the ground, you can be convinced that the stump is dying of hunger.

When inspecting the trunks for the first time, pay attention to the following; so as not to disassemble the socket unnecessarily. Having opened the valve, you must first carefully sweep up the hive, sweeping away the fallen bees and crumbs from all corners with a broom, brush and scraper, and collecting everything into a box so that nothing falls on the ground, as there are almost always crumbs of honey in the sweepers. which, if left next to the hive, would attract bees and give reason to rob. You can also easily form an opinion about the condition of the trunk from the sweepings, because if there were few bees dropped, the trunk overwintered well; if a lot of bees have died and they have relatively large, swollen abdomens, it must have overwintered badly and partially molted; if one or another white, i.e. young worker bee is found in the bushes, it is a sign that the trunk has a healthy queen; and if a young drone brood is found, the trunk has either a drone brood, a drone mother, or an old mother preparing to die. These observations should be written down on the ulacli with appropriate characters.

The garbage must either be buried in the ground or burned; if there are many crumbs of wax and sugary honey in them, they can be sieved and the honey and wax separated by dissolving and floating in water. After boiling, the honey obtained can be used to feed bees, and the crumbs can be melted into secondary wax for home use.

After sweeping the trunk, the mat and valve are then removed in order to check the condition of the mother by examining the outer frames, if possible without further dismantling of the trunk, by the presence of the brood, and whether the trunk has any honey reserves. Whoever properly built the nest for the winter last year will see immediately from the first frame whether there is still honey in the trunk, and if he has noticed working brood in the bushes, he does not need to disturb the trunk any further. If, however, he cannot gain confidence in the mother's presence from the underbrush, then, carefully removing two or three frames, he will encounter a brood from which he will gain an idea of the mother's condition. In a healthy trunk with a healthy mother, at this time there will only be working brood, compact, cell to cell, without jumping; if the brood is interrupted so that between the covered cells there are cells with eggs and brood in different stages right next to each other, then the trunk * is suspected of rot (see Part I of Beekeeping, p.); if there are drone brood in the working cells and the eggs are regularly deposited in the cells, then the trunk has a drone mother; and if there is a drone brood, and whole piles of eggs are laid by cells, and mostly in drone cells, then it has a drone brood; and if between the working brood there is a protruding drone brood here and there, thrown individually, it is a sure sign that the mother of this trunk is old and close to death. However, when we see only covered brood in the trunk, and here and there the lids of the newly covered brood are spoiled, and the white brood has been bitten, then there is starvation in such a trunk, and the bees save themselves from starvation by sucking out the brood. (See Part I of Beekeeping, pp. 111, 118, 119).

During this first inspection of the trunks, there is no need to go into precise estimation of the amount of honey, just check that they still have some resources. At this time, you can count on the fact that 2 kilos of honey will be enough for one month, and 1 kilo of honey will fit less than a piece of comb the width of the frame of a Slavic beehive, if such a piece has a cm. length and is sewn on both sides.

After such an inspection of the trunk, its condition is marked with an appropriate mark on the valve, and those trunks that need quicker rescue are marked appropriately next to the pond so that our attention does not escape, then a valve is placed, a support is placed under the frames, a mat is placed, and the tape is tapered. the mesh so that two bees can comfortably pass next to each other and closes the valve tightly, carefully sealing the gaps if necessary. If the previous mat was wet, it should be replaced with another, dry one.

We perform the same inspection in non-removable trunks, examining the condition of the mother and the honey supply, while in bottomless trunks and baskets the combs are opened from the bottom or the movable middle frame is removed; Moreover, an experienced beekeeper will be sure about the supply of honey in such hives, just by the weight of the trunk. In valve chambers, the condition of honey is probed by inserting a thicker wire into the combs just under the ceiling, and after smearing the wire with honey, the supply of honey can be assessed quite precisely, with due attention.

The first inspection of the trunks should be carried out at an accelerated pace, and only roughly, in order to have an overview of the entire condition of the apiary, because otherwise, if you get too meticulous or postpone it from one day to the next, you may end up with more than one trunk after wintering on the toque. break off. We also need to be careful not to give rise to robbery by any careless behavior, which is not difficult to do now in spring.

Feeding bees out of poverty. If, either during the first inspection or later, we notice that a stump lacks honey, we should immediately add the necessary amount. In our climate, with the exception of some years and areas, it must be expected that bees will rarely have the opportunity to feed themselves with honey brought from the field before June 15, or at least before June 1 (in the Podolia region, before July 1). Until then, the trunk should have enough honey so that it does not need to be cut down, and even more so that it does not succumb to starvation at the last moment.

As we have already said above, a good spring trunk needs about 2 kilos of honey per month if it is to develop properly and grow strong, so it is easy for a beekeeper to calculate how much honey a given trunk needs to add. A beekeeper should remember that spring is the most important moment for bees, and therefore for him; If the bees do not gain sufficient strength during this time, the year is usually wasted; bees multiply and develop properly only when they have a sufficient supply of food in the hive. Anyone who thinks that maybe it will be a good spring and the bees will somehow cope is gambling. Isn't it better to have plenty of food for the bees and not worry about spring bees, rather than anxiously look forward to each warmer day, only to be severely disappointed in our false hopes? However, the bee will not waste anything, nor will it take honey to the inn, and whatever it has too much of in the spring, it will return to us with usury later.

It is obvious that just as a prudent beekeeper should make sure that the bees have enough food in the spring, he should also make sure that there are enough empty cells in the nest to raise the brood, so if any extraordinary spring benefit occurs, he should immediately empty the excess honey from the combs using a honey extractor. .

The honey beekeeper should give the calculated amount of honey needed for the first major benefit to the bees day by day in larger portions so that they immediately cover their needs and, feeling well supplied, they feed properly with brood. It should be remembered that giving honey in small portions to a hungry trunk is of no use. will not work, while on the contrary, slowly feeding (as will be discussed later) a stocked tree brings a successful result. It can be verified by experience that of two equal and hungry trunks, the one that receives the necessary amount of honey at once will develop better than the other one that receives the same amount of honey, but in small and repeated portions.

If we have spare honey in combs, the best thing to do is to give such a hungry trunk the necessary amount of honey in sewn combs, as long as it is not sugar-contaminated. Otherwise, you should provide potato boiled with a fourth or fifth part of water, i.e. thick, in troughs, preferably in the empty space of a double roof, or placed at the top of the hive*). If we don't have patoka, we should give thick sugar syrup, for this purpose we take ordinary white sugar (in the head) and add 3/4 kilogram of sugar, i.e. 1/1 liter of water, to boil it, collect the scum, and after cooling, it is given to the bees. A kilogram of such syrup is equal in nutritional value to a kilogram of patoki.

*) When feeding bees using troughs placed in the empty ceiling of the hive, like figure 105 shows, it is best not to install the upper plug, but to cover this hole with a larger glass. This glass will cover the hole with steam, but if you remove it a little to the side, you will be able to clearly see through the clean glass whether the bees have taken the honey, and then remove it enough to create a hole in the corner through which the required amount of honey is poured with a funnel, and the glass is put back on again.

When it is necessary to feed a hungry trunk, but it is weak in strength, or in very early spring (or in winter), then feeding it in troughs is usually not possible, because the bees will not choose it, so if we do not have honey in the slices, sewn, you take empty slices with older work and, placing them on a board or baking tray, pour a patch or syrup, prepared according to the above-mentioned recipe, into their cells and carefully rub the liquid poured into the cells with your fingers and rub it into the upper half of the slice. fill both sides. The comb filled in this way is placed in the center of the bee nest, right next to the brood; and even the weakest swarm can benefit from the food provided in this way. However, it should be remembered that a comb filled in this way with its upper half on both sides will contain at most one pound of honey, so this amount of food will not be enough for much longer than one week.

In hives that have plugs in the walls, food can also be given with good results in this way: take a large enough piece of dense cloth, put a thick paste or very thick syrup or even pieces of sugar on it, appropriate amount, fold the edges together and tying them, he makes a knot, which when we put it through the tenon over the frames and close the hole in the tenon, the bees will suck the food from it through the fabric and bring it into the cells. However, it should always be remembered that feeding bees in need in this way is a great misfortune and that if you miss it, you can lose such a bee, so a good beekeeper should avoid feeding bees in need in winter or spring like the plague, and prevent this evil by proper provisioning. bees in winter stores at the right time.

Flour feeding. Sometimes it happens that after the first flight there is a very beautiful and warm time, the bees then fly out of the hive in large numbers to look for bees, but they cannot find anything for the early season, because even the hazel trees have not yet opened their catkins with pollen. This is a very dangerous time for a beekeeper, because the bees, when they come to life, finding no use in the field, attack neighboring tree trunks, and thus, with the slightest oversight, a robbery can result in dangerous consequences.

In this case, it is very advisable to provide the bees with appropriate employment, and feeding with flour is an excellent solution. For this purpose, we choose a larger or smaller number of old combs, preferably with drone work, pour oat flour into the cells of these combs on one side, if we have it, otherwise, some other flour, then place these combs a dozen or several dozen steps from the apiary. in a place exposed to the sun, but at the same time protected from rain, so either under a shed, under canopies, or finally in empty hives. Soon whole flocks of bees will flock to these combs and they will begin to take this delicious flour as a hive knife. Apart from honey, such flour serves as food for the bees, but as soon as the first crop appears in the field, the bees will abandon this food.

Instead of flour, the bees can be fed in the same way with pollen collected during the previous year from flowers, such as pollen from hazel, flowering cereals, hemp, nettle and other plants, from which the pollen can be easily shaken off in large masses onto sheets placed under it. and store it in a dry place for next spring.

Water supply. After the flight, more abundant brood begins in the trunks, so the bees need water both for themselves and for the brood, and with the slightly increased spring temperature, the honey in the exposed cells will not be able to absorb it as much as needed, so the bees will be forced to look for it outside. beehive. Spring is a capricious season, so when bees are forced to look for water further or take it from an inconvenient place, many of them will die, so we should place troughs in the apiary immediately after the first flight, containing slightly salted water, shaken with straw or moss. . Bees are more willing to take salted water than pure water, because salt is useful to them, as evidenced by the greedy taking of water by bees from manure pits and similar places.

These saltwater troughs should be cleaned and refilled from time to time until the swarm is complete.

Keeping bees in the hive during cold weather. Excited spring life stimulates bees to leave the hive even when the season is not favorable for this, which is why many bees die in the field in the cold season, especially on cloudy days with glimpses of sunlight, so that sometimes they will become depopulated and weakened. This problem affects strong trunks more than weak ones, because the former, due to the higher temperature in the hive and the need for water for the numerous brood, tend to break out into the field more quickly.

With this in mind, when cold winds come in spring, you should stop the bees from flying, and this can be achieved without harm if you put a trough with sweetened water in the hive, and put a little moss in the pond, moistened generously with water, and sow it. o a perforated metal sheet or plank. If we didn't put water inside the hive or put wet moss in the pond, the bees would crowd into the pond, suffocate and die there, perhaps in greater numbers than in the field, which is why the moss in the ponds should be moistened from time to time with a sprinkler. , and every few days check the hive to see if there is any water in the trough. As soon as there is a day with a more uniform temperature, the bees should be released to fly, and then they can be kept in the hive in a cold shelter for a week or even two without harm. Placing the hives with the eyes facing north also helps to prevent bees from leaving the hive prematurely. However, if, despite these precautions, the bees become crowded and disturbed in the pond, they should be allowed to fly around.

The second, more detailed inspection of the trunks is intended to remedy various defects that a long period of wintering may have caused in this or that trunk. And now you have to be careful not to dismantle the trunks unnecessarily; In most cases, removing two or three frames will sufficiently inform us about the condition of the trunk. We must always remember that each time the tree is dismantled, it cools the brood and disturbs the bees, which often results in rot, robbery, or orphanage. Already during the first inspection, an attentive beekeeper had the opportunity to check which trunks require his help and which do not need it at all, as well as those trunks for which the records show that they have a fertile queen, a sufficient supply of honey, healthy brood, clean combs, with cells working hours, a nest corresponding to the strength of the bees, - there is no need to dismantle such trunks, but it is enough to sweep them once a week or two, and only as their strength increases, we add as many built-in frames for brooding as possible. However, those trunks in which we noticed an abnormal condition during the first inspection, or which we were unable to make a proper judgment about at that time, should now be inspected more closely, examined and their defects removed.

You should not hesitate to make the second, more detailed inspection, but carefully take advantage of every warmer part of the day, because you must remember that spring can be a very changeable time in our country, and what was neglected on one day cannot be made up for on the next. Therefore, if the time is favorable, the second, more thorough inspection of the trunks should be started immediately after completing the first inspection. During this inspection, we bring all the trunks into proper order, so:

Stabe trunks, but with a good mother, with only a few handfuls of flies in them, are used to combine them with other trees that either have no mother at all or have a defective mother; for now, we take away the unnecessary patches, tighten the nest on three frames with a tumbler and a support, narrow the eye as much as possible, and leave it for further use.

Trunks without a queen, as well as those with a drone queen or a drone bee, should be removed at this time, even if they were quite rich in flies, because it is not worth getting involved in repairing such trunks now. For this purpose, we select frames from the trunk with bees sitting on them, sprinkle the bees lightly with thin honey (satisfied) and put them behind the gate into a weak trunk but with a good mother; In order for them to connect with each other, we first move aside the passage in the penstock with a grid plate. On the second or third day, we look into the trunk and remove the valve from between the frames, placing it behind all the frames. If you do this, the bees will not be afraid and will join the good queen willingly. In the trunks that had a drone queen, the defective queen should be found and destroyed when joining, but if there was a drone bee, there is no need to find it when joining, because in the case of a good queen, she will completely stop laying eggs after joining. Hives of deleted bees should be cleaned up immediately, otherwise the bees would return to their former places, wander around and become restless; this way they will easily get used to the new place.

If we want to repair a queenless hive or a trunk with a drone queen using a reserve queen, and due to lack of space we cannot move the frames with bees to the hive where the colony with the reserve queen is located, we can, conversely, move the colony with a good, reserve queen to the trunk of that other one. . However, it is not advisable to do the same when removing the trunk with the poison, because most often it will happen that when we move the good queen with the bees to the trunk with the poison, the queen will be cut down, while on the contrary, if we move the bees with the poison to the trunk with the good queen, the in spring, the connection is almost without exception consistent.

Stumps lacking honey should be provided with a sufficient supply as soon as possible until the first major harvest. The first of these greater benefits falls in different areas at different times, so it is the duty of a good beekeeper to examine his area well in this respect. On average, in our country, it can be assumed that the best benefit comes only in June, so a good stock should have or receive 2 kilos of honey for each previous month, and this will not be too much if it is to develop properly. We already talked about processing and calculating honey in the first review on page 170.

We remove frames with drone work from the trunk and insert frames with only bee work; and if the drone frame contains honey and for this reason we cannot remove it from the trunk, we place it last, right from the opening, that is, as far as possible from the pond, i.e. from the brood nest. If it happens that the frame consists partly of bee work and partly of drone work, and there is brood in the bee cells, it is obvious that such a frame cannot be moved away from the hive or outside the nest, in which case the frame should be leave it in the nest, but cut out the drone work and replace it with an appropriate piece of comb with the bee work, tying it with cotton thread in a circle so that it does not fall out. If there was no such piece of bee work to patch, then the bee work should be cut out and the frame in the nest left rather unfinished, as with the bee work. Most often, at this time, the bees will tighten the comb by beekeeping (especially if there is a young queen), and in the worst case, it will turn red with poisons later, especially since once it warms up, it will be possible to move it to the edge of the nest.

We also remove moldy or crusty work from the trunks, replacing it with beeswax, or working wax, if necessary. We do the same with work that is covered with butter, or is filled with old, moldy pearls or bee corpses. Bees waste a lot of time on cleaning such earwax, and most often they are forced to bite the cells down to the bottom and laboriously remove the impurities from them, while the beekeeper, having properly dried such earwax, can easily clean it properly. If the walls of the hive itself are contaminated with feces due to fertilization, it is best to move the frames with bees to another one, in the same place of the hive, and wash and clean the other one carefully.

Adapting the socket. During the second inspection, the number of frames must be adjusted to the strength of the trunk, so all the combs that are not occupied by bees are removed from the weaker trunks, obviously if the supply of honey on the remaining combs is sufficient, and the stronger trunks are given as many combs as they can accommodate. The empty combs added at this time should not be placed between the combs with the brood, but should be placed right next to the nest. Since usually at this time the comb adjoining the brood nest is filled with freshly laid perha, and such a comb is, in a way, an obstacle to the brood's expansion, the added empty combs are placed between the brood and such a frame filled with perha.

It is almost unnecessary to mention that during this second inspection, all trunks should be carefully swept up, the supports, valves and mats should be put back in place, the valve slots should be sealed if necessary, and the holes should be narrowed or widened depending on the strength of the trunk.

Slices removed from the trunks should be carefully cleaned immediately and stored for the time of need, as in §. 8 is said.

Cutting straight trunks, i.e. non-demountable ones, is done for two purposes: either to take away the excess supply of honey or to renew too old work in the hive. In the first case, you can cut the trunks already in autumn, but preferably only in spring, and in the second case, only in spring. In both cases, first of all, you should make sure that the trunk has a young queen, because if you cut the trunk with an old queen, the bees will almost exclusively use drone work instead of the cut work. Therefore, you can cut swarming trunks, swarming swarms, swarming swarms, third swarming trees, etc. - trunks that have not swarmed, and the first swarming trees should not be cut. When cutting the trunk to obtain honey, you can cut the combs from the bottom so much that only 40 cm combs remain in the heads. long, regardless of whether we carry out the cutting in late autumn or spring.

If we want to renew too old work in the trunk, we spread this activity over two years, namely in the first year we cut out one half of the combs right up to the top of the hive, and those that already have brood, right up to the brood, and in the second year we cut the other half half. We do this when the cherries are blooming. At that time, the bees still have relatively little brood, and then, when the fruit trees are flowering, they will immediately start rebuilding the cut-out nest.

Instead of cutting straight trunks, it is better to allocate a certain amount of them to clearing each year. Then you drum around St. Michael from the trunk of the bees, which, sucked in honey, are thrown to one or several other trunks without searching for the queen, the work is completely destroyed, and the hives are kept for the next year's swarm. How to sprinkle the bees so that they do not get crushed is discussed in §. 8.

How to keep tree trunks warm or cool in spring? This question would seem superfluous considering the fact that in spring we want to increase the strength in the trunks, and the temperature needed for the brood to warm up is, as we know, about 35° C, so it would follow that in spring the trunks should be kept as warm as possible. And yet how many times have we not had this unpleasant experience that the trunks that were very strong in early spring, rich in brood and honey, later - without swarming - became much weaker, like trunks that emerged from the winter with average strength; the latter grew stronger during spring, while the former declined. So what happened? In very strong trunks, with a warm nest, the mothers brood more abundantly than in medium-sized trunks, and the brood needs, in addition to honey, a lot of perha and water for its nutrition, so the bees, even if they had enough honey in the hive, are forced to carry perha and water by hand. , because the supply of the first spring in the hive is insignificant, and the second spring there is no supply at all. If the spring days are warm and sunny, such a trunk will soon multiply in strength and produce swarms early, and the beekeeper would probably be at a disadvantage if these swarms came out much before the beneficiation, because he would have to feed them in order for them to grow properly and not starve. showered. If the spring is cold, windy and wet, and there are storms and storms, the bees that fly out of such stumps despite the cold for the benefit of the weather will die out in the field, so most often there will be no nurses to heat and care for the numerous brood, so the brood will catch cold. and it will wither away, and the whole trunk will become very weak as a result. This problem can be partially remedied by giving the strong trunks water to the hive during the cold spring and keeping the bees firmly in the hive during the cold spell, but it will be difficult to provide them with the pearls they need to feed the brood, unless we give them satie mixed with milk or eggs as a surrogate * ), which, like perlia, contain abundant protein compounds needed, in addition to honey, for proper nutrition of the brood. However, satiety excites the bees to fly, so this will not completely remedy the problem.

In such cases, we will achieve our goal more effectively by keeping the trunks very strong and cool by adding as many frames as possible to make the nest as large as possible, by removing the mat and lining, and by opening the hole wide; However, as some people advise, you should not ventilate such a trunk during cold spring, as it has a very harmful effect on the brood at this time and may contribute to the occurrence of foulbrood. Under such conditions, the bees in the hive will feel every change in the air more acutely, they will be forced to brood more densely, and therefore they will move less into the field and waste there less.

*) The milk is sweetened with half and half sugar and is served in small doses. Milk cannot be sweetened with honey, as it will curdle (skip). You need 5 eggs per half a kilo of fatty meat. Fatty filling is made by mixing patoka or white sugar half and half with water, i.e. for 1 kilo of patoka or sugar, add 1 kilo of water. First, beat the egg white and yolk well and pour it into the cooled filling. Both milk and egg satie should be given only in small doses, making sure that the bees take it immediately, otherwise it will spoil and harm the bees more than it helps. The troughs should be cleaned carefully every time.

It follows from the above that weaker and medium-sized trunks should always be kept as warm as possible in spring, while very strong trunks can be kept cool, especially in early spring, and especially in areas where the harvest does not occur until late, e.g. in mid-July, because there swarms will bring less benefit than swarms at the right time, that is, coming at the time of benefit.

Enlarging the nest. On the one hand, one must avoid opening the trunks unnecessarily and disturbing the bees, on the other hand, one cannot neglect careful sweeping of the trunks and gradual enlargement of the nest by adding frames as the number of bees and brood increases. However, for these activities, it is enough to open the valve and sweep the hive with a brush and a long brush, or when, enlarging the nest, we place the combs to be added in front of the last frame from the valve, which will usually contain only perha. Putting empty combs between the combs with the brood, as some people advise, is of no use, because if the strength in the trunk is good, there is enough honey, and the nest is warm, the mother and the brood will spread out all over the hive, but if these conditions are not met, , then the mother in the brood will limit herself, unable to expose the brood to cold and hunger.

Fueling. There is no doubt that the appearance of the honey has an exciting effect on both the queen and the worker bees; the mother then begins to brood more profusely, and the workers work harder and go out into the field eagerly and vigorously. In areas where nature itself provides bees with an abundance of nectar and perha from the first spring in the flowers of first fruit trees, then maples, chestnuts, rapeseeds, acacias, white clover, sainfoin and many meadow plants, a beekeeper would needlessly work hard to further excite the - latively feeding the bee to work more energetically. However, in those areas where there is no spring benefit for bees, or the continuity of the benefit is interrupted in certain periods, a clever beekeeper should come to the aid of the bees and fill this lack or interruption of the spring benefit with artificial feeding.

The purpose of feeding is to deceive the bees that nature provides abundant benefits and to keep them fully alive and willing to reproduce, which is why diluted honey, i.e. full honey, is used for this purpose, and not honey, which is given to them in small but frequent doses. Syta is prepared from patoki honey or white head sugar, taking one part of patoki or sugar to two parts of water. First, the appropriate amount of water is heated until it boils, then half of the patoka or sugar is added and the meat is added until everything dissolves. When the filling has cooled down so much that it doesn't burn your finger when you put it in it, you can give it to the tree trunks. Only in this case, when we do not have our own honey, but purchased, the stuff made in this way should be boiled for at least half an hour to protect against the possible introduction of foulbrood; because the foulbrood bacteria would be killed by half an hour of cooking.

We do not recommend adding other foods, such as milk or eggs, to the satie, because such a satie would have to be fed on the same day, while regular satie can be stored in a cool place for two to three days, and these additions should be added in the normal course. are completely unnecessary, because perha, which these additives are intended to replace, is plentiful in spring, as long as the season is favorable for collecting it.

The feed is given to the stumps in small doses, about 8 liters a day, and on those days when there was no harvest in the field, and it is given either in small troughs in front of the pond or in the most convenient way inside the hive. If we are sure that there are no foreign bees within two kilometers, we can also give satie to the bees outdoors, placing larger troughs a dozen or so steps away from the apiary before sunset, but only on warmer days, filled with satie. When feeding in the hive or in front of the pond, we place the troughs or dishes just before sunset, and the next day before sunrise we take them all away, otherwise there would be robbery. It should be remembered that feeding will be effective only when the trunk has enough strength and a supply of honey, feeding a weak trunk will be of no use, and equally it will not be effective when the trunk has no reserve honey to feed the brood multiplied by feeding. .

Since the bees are stimulated to work more vigorously by feeding, and therefore after each feeding they run out into the field more quickly, you cannot start stoking too early in the spring, when the season is unstable and cold, as many bees will then get lost unnecessarily, and the stumps will instead come to greater strength, they will weaken even more. The ultimate purpose of stoking is to multiply the largest possible workforce for the duration of the main harvest in order to collect the largest possible supply of honey. This will also be the time in each area when it is advisable to start feeding, and the careful beekeeper should comply with this, and having calculated when he needs the largest group of workers in his area, he should start feeding six weeks before this time and maintain it for two to three weeks, then you can discontinue it again

From what we said at the beginning, it follows that feeding only in areas with poor spring benefits will produce good fruit, while in areas with good spring benefits it can only be necessary when, for some reason, fertilization is carried out in the period from the 40th to the 25th day before the main benefit will cease; in this case, the bees need to be fed in such areas for 15 to 20 days in order to have adequate strength during the honey harvest or swarming period. It is not worth feeding the bees earlier than before the gooseberries and currants bloom, because with the changing seasons, more bees will die out than there will be new ones.

It is most convenient to give the trunks a meal in front of the ponds, because it can be distributed quickly and the dishes can be cleared quickly in the morning, but there is an inconvenience that the bees often do not eat the food during cold evenings and nights. However, this can be partially remedied if we arrange the troughs in such a way that they are covered with a cap on the outside and only open on the side of the pond. Such trays are filled with water and hung on a nail driven above the pond in an appropriate place. However, there should be a small opening on the side so that bees returning from the field can get to the hive through there. To prevent the bees from drowning when they are full, it should be covered with a float, which can be made of thin, narrow boards, or made of split reed, tied crosswise like a raft. You should not cover the stool with straw or moss, as some people advise, because if you do not want to risk the souring of the stool, you would have to change the material frequently. The troughs and floats should be kept very clean to prevent acidification of the feed, as this is very harmful to the bees. You can also quite conveniently feed the bees using troughs placed in the empty space of the double roof of the hive. There is no need to clean these troughs every day, as foreign bees will not get there.

Strengthening and leveling tree trunks. In every apiary, no matter how carefully cared for, there will always be a few stumps that are weaker than the rest. Such trunks should not be left to themselves and wait until they gain the necessary strength, because most often it will be too late, and not only will we lose the income from them, but we will also have to provide them with the necessary supplies for the winter. A diligent beekeeper is obliged to come to the aid of his servants, and such weaker trunks, as long as they have a healthy, fertile mother, can be relatively easily leveled with the others. This goal can be achieved most conveniently in three ways, namely: 1) sprinkling with flies, 2) adding brood and flies, ) alternating weaker trunks with stronger ones. The beekeeper will be able to choose the most appropriate method for given conditions. Balancing the strength of the trunks should not be too slow, and it cannot be postponed, as some people do, until the time of the main use, because then we will not use these weaker trunks properly; but you can't start doing it too early, when it's still cold and there's no benefit in nature. The best time for this in our climate is from the second half of May to the end of that month, or until the first half of June.

1) Leveling the trunks by backfilling leads to the goal in the shortest way, but this method can only be used when we have two apiaries that are at least three kilometers apart in a straight line. Having prepared a transport box, we put a comb with uncovered honey or syrup in it, on a warm day in the evening, we open it, when all the bees have gathered in the hive, the stronger trunks in one apiary and we use a scoop to scoop out the fly sitting underneath the combs, or we sweep them away it from the rear frame that has no brood. Having collected a sufficient number of flies in the transport bag in this way, we throw a piece of camphor, the size of a pea, into it and take it to the cellar or to the lockstitch, where it remains until the evening of the second day. At the same time, in the second apiary, we prepare the weaker trunks which we want to level out for receiving guests by adding a piece of camphor to them. The smell of camphor, being a very volatile substance, will soon permeate both bees and overpower their proper scent, so that they will no longer be distinguished from each other. In the evening of the next day, we sprinkle the bees collected in the transport from one apiary to the weaker trunks of the other apiary in the amount we consider necessary, and since the sprinkled bees have the same smell and are drenched in honey, they will be most calmly accepted by the bees of the trunk that is to be fed and will not there will be no mutual shearing; there will be no case of beheading the queen, because the bees kept for a day feel their orphanhood and will be happy to unite with the bees that have a mother. Therefore, by giving the swept bees honey, keeping them in a cage for 24 hours and giving them an equal smell, we make it unnecessary to search for the queen in a trunk that is supposed to be fed with flies, imprison her in a cage for several days and keep her in the brood. If you want to be extra careful, you can sprinkle the bees with slightly sweetened water when they sprinkle them, but this is completely unnecessary. In this way, the nourished trunks will begin to work hard, and soon they will compensate the best trunks in kindness, as long as the mother is properly fertile.

Some people advise to feed the trunks of one and the same apiary in the same way, recommending sweeping the bee from the combs during the greatest flight; in that case, we will only take the young bee, which, although it will remain for the most part in the energized trunk because it has not yet fledged in its trunks, but since together with it we also take away a smaller or larger number of flying bees, it can easily become a similar reason for robbery, especially at a time when the benefit is not yet determined; and if we allow an older bee to escape from the transporter before adding water, there will be very little benefit left, so the effect will be very insignificant compared to the hard work.

2) Leveling the weaker trunks by feeding them with brood, or with brood and flies, is recommended mainly when we do not have another distant apiary at our disposal and when the season is unfavorable and does not allow the bees to fly in abundance to feed the bees. For this purpose, we look for combs with covered brood from the strongest trunks, which already have dark-brown lids, i.e. combs in which a young bee is already emerging, and add them to the weaker trunks, securing the nests of the trunk thus supplied with a valve, a cushion, a mat and tightening. eyes against the possible cold of the brood. If we add combs with older brood, swept off the fly, we cannot give the weaker trunk more than one such comb at a time, otherwise the bees on the weaker trunk would not sit on the brood and it would get cold; only when the young bees leave the added comb can further reinforcement be undertaken with new combs.

However, you can also strengthen weaker trunks with slices of brood and a fly sitting on them. In such a case, we put a piece of camphor, the size of a pea, into the strong trunk from which we want to take the brood and the fly, and also into the trunk that we want to strengthen, in the evening of the previous day, we put a piece of camphor, the size of a pea, and the next day we look for a patch with the oldest brood from the strong trunk, we check it to see if it is found. the mother is on it, we spray the bees on this comb with fresh water and add this comb together with the fly sitting on it to the trunk that is to be strengthened, right next to the nest. Since we have equalized the smell of both bees with camphor, and the newcomers are sprinkled with sweet satiety, the connection takes place without mutual cutting.

In this way, you can feed the weaker trunk with the necessary number of combs with brood and bees from several stronger trunks, because it is not advisable to take more than one frame with brood and bees from one trunk, even a very strong one. In order to avoid possible disturbance of the bees or an attack, it is a good idea to strain the trunk fed in this way, give it water in a trough, and if it is a cold season, leave it in a strainer for two days, and if it is a warm season, put it in for two days. to a dark, cool basement or to the lockstitch, from where it is taken out in the evening for a toque.

3) Leveling the trunks by rearranging is the least appropriate, but the easiest, and it consists in the fact that during the strongest flight of bees, i.e. in the morning hours, we rearrange the weaker trunk with the strong trunk, so that the few bees flying on the weak trunk will move to strong trunk, and a numerous flying bee from the strong trunk will move to the weak trunk and thus increase its strength, as a result of which the queen of the weak trunk will begin to redden more and the trunk will become even with the others. This method can be used only when the trunk we want to strengthen is not too weak and when it has a good, fertile queen, and when the season is warm and the benefit encourages the bees to fly in rapid succession; During the slow flight of bees, moving such trunks will be of no use at all.

When moving the trunks, you should try to equalize their smell by first inserting pieces of camphor into both trunks, and also to ensure that the eyes of the hives after moving fall on the same places where they were first, which is achieved by marking them with plugged rods. If these precautions are taken, there is no need to catch the mothers in the rearranged trunks and lock them in cages, otherwise there is a risk that the mothers not placed in cages will be cut down by the visitors.

Trying to gain strength at the right time. From what we have already said above, it follows that the most important task of the beekeeper is to have as much strength as possible in the trunks at the right time, that is, to have as many workers as possible for the main benefit in his area. Experience shows that one strong trunk, under favorable conditions, will bear much more honey than two weaker trunks, because there remains a large number of worker bees in it, free from household chores, from caring for the brood, and can therefore devote themselves exclusively to collecting supplies, while two weaker trunks relatively more workers must devote themselves to the care of the brood, and only a larger group can take care of collecting the reserves, and even more of these will be consumed due to the larger brood of the two trunks.

Therefore, whoever wants to have an adequate income from an apiary must first examine the time of year in which the main benefit falls in his area, in order to adjust his trunks accordingly, that is, so that at that time they have the greatest possible fly power and, relatively speaking, the least uncovered brood. He will achieve this goal by starting six weeks before this period to keep the trunks as warm as possible, to excite the mother in the brood by regular feeding (obviously with a sufficient supply of honey in the trunk), and where necessary, he will try to equalize the strength early; and then he will take appropriate measures (which will be discussed later) so that ten days before the main harvest begins, the mother will stop brooding or be limited in brooding to the smallest possible size.

We do not deny that it is easier to state the above rule than to implement it in practice, because although a careful beekeeper will examine which plants, and at what flowering time, the bees in his area benefit the most, it is known that the development and flowering of one and the same plants do not fall at one and the same time every year; In one year it will happen a few or even a dozen or so days earlier, in another year later. So how do we remedy this? There is no other way to do this than to keep careful records over several years of the flowering of the most prominent plants in your area, and having these dates, you can then approximately calculate, by seeing certain flowering plants, at what time other plants will bloom. Suppose, for example, that in a certain area there are many wild Acacias (Robinia Pseudoacacia) and the bees mainly use them, then our task will be to determine which plant blooms about six weeks first, so that when the flower of this plant appears, we can immediately start bringing the apiary to as much strength as possible for the duration of the acacia flower. The records show us that about six weeks before the Acacia flower, the Blackthorn (Frunus spinosa) and Vishnia (Prunus Cerasus) flowers appear, and when these bloom, it is time for us to vigorously strive for the strength of the trunks by known methods. About ten days before the acacia flower, the flowers of Field Mustard (Sinapis arvensis), Turnip (Raphanus Raphanistrum), White Clover (Trifolium repens), and White Clover (Lamium album) appear, when these flowers appear , this is a sign that the queens in the trunks should be tamed in the brood, so that during the acacia flowering season we will have as many workers as possible to collect honey, and not have uncovered brood in the combs, which would prevent us from shaking the honey in the honey extractor, as we will say later. Here it should be mentioned that the time interval between the flowering of both plants is not absolutely strict, because in some years it is slightly shorter, in others slightly longer, depending on whether spring was late or early, and later or later In the meantime, there was a hotter or cooler season, but this difference is not so significant and can be approximately calculated according to other plants that tended to bloom in the meantime.

In order to make it easier for beekeepers to estimate when they can expect the flowering of any plant that provides bees with benefits, in part V we will provide a calendar of the average flowering of plants according to the records we have kept in the Lviv area for twenty years. According to this calendar, anyone in their area can easily calculate the approximate flowering time of any plant in our country when they see a flower of one of the given plants.

It should also be mentioned here that the flowering time of cultivated annual plants depends not only on the climate of the given area, but also on the time of their sowing, and furthermore, even in permanent plants, shrubs and trees, there are often individuals that usually either earlier or flower later than others of the same species.

§ 5. Caring for bees in summer. A. Propagation of the apiary.

General thoughts. The multiplication of tree trunks is achieved with the help of natural and artificial swarms. Some people claim that artificial swarms are less suitable than natural ones, but this is wrong, because experience shows that artificial swarms, provided they are made in a way that is consistent with the bees' nature, are not a hair's breadth worse than natural swarms, but have the same the superiority that we do them when the time is right; that we stop the bees from spending several days of unnecessary fuss and anxiety to which they are exposed when starting a natural swarm; that we multiply them as much as we need for our purposes; that we thus prevent the trunks from growing too much; that we finally save ourselves a lot of unnecessary work and time loss, to which we would be exposed if we waited from day to day for the emergence of natural swarms; and most importantly, we protect ourselves most effectively against the loss of many bees, which disappear even in the most carefully supervised apiary, often disappearing into the wider world as swarms.

The statement that natural swarms are better than artificial swarms is only true because natural swarms can be used by any bungling apiary to expand an apiary, while artificial swarms require at least a basic knowledge of the nature of bees. In fact, however, both for both methods of multiplying the apiary, it is necessary for the apiary operator to become well acquainted with the principles of swarming, and therefore we strongly recommend reading the relevant passages from Part I of Beekeeping, pages 123 to 141.

The reason for multiplying the apiary may be various, either we multiply it to increase the number of trunks to a predetermined number, as is the case with beginner beekeepers, or we multiply the number of trunks only to maintain the apiary with a certain constant number of trunks, and with swarms we replace only the trunks that fall off for some reason, or in the case of the so-called swarm farm, we multiply the number of trunks so that we can remove them later after the harvest and collect the honey, which may be appropriate if we run an apiary in non-dismountable hives. For whatever reason we multiply the number of trunks, we should always be careful not to spread the strength of the bees too much, but we should remember that each trunk should have adequate strength, so in our climate it will be most appropriate if the apiary consists of good, strong trunks of at most / 3 or by T / 2 we will multiply depending on what year it is, i.e. whether it is more or less favorable for bees.

Preparations for swarming. Anyone who intends to expand the apiary should prepare everything in advance, whatever he or she will need during the swarm, otherwise he or she will waste a lot of precious time at the hottest moment, and will often cause quite a loss to himself. First of all, he should make stakes for the hives with swarms that are to be set up, he should arrange empty hives for himself so that later he can place the swarms in them without any hassle, and it is best if he places the hives thus prepared in the apiary in the designated places. These hives should have the necessary number of frames, either with ready-made wax or artificial tubes, or with stickers, a valve with a grid plate and a support. In a word, everything is completely ready to receive the swarm. However, you should prepare bees, a board, a sipper, poles and a ladder for collecting natural swarms, which you need to be prepared for in a larger apiary, even if you only intend to multiply bees with artificial swarms.

Puie should be carefully inspected and graded according to strength, and in areas where it is not useful, it should be fed at least every other day to keep the mothers red. This filling can be thin, one liter of honey dissolved in two or even three liters of water is enough, or, if there is no honey, one pound of star sugar dissolved in a liter of water. One liter of such a filling can be used for eight trunks, because it is not about feeding the bees out of necessity, but only about stimulating them, especially the queen, to greater energy by providing them with the water needed for the brood, or by awakening them in them the freshness and willingness that they exude when there is a need for it.

Sticking beginnings and artificial knots into frames. The advantage of frames in demountable hives is that each comb can be removed from the trunk without any damage, but this can only be done when the combs are well built, i.e. when each comb is exactly placed in its frame. To achieve this, in each frame you need to glue a piece of earwax to the upper bar in the very center, reaching as far as possible across the entire width of the frame. The bees then begin to pull the earwax from these stickers, i.e. build combs, and as soon as the hive and the frames stand perpendicular, the combs will never go beyond the boundaries of their frames. Various pieces of plaster waste are used for these stickers, which are then cut with a knife into thin, 2- to 3-centimeter-wide straight strips, as long as possible, as long as the frame is wide. The best stickers are made from older beeswax; fresh, white earwax is a bit more difficult to stick to, and the stickers of drone earwax tempt the bees, especially in larger nests, to drag them out with the drone beforehand. If you don't have pieces of wax to start with, you can stick on narrow strips of artificial string with the same effect, or even make a thin roll of wax and glue it along the center of the upper bar of the frame. You should not put any stickers on the side bars of the frames, as it is of no use at all and only bothers the bees.

When sticking the beginnings, the wood of the frames must be completely dry and dust-free, otherwise the wax will not stick. To do this, the frames must be dried and heated, either in the sun or over a baking sheet. Once we have the frames and pieces of wax prepared, they are melted over the fire in a tin tray, which should be at least as long as the frame is wide, the wax is clean or with the addition of 1/3 resin, then the frame is taken and placed in front of with the upper bar down, immerse a piece of earwax in the melted wax on one side, and apply steady pressure to it exactly in the middle line of the bar. The more regularly the earwax is stuck on, the more regularly the bees will remove the patch from it. To prevent the wax from hardening in the tray during this operation, they are placed on a hot baking tray or on a hot brick, or they are heated from below with an alcohol lamp.

Pieces of artificial snakes are stuck in the same way. However, sticking whole patches of artificial snakes is more difficult, and that is why we will describe them briefly here. The thing about artificial hose is that when the bees start to finish it, it stretches significantly due to the heating and the load of bees sitting on it; Therefore, if such a plaster of artificial wood were cut exactly as large as the space in the frame, after finishing it would bend wavy and create an uneven, humped plaster; therefore it should be cut to a width of 1 cm. narrower and 2 cm in length. shorter than the frame space. The plaster adhered in this way only to the upper bar and on one side to the side bar, but not along its entire length, but only in the upper half. When starting to stick them, you should first nail an inch-wide board so large that it fits comfortably into the frame, two nails are driven into each side of the board exactly halfway through its thickness, just deep enough so that it can hold well on the protruding heads of the board. frame placed on the board, so the board will reach half the width of the frame slats. Having placed the frame on the board in this way, a slice of artificial hose is placed on the board and pushed tightly to the upper strip and one side strip of the frame, then a brush is dipped in melted wax with a third part of the resin and pulled at the point of contact between the hoses and the strip. ; when it hardens, the plaster will stick strong enough, but to be sure, you need to turn it and the frame over and stick it on the other side in the same way. Slices of artificial wax glued in this way are inserted into strong trunks, in the middle between two slices, right next to the nest, at a time when the bees show the desire to draw wax, the bees will then stick the slice more tightly to the frame and will immediately start finishing the cells. You can either leave such a patch and the mother will immediately redden it, or if you want to prepare a ready-made nest for the swarm, you can remove the patch after one or two days, i.e. before the mother reddens it and store it for the time of swarming. It is not advisable to place such freshly glued combs in the very center of the nest between the brood, because they can easily break off when the bees are eating in a dense mass, or if the season is less favorable, they can interrupt the monotonous brooding of the queen.

Ready WOSZCZYNA. Placing the swarm on ready-made wax, i.e. on frames in which the combs are already completely or partially built, is very advantageous, because first the bees do not need to eat a lot of honey in order to collect the wax, and then, having space to store the honey, they can get down to work energetically, and the mother will have somewhere to breed; as a result, the swarms placed on the finished earwax will breed more flies and produce greater supplies of honey than the swarms that were initially placed. You can extract honey from such swarms with a honey extractor right away in the first year, which will again contribute to increasing the harvest. These benefits of ready-made wax will be especially noticeable when the swarm is placed just at the time of the main benefit, and if the swarm is placed on the ready-made wax much before the main benefit, the difference between it and another one placed at the same time only for the beginning , will not be so significant, because before the main harvest begins, the second swarm will have already prepared a nest sufficient for a harvest room, provided it had enough honey to build combs.

Artificial snake provides us with the same benefits as ready-made wax, it also has the advantage that the bees are forced to finish such combs with clean bee work. Whoever buys an artificial snake will only find good value in it when he gives this snake to such swarms. , which he places right at the time of honeying, but obviously with the care described above, i.e. a knot that the bees have previously attached to the frame well, otherwise a freshly glued knot or swarm will not hold the swarm on itself, it will just slide down and get torn off.

Dig. 123. Artificial snake.

The artificial comb shows only the central wall of the comb, on which the bottoms of bee cells are embossed, and the bees place side walls on these bottoms and thus finish the comb consisting of only bee cells. We owe the first attempts at making artificial snakes to the German beekeeper Mehring, who made them for the first time in 1858 and described them in "Eichstädter Bienenzeitung" in 1859, No. 6.

Since then, the production of artificial cord has improved significantly; today, not only the central walls are made, but also the beginnings of the side walls of the cells, and recently artificial patches with quite deep cells are being made. Anyone can make artificial knots as long as they have the necessary molds. The forms used for this purpose are of two types: either they represent two metal plates (Fig. 124) well adapted to each other, with grooves corresponding to the outlines of the bottoms and sides of the bee cells, or the form consists of two metal cylinders (Fig. 125.) whose distance from each other can be adjusted, and in which the bottoms and the beginnings of the sides of the cells are carved in the same way.

If you want to make an artificial knot on a cylindrical form, first prepare a suitably thin wax plate by dipping a glass pane in melted wax, slightly covered with half-mixed water and honey, and then place this wax plate between the rollers, also slightly moistened with this water. and by rotating them, traces of the cell bottoms are embossed in the plate, so that the plate, after being squeezed between the rollers, represents, as it were, the very central wall of the slice. Mr. M. Szwajkowski in Bartnik 1898 advises preparing these wax plates for cell extrusion in the following way:

"It is poured into shallow but wide vessels, e.g. baking trays used for baking pancakes, etc., at the bottom of which there is water and hot wax, which, by dipping the board with a handle (coated with thicker cloth and dipped in cold water first), will form on a wax plane of the desired thickness and suitable for embossing. If the wax is too hot, you should move the board over the surface of the melted wax several times at short intervals to allow time for the coating to form on the board, if the wax is liquid but cooler, dipping the board once is enough, but such a patch is brittle, so it is better in hot wax swipe several times. The board with the wax collected is placed in cold water, and the tile can be easily removed or falls off on its own. To make the cell extrusion plate soft, it is placed in warm water and then placed between rollers." Fig. 125. Cylindrical mold for artificial tubing.

An artificial knot is made on molds consisting of two sheets in the following way: Melt the wax, preferably in a stone or clay pot, so that it does not burn, add some water that will remain at the bottom, then place it nearby on a flat table. , the mold and prepare an ordinary clean brush for cleaning things, and in a plate or some shallow vessel, a liquid for wetting the mold, which is made by mixing one part of water, one part of honey and two parts of pure spirit; You will also need a larger spoon, for example a ladle and a blunt knife. Once all this is at hand, pour some of the liquid made of honey, water and spirit onto the lower plate of the mold and then place the upper plate of the mold on it, raise and lower it several times until the liquid is well distributed throughout all the cavities of the cells. both albums. Then, one and the other mold plates are brushed with a brush moistened with the liquid, so that the mold plates are wetted evenly everywhere, i.e. neither too much nor too little. As can be seen in the attached drawing, the lower plate of this form has an eye on one side with a recess into which the corresponding eye of the upper plate is inserted, so that the plates are connected to each other as if by hinges. Well, after rubbing the boards with a wetting liquid, you put one board on top of the other, take a ladle of melted wax and pour it, lifting the top board, onto the bottom board on the side where the hinges are located. The melted wax should not be too hot. After pouring, simply place the top plate lightly on top without further pressing. Due to the pressure of the upper plate, the wax flows into all the cell cavities, and the remaining amount is squeezed out on the edge of the plate. This operation of pouring the wax and pressing the plate must be done in the blink of an eye, otherwise the wax will harden and will not flow on the mold. If we poured too much wax so that a lot of it flowed over the edge of the mold, we should lift the mold, tilt it towards one corner and pour the excess wax back into the pot. After a while, when you feel that the wax in the mold has hardened, you carefully open the mold, either in the air or immersed in water, and if necessary, use a blunt knife to separate the wax plate from the mold. If we did not pour too much dehumidifying liquid, all the cell beginnings in the wax plate will be pressed out and the middle wall of the artificial knot will be ready. If we wet the mold too little, we may risk that the wax patch will stick to the cart and be difficult to remove. The edges of such a patch will most often be uneven and will need to be cut with a ruler and a knife. If, after making knots for a long time, the mold gets too hot, it should be cooled down after pouring the wax, or immersed in lukewarm water at -18° R. The snake slices should not be too thick or too thin. They will be the appropriate thickness when one kilogram of wax produces 9-10 combs the size of the frame of a Slavic beehive.

To make it easier to attach the artificial threads to the frames, I made the plasters in this way: after properly moistening the boards, I placed four waxed white threads along the mold so that they protruded significantly at one end of the mold and then poured wax into the mold. In this way, after some practice, I managed to make patches of snakes with these threads embedded inside them. I then attached such patches to the frame by making holes in the upper bar of the frame in places corresponding to the threads, through which I pulled the threads and tied them on the other side. Most often, it was then necessary to place the clinic's tied threads on the top of the frame to properly attach the plaster to the frame. In this way, the bees fixed and finished the knot attached to the frame quite well.

When you stop making the artificial knot, wash the forms with warm water and place them in a warm (but not hot) place or in the sun to dry quickly. Such molds in various sizes are usually made in Germany, where they can be purchased at quite moderate prices, such as: Rietsche in Biberach in Baden, Ditrich in Eslingen, H. Greve in Neubrandenburg in Mecklenburg, Ihring and Fahrenholtz in Berlin and many others. Price lists are available from them at any time upon request. A very good plate mold the size of a Slavic frame costs about PLN 20 at Rietscli's. The cylindrical form is available from H. Greve for approximately PLN 80.

For a beginner, making artificial knots is quite difficult, but after a few unsuccessful attempts you can easily become proficient. The most important thing is that the molds should always be cleaned as carefully as possible, otherwise the wall will easily break when removed or pressed. The best is an artificial knot made of pure beeswax, and the bees finish it without hesitation, but it is easier to make an artificial knot from wax with a small amount of resin or earth wax, but the bees are not so eager to finish it. The snake is often very carefully crafted, but is rarely made of pure beeswax, which is why the bees sometimes don't finish it at all.

Artificial snakes can also be used to create single-sided combs, which can, to some extent, be used to limit the mothers' nesting. For this purpose, an artificial knot is glued to the deer frame, i.e. on one side from the top to the frame slats, not in the middle. If we insert such a glued frame at a regular distance between already made nest combs, the bees will finish the cells of the artificial wall only on one side, i.e. in the middle of the frame, and they cannot build cells on the outside because they do not have the necessary space between the artificial wall and the adjacent comb. . The mother is reluctant to brood in such a one-sided comb, so when it is placed on the edge of the nest, the mother usually does not pass through it and does not brood beyond it; However, it happens that the mother lays eggs in such a plaster, so such a plaster is never enough to limit the mother's appetite. In recent times, combs pressed on one side on boards have been made for the same purpose, intended only for collecting honey; In our opinion, this device is not only unnecessary, but also impractical.

Collecting natural swarms. Most often, swarms are found on tree branches, sometimes lower or higher. The swarms, which have an old mother who is difficult to fly, usually mate low, while the swarms with young mothers like to mate high, and often, without being attached to the apiary at all, they escape into the distant world. During the swarm, there should always be a caretaker in the apiary to keep an eye on such emerging swarms, and if he sees that a swarm does not want to stay in the apiary, but flies upwards and moves further and further away, then he should release a stream of water upwards from the sikaka. above the swarm so that the drops of water falling on the bees make them fall down and get stuck. On a sunny day, a mirror does the same service by reflecting the sun's rays so that they brilliantly hit the swarm swinging overhead. Sometimes strong rattling of a scythe or a metal vessel also has a beneficial effect. In the first case, the bees think that it is raining, in the second that there is lightning, and in the third that there is thunder, which forces them to form a swarm more quickly.

When the swarm is established, you should wait a while until the bees calm down completely and only then start collecting the swarm. A swarm is gathered from a branch by placing either a swarm or a hive directly under it and shaking the branch vigorously and briefly so that all the bees fall down at once. If we shake the swarm straight into the hive, we can close the valve and immediately put the hive back in its proper place. If we have collected a swarm into a hive, it is best to turn the hive upside down, place it on the ground just below the place where the swarm is tied up, and place a block or a stone on one side to leave an opening where the rest of the bees could get into the hive. When all the bees have gathered inside the hive, they can either be poured into a prepared hive or covered with a wet cloth, tied lightly and placed in a dark, cool place, where they will stay until the evening. they will only be poured into the prepared hive. Keeping the swarm until the evening is advisable for swarms with young mothers who often like to escape when embedded in the hive. If the swarm is stuck high on a tree, you should either climb the tree and shake the bees out of the hive held just below the swarm, or do it using a ladder, or finally have a bee hive mounted on a long pole (Fig. 126.) To shake it off, have a double hook attached to a long pole. For collecting swarms from high places, there are also convenient swarm bags (Fig. 127.) which are placed right next to the branch and then, after shaking off the swarm, close it by pulling a string, as shown in the attached figure. The other end of the bag is only tied with a string, so all you have to do is untie the string and shake the swarm straight into the hive. It is more difficult to collect the swarm if it is tied, for example, to a woven fence, or to the trunk of a thick tree, or finally to a very thick branch. Then it is best to remove it, either from the trunk from which the swarm came out, or finally, and on the other hand, a comb with the brood, place it right next to the swarm so that it touches the bees lightly, and on the other side, carefully stir up the bees so that they move towards the comb, and you can also lightly help them with a feather dipped in water. The bees and the queen will soon move to the comb, and then you can either place the prepared hive in this place, place the comb with the bees and the queen settled on it, and wait until the rest of the bees come to the hive, or cover the comb with a hive in which the bees will gather soon. The same thing happens if the swarm lands on the ground, which happens rarely and only when the old mother is completely unable to fly. When the swarm settles in a tree hole or any other crevice, make a hole above it and then let in smoke from the hen through the lower hole until the bees come out through the upper hole, either into the nested hive or onto the comb with the brood. they will transfer. Slow, steady tapping also makes it easier to drive out the bees. The apiary should have trees that are not tall but spread out to make collecting swarms easier. In such apiaries, where there are no trees at all, you can stick stronger branches into the ground near the hives, or hang pieces of tree bark or pieces of bark or bees rubbed with lemon balm on the stuck poles, on which the bees will then settle.

Deposition of swarms. As we said above, you can place the collected swarm directly into the hive. However, if it is a swarm with young queens, then it is safer to keep it in the hive in a cool and dark place until dusk and only then pour it into the hive, because swarms with young queens are prone to abandon the hive in which they were placed, and coming out of the hive again as a swarm, either settle down again or fly away to where the Isk had previously chosen as their home. To avoid this escape of the nested swarms even more surely, it is necessary to add to the hive in which the swarm is placed a comb with unmated brood - without bees, taken from either stump. It is also good that if the queen dies, the bees can warm up a new one. A swarm should never be spread over large numbers of frames; and so in the Slavic hive, we give it according to the G strength, and at most 8 frames; unless they are frames with ready-made earwax or with an artificial, already attached cord, in which case you can put all ten of them on. The swarm, placed on a smaller number of seed frames, pulls the earwax from the top to the bottom at once, so that under favorable conditions it will earn all the given frames completely from top to bottom in 8 to 10 days with clean bee work. If he had too many frames, he would start working on all of them, and either he would not extend the work to the bottom of the frames completely, or he would, at best, cover the lower part of the rear frames with trunnion work. Experience shows that when a swarm reaches 60 dm. 2 beeswax, then always moves on to drone work. Once the swarm builds the first frames, two or three more are added, which will usually be filled mostly by drone work. So it will have a pure bee-made nest, and the rear frames will be used to store honey.

When establishing a swarm, you can either build the hive from stakes, tilt it diagonally and straight under the frames and shake out the bees by briefly hitting the hive with your hand, place a partition board just behind the frames, close the hive and place it in the place intended for it, or you can place a board on the hive, he pours the swarm onto it and then, using smoke and feathers, drives the bees into the hive. This last method is especially advisable if, for any reason, we want to look for a queen in the swarm.

Care of the swarm - The day after the swarm is established, you should carefully open the hive and check whether the swarm is sitting properly on the frames, because sometimes it will start to drag under the frames or between the valve and the partition board. The same should be repeated after a few days to check whether any of the glued parts of the earwax have broken off and whether the bees are pulling the earwax perpendicularly in the frames. If any irregularity is found, it is easy to fix it now, but later, when the combs are larger and red, or filled with honey, it would be difficult or even impossible. It is almost unnecessary to mention here that you need to be very careful when dealing with newly built-up patches, as they can easily break off, especially since they are not yet attached to the side. If the swarm has arrived at the time of benefit, there is no need to make any further efforts to obtain it. Another thing is when there is no use, because then the swarm, having taken only a little of the honey from the mother plant, will soon exhaust its supply and sometimes it will either die of hunger, or at least the mother will give up, so at such a time about 2-3 kg should be fed to the swarm at a time. syrup made of sugar, and he will not only be protected from starvation, but also if he had to pull the combs, he will quickly finish the job if he has enough food. For well-understood reasons, there should be no frames in the apiary that are partly made by bees and partly built by drones. Therefore, it is necessary to cut out the drone work from such frames and instead insert appropriate pieces of bee work, which can be attached to the frame in the easiest way by tying thin cotton across the frame with a piece of such inserted plaster several times. In the same way, you can use the cut pieces of drone to make frames with pure drone work, which can be placed in the hives during the honey harvest right next to the hive, and they will then provide an excellent service.

If we see that the bees from the established swarm come out of the pond and spread around the wall of the hive '210 weak and sluggish, it is a sure sign that the swarm is hungry, and then it should be rescued as soon as possible by giving it honey or sugar syrup.

The benefits of early and strong growth. In our region, the swarming time usually falls in June, and this is also the most appropriate time for the emerging swarms, as they are quite strong and have enough time to grow well and stock up on winter supplies. Swarms emerging in May may be caused either by excellent harvest and unusual spring warmth, or by a change of mother. If these swarms are quite strong, they can also bring great benefits, especially if the beekeeper makes sure that in the event of later bad weather and lack of benefit, he feeds them properly. In areas where there is still good harvest in July, the swarms emerging in the first half of July can still be properly processed. However, the swarms that emerge in the second half of July, those in our area, have no conditions of existence, because by then the benefit is either very small or ceases altogether, and therefore such swarms, even the strongest ones, doomed to themselves, will never develop properly, unless that the beekeeper will give them ready-made wax or an artificial snake and also feed them properly. Early and strong swarms, when properly processed, can usually be taken for a honey extractor in the same year, in which case a few slices of old wax should be added to them. from which the honey is then taken, because this year's fresh wax should not be used in the honey extractor, because despite the greatest caution, it will either be damaged too much or completely spoil. In the case of early swarms, emerging several weeks before the main honey harvest, weaker swarms can also be established, because by multiplying the bees, they will be strong enough for the main honey harvest. However, it is worth breeding later swarms only if they are strong, because a weak swarm will not only fail to grow, but will also not provide adequate supplies for the winter and will have to either be provided with combs and honey or deleted. Such a trunk, despite the addition of combs and winter supplies, will remain weak, and next spring it will need help again, so it will be more loss than benefit; Only beginner beekeepers can be forgiven if, while trying to increase the number of trunks, they try to nurture and maintain even the weaker and later swarms.

Connecting swarms. It is best to combine weak swarms to have stronger ones, but remember that only swarms with equal mothers can be combined, i.e. swarms that have an old fertilized mother, with other swarms that also have an old and fertilized mother, and again swarms with young unfertilized mothers, also only with swarms having the same young mothers. If we have two or several weak swarms at the same time, we can collect them each separately, put them in the basement, and then in the evening, pour all the queens that have equal queens into one hive, vacuum them thoroughly and close them up. The bees will then get mixed up, and since they are obsessed with honey and anxious, they will not mingle and will take care of the queens themselves. In swarms with young, unfertilized mothers, such mating is reliable. In the case of swarms with old fertilized queens, it sometimes happens that despite being placed in one hive, the swarms will gather separately around their queens and either go out again the next day or start working separately. If this happens, the queen should be found among the bees and removed, and the bees should be reunited. If the bees are sitting on the honeycomb, it is easy to find the queen among them, otherwise, the swarm is poured out onto the sheet and the queen is found by pushing the bees apart with a feather; or the swarm pours out onto the platform next to the hive and drives the bees into the hive with a feather, sweeps them apart and searches for the queen. If we want to create swarms with unequal queens, we should always find young queens, sprinkle the bees of this swarm with thin honey and then combine them together with the swarm with the old queen. If we want to add a newly emerged swarm to a swarm already established in the hive (regardless of which queen), we should keep it until the evening, then sprinkle it with thin honey, sprinkle it on the bottom of the hive and add a handful of hay to the sprinkled bees. The bees covered with sugar then slowly emerge from the hay and there is no case of them being covered with sweets and being cut down by the already settled bees.

Returning roja. Sometimes it happens that a swarm that leaves the hive does not mate, but pulls it back into its trunk through the eyelet. This is because either the old mother, being disabled, did not leave the hive with the bees, or, unable to fly, she fell in front of the pond and, getting lost somewhere in the grass, was not found by the bees. If we don't care much about the swarm, we can leave this to its own course, because either the bees will not come out of this trunk at all, or in about nine days we will receive a swarm with a young queen. If we wanted the swarm, we should - seeing that the swarm is about to pull it back into the hive - look for the queen in the grass in front of the pond, and if we find her, immediately take her into a cage and put her in frames in another prepared hive that has been built. place it in front of the pond of a swarming trunk, and all the bees of the swarm will immediately flock to the queen, then the hive with the swarm is placed in the designated place and the queen is released from the cage. If the queen is not found in the grass in front of the pond, you can open the hive and look at the bottom first. the hive, then search the combs, and when you find the queen, do the same as we said before; so you can put a new hive in place of the mother trunk, and place it somewhere else in the apiary, or put it in the place of another strong trunk, and in this case, after nine days, we will get a very strong swarm with a young queen from the stem of the mother plant, because the old bee from the removed trunk I'll fall for this motherfucker.

Driving the swarm back to the mother trunk may be advisable either when we want to have the first swarm not with an old queen but with a young one, or when the swarm is very weak, or finally, when it left at a late hour after the honey harvest has been completed. In the first case, after finding the old queen from the swarm in the manner described above, we remove it and pour the swarm back into the mother trunk. After nine days, we will usually get a stronger swarm with a young mother. In the second case, when the swarm is very weak, we proceed in the same way. If the swarm emerged late, either during the honey harvest or after the honey harvest, and we are convinced that it will not prepare properly for the winter, then we dismantle the mother trunk, break off all the queen cells and pour the swarm back into the trunk. In that case, the bees will remain if there was an old queen with her in the hive, and if it was a hive with young queens, they will choose one bee and destroy the others.

How to know where a swarm came from. If it happens that we have not noticed from which trunk the swarm came, and for some reason we want to find out, we take a handful of bees from the swarm into a glass and walk with them from the trunk to the trunk, holding the glass with the opening towards the eye. . If the bees start to move towards the pond with their abdomens raised and flap their wings, we can be sure that the swarm came from that trunk. You can also sprinkle some flour on the bees in a glass and then throw them into the air and see which trunk they fly to.

Swarms flying in. In a large apiary, in a time favorable for swarming, several swarms will often emerge from different trunks at the same time and they will clump together, creating a huge swarm. Sometimes it also happens that newly emerging swarms settle on an already established swarm. Such a swarm cannot be placed in one trunk as it is too large. Therefore, we should either divide it into as many parts as we think fit, without taking care of the queens, and place these groups in hives, adding to each a comb with uncovered brood, so that if this group of bees does not have a queen, it can get a new one. bask in; or, as appropriate, we divide the swarm into individual swarms with queens. In this case, we shake off this huge swarm into a larger container, e.g. a bathtub, in which we have previously attached at certain distances from each other as many frames with wax as there were swarms (if there is no wax, we can spread twigs in the bathtub), then cover the bathtub with a moistened cloth. and put it in a cool place. After some time, the bees will separate and each swarm will gather next to its queen or queens on a different comb or branch.

When swarms with equal queens come together, i.e. old fertilized or young unfertilized ones, the bees of such a swarm behave friendly towards each other, on the contrary, if they are swarms with different old queens, then the bees fight each other. Therefore, if we see that another one is trying to settle on a swarm that is already tied, it is best to immediately cover the tied swarm with a wet cloth if there is no time to quickly collect it.

Artificial Swarms. The ease with which artificial swarms can be created, especially in demountable hives, means that beginner beekeepers most often deprive themselves of the pleasure and income from the apiary by carelessly increasing the number of trunks. This rapid multiplication of the apiary can never be effectively guarded against the bad effects of the fever, therefore we state here bluntly that a beekeeper who increases his apiary by more than half in one year will most often be a blunder, because a good beekeeper prefers to have a smaller number of stumps, and perfect cli, like many, and cheap; and in our climate, only in very favorable years, or by vigorously stoking the tree trunks, can the apiary be multiplied by more than half in one year.

What kind of trunk can you make a swarm from? To avoid losses, artificial swarms should be made only from trunks that would soon start swarming anyway, i.e. from very strong trunks. In Slavic hives, such a trunk can be considered suitable for swarming, as it has 7 to 8 frames of brood, and the bees have the same strength. that not only do all 10 frames sit in black, but they also sit densely under the frames and hatch in front of the pond. A trunk this strong will already have reddened drone cells and queen cells installed, or even partially reddened, so if we make a swarm out of it, we will only speed up the natural course of things, and we can be sure that such a swarm will succeed well. In addition to the above and the first part of the Card, the signs given by which you can recognize that the stump is about to swarm, there is also the following one that is almost infallible, namely: if during the honeyting period we open the valve of the hive, and the bees immediately pour out in a crowd through the gap and start attack us angrily, we can be sure that a swarm will come out of this trunk, if not on the same day, then within a few days at most. Generally speaking, it can be said that a trunk is capable of being turned into an artificial hive when: a) it has such significant strength that it hangs underneath the combs and hatches in front of the eye; b) when he is completely exhausted and either carries out drone work or already has brood in the drone combs; c) when it begins to establish queen cells; d) when it is full of already mated bee brood.

Preparation of queen cells. Having everything prepared for making swarms, we should arrange for queen cells, so that immediately after making the swarm, we can add the newly hatched queen cell to help it warm up the mother, because otherwise we would sometimes have to wait for the young mother to appear in the the orphaned stump for about twelve days, and this would involve considerable loss. For this purpose, 10 or 11 days in advance, we make one or several swarms, day by day, depending on the size of the apiary and how many swarms we intend to make for ready queen cells. Each orphaned trunk in this way will establish rescue nurseries, which will then be used to make new swarms on the 10th or 11th day; the longest you can wait is the third day, because on this day the queens almost always start to leave the queen cells. Each strong orphaned trunk in spring will create a dozen or so nurseries, many of which, however, may be so embedded in the combs that it will be difficult to cut them out. Therefore, on average, it can be assumed that an orphaned trunk will provide 6 rescue nurseries; Therefore, based on each preparatory swarm made 10 days ago, you can then make an average of 6 swarms.

The queen cells should be cut very carefully so as not to damage them, as the bees destroy any damaged queen cell; it is best to cut the earwax with a narrow knife around the mother cell in the form of a triangle V, through and through, because with such a triangular shape it is easier to attach it to the patch. (Figure 128).

When starting to insert queen cells into slices, a triangular hole is cut in a given slice, preferably at the top on the side, right next to the frame slat, and a triangular section with the queen cell is inserted into this empty space so that the queen cell is in a natural position, then it was facing the ground. If the section with the mother cell does not sit quite securely in the comb and is at risk of falling out, it can be easily secured by plugging one or more pins on the side to hold the section slightly. The bees will soon secure the nest box with wax so that they won't know it's in place, and then the pins can be removed and removed at a given opportunity.

It almost goes without saying that only the covered nurseries are cut out, and that after cutting they must be kept warm so that they do not catch cold; For this purpose, it is best to prepare a box, stuffed with cotton wool, into which carefully cut out queen cells are placed, and such a box is kept in a pocket or behind the coat.

Different ways to make roja. Having prepared the necessary number of queen cells, we start making swarms, which should be started when the bees fly out into the field in large numbers, i.e. on sunny and warm days, preferably between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. at noon.

Of the various ways to make roja, here are some of the best and most convenient ones.

Swarms in half flight. The easiest of all methods of making artificial swarms is undoubtedly dividing the trunk in half, but this can be used in the case of demountable hives, but is impossible in the case of beehives and tree swarms.

This method is only used for very strong trunks. For this purpose, prepare a beehive exactly like the one you want to divide, externally similar, with a mesh at the same height as the other one, and a valve on the other side, as well as several frames, either with the beginnings glued on, or with whole slices of wax, or also with the artificial hose already well attached by the bees. On a clear day, when the old bees are in the field and almost only the young bees are in the hive, stick a stake in the ground in front of the eye of the trunk you want to divide, move the old trunk to the side so that its back wall is right next to the inserted stake, on the other side, place the new hive against the back wall, also right next to the stake, so that the eyes of both hives will be equidistant from the stake marking the old hole. Open the old stump, take out the first comb, look at it carefully® (if by chance there is a queen on it, it's good, because you won't need to look for her anymore) and put it in a new hive, temporarily right next to the pond, so that the bees that come back from fields, and not having set their eyes in the old place, they wander and split into two neighboring hives, so they had somewhere to store their crops, otherwise they would have left the empty hive again and wandered further. Divide the remaining combs into two parts, taking care to distribute the honey and brood equally, leave one part in the old hive and put the other one in the new one.

This may be the end of the division, because in one hive there will be a queen, and in the other bees will create a young queen from the brood. A bee returning from the field will arrive at each of the hives in approximately equal strength, but if you see that there is more pressure on one than on the other, move that one further away and move the last one closer to the place where it used to be.

Whoever would do better should look for the mother and give the trunk that receives her fewer combs with the older brood, and therefore more with honey and vain, because the mother will immediately begin to brood, while the other one, forced to warm the mother, will remain for a long time without benefits in June; he should therefore give the brood much more.

We will do even better if we add a prepared nursery to the trunk that has not received a mother, or a spare mother in a cage, which is released from prison the next day. It is a good idea not to let her out immediately, but to cover the opening of the cage with a piece of wax, you the bees themselves then, having chewed through the wax, released the matkg, or they could add it to the wax coil, as in §. 8 described.

Half-flight swarms composed of two trunks. For this purpose, I designate two strong trunks in the apiary for each swarm, e.g. trunk A. and B., having done this, I prepare a hollow hive C. and eight frames with the beginnings of wax glued on them, or if there are spare patches, it is obvious that these too I can use them with great benefit, as long as they are not too old.

This hive should be as externally as possible as completely similar to the hive of the trunk with which it is to be rearranged; so if it is made of wood, then the other one should also be made of wood, if it is made of straw, lined with reeds, or painted, then the other one should be so too, because when leaving, the bees are guided mainly by the location of the hive and the pond, but also by the surroundings of the hive. external, and above all, the general appearance of the hive and color. Therefore, if we have the same hives in the apiary, e.g. Slavic hives, all work will be extremely easier, because not only can we take the frames from one trunk and put everything into another, but such trunks can be freely rearranged during the harvesting period - but only during the harvesting period. , without risking the mother's cutting.

If we had wooden and straw hives in the apiary, it would be easy to remedy this so that one different hive would become similar to another, by having a few straw mats and a few wooden boards prepared exactly like the front of the hive, i.e. with an erupted eye and, if necessary, with the same painting, and then, for example, if we want to make a wooden hive similar to a straw one, we attach a straw mat to the first one - the eye is always in one place in the hive, so the mat can be placed easily, - we can make a straw hive similar to a wooden one by attaching a wooden board with a mesh to the straw hive.

When creating a half-flight swarm, you must also make sure that the hive used has the same roof as the old one, because otherwise the separation of the flying bees into the old trunk and the new one attached to it will not be possible.

Taking the above conditions into account, I place the newly prepared hive C. Meanwhile, somewhere on the side near the trunk A, with which I then want to place it for half a flight. I dismantle the trunk, I first look for the mother and place her and the comb on which she is sitting on the other side of the dismantled trunk, so that this comb does not touch the others, because then the mother could easily move to the other comb and thwart my whole plan; it will be best if, when dismantling the trunk for such a purpose as the above, the frames are placed on the side opposite the pond, and the comb with the mother is placed on the side of the hive where the pond is.

Let me briefly mention here that when disassembling a Slavic hive, we do not use the so-called billy goat or a cones, but after opening the hive, we place the comb on the ground on the side of the hive, and then we place each frame with a comb on the comb, resting it slightly obliquely against the wall of the hive. , or on the slats of the previous frame.

After putting aside the comb with the queen, I select 3 or 4 of the remaining combs, the prettiest ones, as many as I can, and together with the bees sitting on them, I put them into the prepared hive C, standing on the side, then I put the remaining combs together with the queen to water. gate to trunk B, I add spare frames or ones with glued beginnings and close it. Now I go to trunk A, dismantle it, look for the queen, put it aside with the comb, select 3 or 2 combs - according to their strength - as much as possible with as little black brood as possible, put them together with the bees sitting on them into the prepared hive C, put them in prepared mother plant in one of the slices; I add frames with the beginnings to the number eight and close it; I close trunk A in the same way, after returning the mother patch to it and adding it to the full number of spare or start frames.

Then I mark the location of the eye of trunk A with a stick stuck in the ground, remove it in a straight line, far enough to the side so that the new trunk C can stand next to it, and so that the eyes of the old trunk A and the new trunk C are now placed at an equal distance from the original one. the point of the mesh, marked with a stick. Having covered trunk C with a roof completely similar to the roof of trunk A, I will find that the bee of trunk A, returning from the field, not seeing the eyelet in its former position, will now divide quite evenly into trunk A and trunk C, but always slightly more bees will go to the old trunk A, which won't do any harm, because the trunk C is rich in brood and a young bee that was sitting on the combs. However, if this distribution of bees were to be too unequal, that is, if for some reason the bee should mainly turn to one trunk, then this can be remedied by moving the trunk a little further from the position of the former eyelet, and the other trunk , on which too few bees go, it moves a little closer to its former place. However, if we observe all the conditions described above, this accident will not occur at all.

After a few days, you can start moving the separated trunks a little further apart, which will only be necessary if the valve of one of the hive happens to be located on the side of the other hive; You should not remove more than 2 to 3 cm at a time, but you can easily move the trunks every other day, especially if the bees go to the field every day.

The fact that when making a swarm and a half flight, you must first make sure that there is somewhere to move the trunks A and C aside, is obvious, so you need to prepare the foundations or kill stakes at the necessary distance, depending on how there are hives set up in the apiary.

Swarms in half flight with the help of the second trunk. I am looking for two strong trunks in the apiary, A. and B., one of which, e.g. B., may be non-detachable. I take apart trunk A, find the mother, and set her and the comb she's sitting on aside; then I take 4 frames with brood with the bees sitting on them from trunk A and put them into the prepared empty hive C. I put the frame with the mother back into trunk A and complement it with frames with ready-made wax or with an artificial snake. I place a prepared nursery stock in one of the frames inserted into the C hive, complete the hive with frames with ready-made wax or an artificial snake, and if these are not available, with frames with beginnings, I place it on a half-flight with the other trunk B, from which I do not take anything and therefore it can be indestructible .

Artificial swarm using two trunks. For the sake of simplicity, we will name the two selected trunks from which we want to make a swarm, and we will call the empty hive in which we want to embed the swarm C.

We therefore take the empty hive C and first place it next to the trunk A; then we select all frames from the prepared hive C, either with glued beginnings or with ready-made wax; we open the trunk A, take out the frame with the brood and the bees sitting on it, and put it in the empty hive O; then we add the necessary number of frames with stickers or ready-made wax to it, and place it in place of trunk A, which we set aside; now we take out frame by frame from the set aside trunk A and using a platform attached to hive C, we sweep all the bees from these frames, every one to hive C; If we encounter the queen while doing this, we carefully put her into hive C; if we do not notice her, she will still get into hive C together with the swept away bees; after sweeping all the bees, both from the frames and from the walls of the trunk A to the hive C, we close the hive C, and we have a ready swarm. Hive G should be as similar to the hive of trunk A as possible and covered with the same roof, and care should be taken to ensure that its eye is in the place where the eye of trunk A used to be, which is very easy to achieve by properly plugging the stick in before eye.

After selecting all the bees, we put the swept frames back into trunk A, - after placing one of the prepared nurseries in one of them, right next to the pond, which, for reasons that are easily understandable, should be placed in the upper part of the comb, - put on the mat, close the valve, and we place this trunk A in the place of the other strong trunk B, making sure that the eyelet is in the same position and covered with the same roof. We move trunk B to another place, as far away as possible, in the same apiary. To be sure and to attract bees more easily, you can also take out one comb with bees sitting on it from trunk B (as long as there is no queen on it) and put it in trunk A. After putting aside trunk B, a bee coming back from the field will fly to trunk A and nest bee brood deprived.

Trunk B may even be non-demountable.

The result of this action will be: Trunk O, as a swarm? he will have both old and young bee trunk A, so he will be strong; trunk A will have its own brood, from which new groups of young bees will emerge every moment, and it will have almost all the flying flies of trunk B\, while the latter will have its own brood and all the younger bees that have not yet gone out into the field, but which will soon then, according to its age, it will fly and start flying out for useful purposes; for this reason, it is good to put a trough with water inside the trunk B, so that it has the necessary amount of water to nurture the brood before the young worker starts going out into the field.

If there's a rainstorm, you need to remember about the C swarm so that it has enough honey; In the evening, you should check the trunk A to see if enough bees have flown into it to make brood, otherwise you would have to collect the bees from the trunk B and sprinkle it over it. However, this need can only occur if the transfer of trunk A and trunk B did not take place during a dense flight of bees.

A swarm composed of three trunks. I peel off three strong trunks in the apiary, A, B, C, and temporarily set up an empty hive D somewhere nearby. I open trunk A, take out the frames, look for the mother, and place the frame with the mother separately so that it does not move to another frame, then I choose 2 frames with young brood, freshly mated or partially uncovered, and one frame with a bit of honey (it is best if there is unfinished), I put them together with the bees into the prepared hive D, and I tidy up the trunk A, return the frame with the mother, add empty frames and close it. I go to stump 2?, I take it from him in the same way, having first found the mother - I take one frame with young brood and one with older brood, and if necessary, also a frame with honey and put them in the same way together with the bees into the prepared hive D. In one of I fill the frames with brood inserted into the D hive with a covered queen cell, then I fill the D hive with frames with the beginnings, because the bees will soon have a young mother, they will complete all the frames with bee work, and I close the hive. Then I take the trunk C (which may not be dismantled), I take it to another place in the apiary, and in its place I immediately put the complex trunk D, making sure that the eye falls in the same position where the eye of the older trunk O was first, which, as we know, is achieved by marking this location by inserting a stake of appropriate height. The more similar the hive D is to the set aside hive G, the more accurately the stitch is made, the more similarly the roof is positioned (since the former roof of the trunk C should now necessarily fit on the trunk D), the better this artificial swarm will succeed, because the old bee from the trunk C when returning from the field, he will go to the trunk of a new D, which will be strong and good. The set C trunk will, at worst, weaken for a day or two in flight, because the old bee will disappear, but at this time there are more young bees flying every day, so it will soon go to the field as if nothing had happened. Moreover, part of the flying bee, i.e. the one that only flew a few days ago, will stay near the old trunk C, although it has been moved, because the bee, when flying out, always looks at the hive and does not yet know its former location by heart.

Repellings. Another good way of making artificial swarms, as previously mentioned, are the so-called swarming swarms, which are recommended because they can be used both in demountable hives and in beehives, barns and the like in non-demountable hives. The whole manipulation consists in taking some of the bees along with her from a strong trunk with a good mother, which will result in, on the one hand, an artificial swarm, equal to the first swarm, and, on the other hand, a trunk containing all the brood and the rest of the untaken bees. . If we want to make a clearing out of a trunk with non-removable combs, first of all we prepare two sticks for knocking on the hive, then a basket or a box into which we will temporarily drive the bees away, and a chicken coop. The best sticks are made of soft wood so that they do not knock too much when you knock on the hive. Having prepared ourselves in this way, we uncover the lid or the upper spigot of the trunk from which we want to expel the bees, and we place a basket or box on the opening with the bottom up, covering the gaps with clay or covering the gaps with cloth so that the bees cannot escape. Trunks that do not have a hole at the top but at the bottom should be turned upside down, placed correctly, and then the basket or box should be placed; However, in this case, you need to be careful - especially when it's hot - so that the freshly pulled plasters and the edges that are not yet attached do not bend, which can be easily prevented by inserting sticks between them.

It is best to start making chases at the time of day when the most bees are present, i.e. in the morning before 8 a.m. and in the afternoon starting at 4 a.m.

Having prepared everything in the above way, you open the valve and let some smoke into the bottom of the trunk to scare the bees, then, closing the valve, you start knocking with sticks, starting from the bottom and then around the hive, slowly working your way up. The bees, frightened by the smoke and disturbed by the constant, monotonous knocking, slowly move higher and higher as the knocking gets closer to them. The force of hitting the sticks must, of course, be proportional to the thickness of the hive walls, but do not hit too hard, as the slices could be torn off due to too strong shaking.

From time to time you can blow in some smoke from below, which will make it easier for the bees to move upwards, but beware of too much dust, because this would have the opposite effect: the bees would get too excited, and instead of moving upwards, they would disperse in anxiety. all over the hive. The first condition for good and quick removal of bees is to use sticks wisely. Whoever knocked too hard, here and there on the hive, would not achieve the goal even after several hours of knocking, while if he acted carefully, he could complete the job in a dozen or so minutes.

After just a moment of knocking, you can hear the noise and clanking of bees moving upwards from the hive, and when we walk uniformly in a circle, knocking and moving upwards beyond half of the hive, we can usually hear the hum of bees in a placed basket or box. If some of the bees have gone to the set-up, others will go there sooner. When we see that there are enough bees in the device for a swarm, which can be confirmed by looking at it, we remove the device, sweep the bees that are sitting in the hive opening into it, cover it with a net or a wet cloth. a row of cloth and place them in a shady or dark place for some time, with a net or cloth on the side, so that they do not suffocate. After half an hour you can already see whether the bees have a queen among them or not; in the first case they will calm down immediately, but in the second case they will howl pitifully.

If we have a second apiary about 2 kilometers away, we take the bee there and settle it, because a bee placed in the same apiary would return to its old place. We then leave the hive from which we removed some of the bees in its old place. However, this method of installing a fence requires some work, and not everyone can do it without having a second apiary.

Such a bee can also be placed in the same apiary, but in this case it must be placed in the place of the stump from which we took it out, and if we do this, we will have a very strong stump, because the old bee will also come to it from the stump we put aside. Moreover, if the bees are kept in a dark room for 48 hours, then, even if they are placed in the same apiary, they do not return to their former place.

A branch should always have a mother, and if it does not exist, then it must be added from somewhere, either by taking it from another trunk or from an older one by knocking and finding it again. Instead of the mother, we could only give the brood or the queen cell to warm up, if we set it at least partially for ready work, otherwise it would only do drone work until the mother is warmed up. - When we place the fence in the place of the trunk from which it was made, we place the old trunk with it - or another strong trunk - for half a flight, as we have already described, and in this way it will receive half of the old bees that fly out of the placed aside neighbor, and having all its brood and some of its own bees, it will also become a strong trunk and will bear a lot of honey, because while warming the young mother it will not have any brood to nurture for more than two weeks, and it will often happen that it will also produce a swarm of the singer. ; and the strong neighbor, having lost only half of its old bees, will by no means become weaker because of this.

In demountable hives, there is no need to knock out the bees, but the required number can be conveniently removed from the combs.

When making clearings, you can use the trunks from which the clearing was taken to force natural swarms from non-dismountable trunks. Especially if the trunks are old and, despite their great strength, do not want to grow. Then we place the raised stump in the place of another strong one, as a result of which a fly returning from the field, coming from the stump that was put aside, will fall on it. And since, having lost its mother, it will have numerous queen cells, its own young strength from the abundant brood and the strength acquired from that brood, it will certainly produce a swarm of singers after the first young mother leaves. After producing a songbird, you can put it back together with another strong trunk and it will produce a bestie. And so it can be used to remove natural swarms from straight tree trunks until they have young mothers.

Swarms by rearrangement. It is best to make such swarms only from straight trunks, instead of more difficult knockers. If we have a very strong trunk, from which we would like to have a swarm, we prepare a hollow hive while the bee is moving into the field by adding several frames to it, as much as possible with ready-made work, and one or several frames with the brood and the queen cell. , (either native or inserted) with the bees sitting on them, taken out of any demountable trunk, or a spare queen. Having prepared the hive in this way, we close it, mark the height and position of the eye of the trunk from which we want to make a swarm with a plugged rod, and move the trunk to another place, and in its place we build a newly prepared hive, making sure that the eye goes back to its former place. For this hive, we put the same or similar bench in front of the hive as was the case in the weaned one, and cover it with the roof of the other one. Bees returning from the field, some fly straight into the pond, others, seeing a different hive, fly in front of the pond as if they were wondering what to do, but hearing the noise of the bees on the brood comb, they do not hesitate for a long time. If the trunk was left strong, a large number of bees would flock to this swarm.

The most interesting thing, however, is that the bees of such a swarm remain in a certain relationship with the removed mother stump for a long time, and the consequence of this is that sometimes a swarm emerges from the mother stump within a few days and simply pulls the artificial swarm made by moving it into the hive's eye. . This will obviously happen only if the stump set aside has already been prepared for swarming, which is not difficult to detect when you see bees lying in front of the pond or queen cells already established.

You can also place an old trunk on a half-floor with another, also strong trunk.

Consolidated swarms can only be done profitably if you have a second apiary at least 2 kilometers away. For this purpose, we prepare a light nesting box, which has one side, or part of it, made of wire mesh. The lid of the box is designed to be moved or removed and has a sliding opening into which a large funnel can be placed. When we start making the feeder, we take a spare queen, lock it in a cage and attach it to the side net so that the cage does not move. With the box arranged in this way, in the evening we go to the stronger trunks, open the valve, shake the bees sitting on it into a funnel placed in the nest box, drive the bees into the box with a feather, then scoop up the hanging bees with a scoop, chin under the combs, and pour them into the box as well, then we close the trunk. We repeat the same operation with other trunks until we are convinced that there are enough bees in the colony to create a strong swarm. Then we take out the hopper, close the hole in the top and move the dumper to a distant apiary, where we place it in the usual way. However, we only let the queen out of the cage after hours, otherwise the mob of bees could sting her. The queen in the cage is placed upwards under the hive cap so that she can be accessed at any time without much concern for the bees. If we do not have a spare queen, the nestling can also be placed on the brood patch with the queen cell.

The mesh on the side of the nesting box means that the bees poured into the box do not beat so strongly back into the funnel.

Mixed swarms can be made, especially in larger apiaries, shortly before the honey harvest, by taking one frame with brood and a fly from each trunk and thus combining very strong trunks. There is no need to worry about the mother at this time, because the mothers in the trunks are removed for honey harvesting anyway.

The same thing we said above in the section about caring for natural swarms also applies to artificial swarms. B. Honey harvest.

The most important moment in a skillfully run apiary is the time of honey harvesting, because only honey constitutes the actual income from such an apiary, and wax is only a side income. The time of honey harvest is different for each area, so a wise beekeeper should carefully examine when the main harvest falls in order to have the trunks properly prepared for this important moment.

Preparation for honey harvesting. Whoever wants to have proper income from the apiary should make sure that the trunks are in full development during the honey harvest, as already mentioned in § 4 how to achieve this. In areas where the main honey harvest takes place already in spring, e.g. in May, the beekeeper must try to have trunks in great strength for the winter; therefore, in August of the previous year, he must multiply the bees as much as possible by feeding them, which, properly overwintered, will survive until spring; because after winter he would not have enough time to get the trunks to the proper strength. However, there are few such areas whose main benefit falls in May and they are exceptions. Most often, the main harvest takes place in the first half of July, and at this time it is easy to try to gain great strength in the apiary according to the above tips. We can definitely achieve the highest income from the apiary if we collect honey using a honey extractor and do not spoil the combs themselves - therefore, the beekeeper should have everything ready for honey collection in advance, i.e. the honey extractor is in order, the honey barrels are properly cleaned, and there is a sufficient number of spare combs to fill the trunks intended for honey harvesting with them; not forgetting other smaller devices and tools that should also be in order at this time, such as: a platform for sweeping up bees, a brush or feathers needed for this, a crooked and sharp knife for uncovering sewn combs, a trestle for carrying honeycombs and a good - profit.

Removal of stumps for use. It often happens that in the vicinity of the apiary there is a lack of plants that provide proper benefits, while in the neighborhood or in another town there may be a large number of them; in such cases, the bees should be transported to the appropriate place in order to obtain the highest possible profit from them. In this way, you can sometimes even significantly extend the honey harvest period because, for example, having obtained the earlier harvest in your home, you can benefit from the later harvest in another area. In such cases, not all trunks from the apiary are transported, but only the strongest and properly prepared ones. Trunks that will withstand transport best, even in the hot summer, have no brood but strong old wax; when trunks with brood are transported, they must have at least the brood in the old wax, but even then they must be handled with extreme caution. Therefore, it will be best if we deliberately prepare very strong trunks, completely without brood, to obtain such a long-term benefit. Then we proceed as follows. Having selected the strongest trunks in the apiary, we put another hive in place of each of these trunks, at least one made of thin boards, making sure that the eye of the established hive A ends up in the same place as the eye of the old one - hive B, and we fill it frames with old wax and place a stick of appropriate thickness above the frames so that the frames cannot move upwards, and then we select all the combs from the trunk B set aside one by one and sweep off them one by one all the bees that are on them and on them they sit on the walls of the hive, to the new hive. Finally, we put a comb into the hive, with as little brood as possible and the oldest work possible, we put two nails on the side into the wall of the hive so that the frames cannot move at all, and we close the hive for now. We put trunk B, from which all the bees were selected, in the place of another trunk C, which is not intended for transport, taking care to ensure the exact location of the pond, and we put this trunk C in a new place - in the apiary. So, in hive A we will have a strong swarm on ready-made old wax with a queen, trunk B will have its own brood and the moth from trunk C will fly onto it and will establish queen cells, and trunk C will lose some of its flying flies. You can also, if you want to avoid crushing the apiary, place the JB trunk with the C trunk at half the bees' flight, as described for making swarms. When we have prepared all the trunks intended for transport in this way, then on the day before the apiary is to be transported, we start preparing the trunks for transport. We open each of these trunks to first check whether everything is OK, put on the valve slat, attach it to the walls of the hive with nails and close the valve, which should have a hole made at the top, secured with a mesh from the inside. To be sure, we nail the valve with two nails so that it does not fall out accidentally. It is almost unnecessary to mention that all nails should be nailed in such a way that they can be easily removed with pliers. In the ceiling of the hive, we take out the spigot and nail the wire mesh on top. In the evening, when the bees are completely calm and come inside the hive, we also nail the wire mesh onto the meshes with small nails, or if the mesh latches are heavily perforated, we just close them and We secure them with nails so that they cannot move away. If the trunk is very strong, so that the bees do not want to get out of the pond in the evening, we open the valve and only when the bees come out after some time due to the cold, we close it and secure the valve in the same way as the pond.

If the road is long, you should load the trunks onto the cart immediately after securing them, and if the road is not too long, it is better to do it only in the early morning, before sunrise. We place the bees on the carts with harvesting ladders so that the combs in all the trunks stand parallel to the axles, which does not cause any harm even if the hives do not stand straight, but lean to the side. * The cart must be properly covered with straw, each hive must be covered with straw and secured with ropes so that it cannot move, but care must be taken to ensure that all openings in the hive, secured with nets and through which air is to enter, are free, i.e. with straw. not clogged. If the hives are properly placed, they can even be placed three stories above each other on a cart, as long as they do not move and cannot change the position once set. The transport time must be calculated so that in the morning, at least two hours after sunrise, the bees are already at their destination.

The transport of bees should always be accompanied by a beekeeper, who should have a bundle of hay and mixed clay, so that if a hole is created somewhere in the hive through which the bees start to escape, it can be immediately plugged with hay or filled with clay.

Upon arrival at the destination, the trunks should be immediately removed from the cart, placed on previously prepared foundations or pegs, and only when all the trunks are in place should the meshes be carefully sieved. It is almost unnecessary to mention that when transporting logs, horses must move at an even pace, that each cart should be braked downhill, and that any bumps and protuberances along the way should be avoided on which the cart could suddenly shake. When transporting tree trunks by rail, care must also be taken to ensure that they only travel at night, as much as possible, by placing them on open carts, and if they must be placed in closed carts, ensuring that they are properly ventilated, and placing the tree trunks in the carts in such a way that so that their slices stand not parallel to the axis of the wagon, but parallel to the railway track, so that when the wagons hit each other, the impact force goes towards the edge of the slices and not on their plane.

The same applies if you want to transport the entire apiary, either in winter or summer. In winter, if possible, it is best to transport the apiary on a sleigh and then there is no need to ventilate the hives too much, as there is no brood at that time, but it is enough if we only cover the eyes with a sieve. and in very strong trunks we will remove the spigot and fill it with a strainer. Transporting trunks with brood in summer is difficult, but possible with proper care; then, however, the ordinary valves should be removed and valves consisting of frames covered with wire mesh should be inserted instead. However, if we are forced to transport trunks with brood during hot weather, we should proceed as follows: We prepare as many light nesting boxes as the number of trunks we want to transport at once. We place these boxes (Fig. 129), equipped with a net on the side and a zippered opening for a funnel in the lid, next to the trunks to be transported and mark each one with its trunk number.

Then, in the evening, when most of the bees are at home, we open the relevant trunk, select frames one by one and sweep the bees from them through a funnel (Fig. 130) into the box next to it, and if after selecting the frames there are a few more bees left on the walls of the hive, so we also shove them into the box. Having taken all the bees from the trunk, we take the funnel out of the box and close the opening with a latch. Now we put the frames selected from the hive back in, put a thick enough stick above them so that they cannot move, we nail two nails on the sides behind the last frame, attach the valve in an even way, and close the valve. If so, they will be in the trunk. air holes in the valve, floor and pond, secured with a mesh, the brood deprived of bees will not heat up so much that the combs could break off.

In the morning, the trunks decorated in this way are placed on carts, boxes with bees are placed on top and, with the usual precautions, they are transported to a new place. After arriving there, the trunks are placed in their designated places, next to them the boxes with bees are placed according to the numbers (on the shade side, if the sun is shining), and then their own bees are poured into each trunk using a platform. It is a bit of tedious work, but it will certainly prevent the combs from falling off and destroying sometimes the best trunks.

If, despite the greatest care, a tree trunk was to be torn off, it is best to put it in order immediately after setting it in place, put the torn off slices into frames, straighten them out and tie them lengthwise and wide with thick cotton thread to keep them in the right position, and sometimes it will be Place the indicated combs upside down in the hive. On the second or third day, when the bees have finished making the combs, you can untie the threads and arrange the combs in proper order. If, when the comb breaks, honey spills out in the hive, it is better to move all the bees to another hive to avoid robbery. The bottoms and baskets are transported by securing the eyelets and inserting long wooden pins at the bottom between the streets of the slices, tying them up with cloth at the bottom and placing them upside down on the cart, making sure that the slices run parallel to the axis of the cart.

Red reduction. In order to achieve a proper income in honey, it is necessary to limit the brood in the trunks during the main harvest, firstly so that the uncovered brood does not interfere with the extraction of combs for the honey extractor, and then so that the bees are not busy feeding the brood, but can devote themselves to collecting them with all their strength. stocks. Everyone will see what is the benefit of this when he chooses two trunks of equal strength, reduces redness in one, and omits it in the other for comparison.

As a rule proven by experience, it is worth remembering that in strong trunks, it is best to limit the sap by completely removing the mother tree from them; in medium-sized trunks, the mother should not be removed from the trunk, but should only be separated in some way in several patches so that it can continue brooding there to a limited extent. In weak trunks, the mothers cannot be removed or demarcated, as this would be of no use anyway, and the trunk would weaken too much. The reduction of redness is carried out approximately 10 days before the main harvest is to begin, which can be calculated quite precisely according to the flowering of the plants, as described in the section: "Securing strength at the right time" on page 191.

We remove the queen from the trunk either by killing it or taking it for storage as a spare queen or to create an artificial swarm. We can fence it off in several slices, either using a valve as it was said on page 66, or we can fence it off in the empty space under the frames as follows:

In Slavic hives there is an empty space of about 15 cm under the frames, from this space you need to subtract about 3 cm for the thresholds on which the frames are placed, so there will be a space of 12 cm. high, which can be used to slide six or eight snoses with wax tips stuck on under the door sills, onto which the grating sheet slides so that the mother can't pass anywhere sideways; then the queen is found in the trunk and she is let into this space together with a few handfuls of bees, and then this space is again closed on the side of the valve with an adapted slat or grate sheet. The bees in this space with the queen separated will draw combs, the queen in the bee will be brooding, and the rest of the bees up the trunk will not feel lonely as they can pass through the grid to the queen. After the honey harvesting is finished, you can remove the grid sheets and the queen and bees will move to the upper space without anything. Once the brood comes out of the lower part, the combs are removed and can then be used as upper slats when making new frames. If honey is found in these combs, it is either taken away or, after scratching the sewn-in cells, it is left for the bees to collect. Please note that in a trunk in which bees intend to swarm, which, as we know, can be recognized by the established queen cells, the queen cannot be separated, but it is necessary to remove her from the trunk, otherwise the bees will try to leave in a swarm, despite a closed queen and hence the beekeeper will have a lot of unnecessary mitre.

Spare mothers. As a result of removing the queen from the trunk during the honey harvest, queen bees establish themselves in order to raise a young queen, and in this way the queens can be rejuvenated in the apiary at the same time; However, sometimes it happens that the young queen dies or does not get fertilized during the honey harvesting rush, and the beekeeper, after honey harvesting, has problems with providing the trunk with a new queen. Although he can cope by adding unmated brood to such a trunk, but it will take time always quite a long time before the young queen produced from it begins to brood and the trunk weakens. Therefore, especially in larger apiaries, it is almost necessary to have a certain number of spare queens at the disposal just in case. For this purpose, it is usually enough if for every 10 trunks we will have one spare queen, but it won't hurt if we have more of them. It is not worth arranging separate hives or alleys for spare queens, as some people do, it is best to keep them in regular hives. When separating queens, you can easily store the spare queen for that the space in which the queen is separated will be completely separated from the rest of the bees, not providing a grid, but giving the separated bees a separate small pond with the queen to escape from, or as it was said on page 66, dividing the old pond into two parts; The advantage is that after removing the queen, the separated bees can be reunited with the rest of the bees. If it comes to storing spare queens even during the winter, then, as stated on page 65, you can keep a certain number, e.g. 10%, of two-valve hives in the apiary. In such hives, a spare queen, even with a small flock of bees, heated by a neighbor, can hibernate in two or three frames.

Application of honey extractor. The highest income from the apiary can only be obtained if we extract honey from the trunks using a honey extractor and do not destroy the combs in the process; all other methods of exploiting the apiary are less profitable. It is obvious that we can only use a honey extractor for demountable trunks, but we can also use a honey extractor for non-demountable ones, as we will see later. By using a honey extractor, we not only save the bees time, work and materials for building combs, but also encourage them to produce honey more efficiently. We also owe it to the honey extractor that we do not need to build too large hives in which to accumulate honey supplies, because we still take these supplies ourselves as long as it is possible.

In order to use the honey extractor's honeycombs without harming the trunk, it is necessary to limit the redness in some way, approximately ten days before the main use. This is necessary so that the unmated brood does not interfere with the use of the honey extractor, because we would either throw it out of the cells together with the honey, or it would be partially damaged in the cells. On the tenth, and at the latest on the 11th day after fencing off or removing the mother, we look through each trunk and either tear off all the mother cells if the mother is fenced off, or leave one of the most beautiful ones if the mother was removed. We place the frame containing the queen cell as the second or third frame from the hive, leaving four frames with the most brood there, which will still remain untouched in the back of the hive; between them there should be this frame with a nursery. We look through the remaining six frames in the Slavic hive, and if we find honey in the sky, we run and extract it from them using a honey extractor. Therefore, from the first moment of using the honey extractor, we will leave four frames untouched in the trunk, which the bees will fill with honey as the brood disappears, and thus they will have almost a sufficient supply for the winter, and in any case, in the event of a sudden cessation of honeyflow, they will not suffer from hunger, having a reserve there. When using a honey extractor, we do not wait until the honey cells are sewn, but we shake the combs even if the cells are only half full. When using a honey extractor for the first time, the sewn honey cells in the upper part of the frames break down, so they need to be uncovered so that the honey can come out. The most convenient way to discover sewn honey is to use a crooked, well-sharpened knife; other methods of discovering sewn cells are less good. To do this, we prepare a bowl with water on which we place a strip crosswise, then we place the comb in which we want to discover the honey on the strip upside down and, dipping a crooked knife in the water, we carefully cut off the cell lids. Drop the torn off lids into the bowl. This water, as it contains quite a significant amount of honey, will be poured into troughs in the evening and given to the tree trunks to take it away.

If we want the honey harvesting work to proceed quickly, we need several people to help, namely, an experienced beekeeper should open the trunks, select the frames from them, sweep the bees from the frames onto the platform placed next to the hive, and place the empty frames of bees on the trestle; the helper takes the frames with the goat and takes them to the honey extractor, and at the same time brings the shaken frames on the honey extractor back to the hive, the second helper, somewhat familiar with bees, takes and puts these frames back in the hive and closes the hive. There should be two people at the honey extractor, who are busy shaking out the honey and pouring it into barrels, cutting off the honeycombs and cutting off the drone brood. The drone brood is also cut with a crooked knife, but only after shaking the honey from the frames, because if we cut the drone brood before shaking, we would contaminate the honey with worms.

Some people, when sweeping bees from frames, try to make it easier by shaking the comb over the platform and thus knocking some of the bees out of the frame, but this is inappropriate because at the same time some honey is shaken out of the cells, so it is best if all of them are removed. the bees are swept away from the frame. The easiest way to do this is to use a strong single feather, from the wing of e.g. a turkey, goose, stork or eagle. This pen is dipped in water every now and then and with a gentle, uniform movement, it sweeps the bees from the comb from top to bottom. Bees that are scooped up this way give up easily and don't get angry, but if we scooped them up with a dry feather, or grabbed them from the abdomen instead of the head, they would get very worried.

During good times, bees do not care about honey, even if it is spilled in the apiary, so you can leave the trunks open for longer and the honey extractor can be placed somewhere, but it is best if the honey extractor is placed where the barrels with honey are stored, so that you can - you don't need to walk around with the shaken honey, so either in a lockstitch or in a storage compartment. As soon as the bees start to crowd into the honey extractor, honey harvesting should be stopped immediately, as many bees would be destroyed and the trunks being dismantled would be at risk of being robbed. Since the benefit usually stops in the afternoon, honey extraction should start in the morning and stop in the afternoon. If the bees were to rush to the honey extractor right away in the morning, it is a good sign that there is no benefit, and then honey harvesting should be completely abandoned and probably only started again when the benefit appears again.

A honey extractor in the hands of an careless or greedy beekeeper can be a disaster for the apiary. To avoid this, it is necessary, as mentioned above, to leave four frames untouched in each trunk from the very beginning, and then, at the end of honey harvesting, place two unshakable frames in succession, so that these six had an adequate supply of honey for the winter. These four frames with the brood are left untouched at first, because careless shaking always damages the brood a little, so if we were to take all the frames with the brood for the honey extractor, the trunk might weaken too much because of this.

In a larger apiary, it is necessary to be careful to simplify the hectic work of honey harvesting as much as possible, so it will be good if we have 6 spare frames for the first stump where we start honey harvesting, which, immediately after removing the frames with bees, we will insert, and we will insert the frames from this trunk, shaken out on the honey extractor, into the next trunk and we will continue like this until the end, as a result of which we will be left with six frames shaken out in the end, with which we will return to the first trunk, excluding the temporarily inserted spare frames. , we will put these frames in their place. In this way, the frames in the hives will become a bit mixed up, but it doesn't matter as all the trunks are healthy and strong. It is also advisable to divide a larger apiary into two or three parts, one of which is taken for a honey extractor every day, so if the harvest is good, you can start extracting honey every morning. With five people, you can comfortably harvest 100 trunks in one day for a honey extractor without being too tiring.

Once the honey harvest is finished, you need to make sure that each trunk has a sufficient supply of honey for the winter, i.e. 12-14 kg at this time, which amount of honey will certainly be in the hive if we left 4 frames untouched from the very beginning, and under the end of honey - they did not extract the honey from the 5th and 6th hours; the honey will then be properly distributed. If, for any reason, there is not to be at least 12 kg of honey in the trunk after honey extraction, the missing amount of honey should be immediately added to the trunks in larger pores at once.

After completing the honey harvest, the trunks should also be checked to see if they have a good fertilized mother. We can be convinced of the goodness of the mother only when we find new bee brood already mated, and we cannot be satisfied with the brood located in the bee cells but not mated, because it could be a young queen, but a drone, i.e. unfertilized, only when If we see that the brood in the bee cells is evenly covered and not so-called hunchbacked, we can be completely sure of the goodness of the mother. Since the queens will hatch and start brooding at different times, this inspection of the trunks must be carried out again at several intervals, marking the number of frames on the hive, the quality of the trunk, the quality and age of the mother, as well as the supply of honey, which dates will then be recorded in the hive. books are moved. We immediately add spare queens to the trunks that lack a queen, or we add brood from other trunks so that the bees can warm up the queen. In general, it should be noted that during honey harvesting, the mothers are lost in many trunks, because during this hectic work we cannot watch out for them, therefore, in larger apiaries, after the honey harvest is finished, we add to all the trunks for which we are not sure whether they already have a mother, after one frame of uncovered brood, taken from other trunks, to see whether the bees will set up queen cells on it, because then, without looking further, we will be sure that the queen is not there at all and that she must be added to the trunk in some way.

Shaking and storing honey. For larger apiaries, the most suitable are honey extractors with 6 combs and a vertically moving wheel; for smaller apiaries, a four- or even two-comb honey extractor, whose wheel can be turned directly with the handle, is sufficient. We place the slices to be shaken upside down in the spinning wheel, then we start spinning slowly so that the slices adhere properly to the wire clasp of the spinning wheel, and then we set the spinning wheel into increasingly faster but uniform movement. Having shaken out the honey from one side of the combs, we turn them to the other side in the spinning wheel and proceed in the same way. If the combs have completely fresh earwax, which has never been red before, you need to be very careful as they can break and fall off easily. In this case, it will be best if at first we make only a weaker movement of the wheel and only shake out the honey from the first layer. sides of the cells partially, then turn the slice over, shake out the honey completely from the other side, and then turn it again to remove the honey from the cells on the first side; We do this because if we wanted to immediately throw away the honey from the first side completely, it could happen that the honey contained in the cells on the other side would be pushed outwards by centrifugal force, would break the delicate middle walls and the honeycomb would become perforated and spoiled.

When extracting honey during the good season, the honey extractor can be placed anywhere in the apiary, but it is best to place it in the storage room where the extracted honey is to be stored. The honey extractor always moves more or less when shaking out the honey, so it should be firmly secured with three pins on the side. The most convenient honey extractors are those that stand on legs and have a drainage coil at the bottom, so that you can conveniently place a vessel under it to drain the honey into. Honey extracted with a honey extractor will be pure, but since it will always contain wax crumbs, a stray bee or a brood worm, it must be strained when pouring into barrels. For this purpose, a dense wire mesh is placed in the funnel used for pouring honey, and all the impurities will remain on the mesh and are collected from time to time. Unstrained honey should never be used for trade, because both the buyer and the seller lose a lot. Larger amounts of honey should be stored in barrels, and smaller amounts in stone pots; tin vessels are less suitable for this purpose, because even if they are coated with tin, they always leave a certain unpleasant taste to the honey. Barrels used for honey should be cleaned very carefully, the best ones are barrels of about 100 liters of wine or cognac. Such barrels should be stripped, properly scrubbed, then stained, rinsed clean and dried. Just before using them, you should beat the rims thoroughly, rinse them well with water again, check whether they are not leaking anywhere, then dry them well and only use them for pouring the honey. Honey, as a relatively heavy liquid, needs very tight barrels, otherwise it leaks out and often even squeezes through the trunks of the barrels if they are made of porous wood, which is why barrels with honey should lie horizontally, turned upside down and rest on slightly higher foundations so that you can check them at any time to see if honey is squeezing out anywhere. If this were to happen, and the leakage was not too severe, you could rub the place with a mixture of tallow and ash, and the crack would be plugged up; and if it leaks more heavily, blocking the affected area will not help and it must be prevented either by breaking the rim or by pouring it into another barrel.

It is not worth using larger barrels, such as 100 liters, for pouring honey, because it is more difficult to sell them later, and then they are too heavy when loaded and, due to their great weight, the rims come off and the barrels spread. After proper cleaning and drying, the barrel should be weighed and its weight permanently marked in a certain place, e.g. at the spigot, so that when selling it, the buyer knows how much pure honey he is buying. Nowadays, in trade, due to the failure to tare barrels, it is customary to deduct 10% of the tare from their weight, but sometimes either the buyer or the seller fails at this. Where cheaply made barrels are available, smaller barrels, made either from beech or fir, can be advantageously used, as smaller barrels are easier to sell.

When pouring honey, the barrel should be placed in its place as it will remain later, i.e. on the foundations in a horizontal position. Be very careful not to overflow the honey, you should not fill the barrels completely, but leave a space of 5 to 10 cm empty under the spout, as the honey expands slightly as it hardens later. For this reason, some people drill a hole in the barrel with a thin drill slightly lower under the spout, through which honey begins to appear when the barrel is already full. You can insert a goose feather tube into this hole so that the honey will rise up and not spill out. Once the barrel is properly filled, the side with the hole is lifted slightly and sealed with a pin. The barrel filled with honey should not be filled tightly, but either covered lightly with a spigot or with a clean sheet of paper, fastened lightly with nails, as the honey hardens more easily when exposed to air. The place where we store honey should be dry, otherwise the honey will absorb moisture, and it should be dark and airy so that the air does not get stale. It is almost superfluous to add that not a single bit of water should get into the honey, so the barrels should be dry, the honey extractor and other vessels should also be dry when starting honey harvesting, and under no circumstances should any honey washings be added to the honey. After each daily honey harvest, all vessels should be thoroughly rinsed and the water containing honey should be distributed in troughs to the tree trunks in the evening for them to collect. Honey stored in open vessels should be covered with a bottom and cloth, filled with resin or wax, and tied.

Honey in combs. Selling honey in combs is definitely less profitable than selling shaken honey. Apart from the fact that we sell wax together with the comb, which is much more expensive than honey, it should be noted that the bees, when they have honey, waste a lot of time on it and they extract the honey less carefully than when we take it away from the honey extractor. Even if we sold combed honey twice as expensive as shaken honey, we would still not break even. Only if there was no anus for extracted honey, or if we could get three times the price for sewn honey, would it be profitable to produce and sell sewn honey in combs. In fact, in America and Germany, beekeepers often produce such honey and sell it at a high price in large cities, where rich people care less about the price and mainly require honey that cannot be contaminated with anything. In Poland, however, there are no such amateurs and such rich people, and that is why honey produced in this way, laboriously, cannot usually be sold at a reasonable price.

Anyone who would like to produce such honey should first of all remember that only honey in glowing combs, i.e. those that have never been red, can find a buyer; that artificial honey cannot be used for this purpose, as it has a thicker central wall and interferes with the consumption of such honey, and further that combs with sewn honey should be in small pieces or prepared in such a way that they are not needed for sale it was necessary to cut it, because it causes a loss and the cut pieces themselves become less attractive. Stitched honey should therefore be produced either in small frames weighing about 1 pound, or in cloches, i.e. so-called honey pots. If you want to produce sewn honey, either in combs or in honeypots, you should select very strong trunks for this purpose and then close their nest so that they are forced to move to the space where the honeypot or frames to be filled are located; this space should also be delimited in such a way that the mother cannot get into it, and furthermore, there needs to be a condition for the fruit to be plentiful, so if it is missing, the tree trunks should be fed heavily. Weaker trunks, and even stronger ones if the benefit is insufficient, will never build such spaces properly separated from the nest. The most suitable honey bowls for the production of such honey are those shown in the attached figure 131, i.e. with a capacity of approximately 1 liter, the edge bent towards the center so that the lid can overlap from above; glass honeydews are the best. In a well-cleaned and dried honey bowl, we stick small pieces of fresh earwax at appropriate intervals on the bottom, or we use a spoon to pour thin strips of melted wax, from which the bees will then start pulling the combs. We place the honey bowls prepared in this way above the hive cap, having previously placed a grate plate in the hole of the cap, through which the queen could not get through, and only the bees managed to get through. We put a piece of match or other wood under the edge of the honeypot in one place to leave a small gap, which will make it easier to remove it from the hive wall after installing the honeypot. You can place one or even two honeypots on one spigot, then cover the rest of the spigot space unoccupied with slats and clay. Moreover, these honeypots, if they are made of transparent glass, should be darkened, because the bees are reluctant to work in an illuminated space, or they darken it with putty; so you can either cover them well with hay or place a tight box over them. Once the honeypots are built and the honey is sewn into them, we remove them carefully so as not to tear off the combs, and if the combs are also attached to the bottom of the plug or the hive, we cut them off using a thin wire or even a strong thread, which we pull through the gap left behind. under the lungwort, and leaving the lungwort for some time after cutting off the combs so that the bees can collect the honey leaking from the damaged cells, we carefully remove it, drive out the bees and cover it with a lid and store it in a dry place. When cutting, direct the thread or wire to the edge of the slices, not to their plane.

It is easier than in honey pots to produce honey sewn in small frames, which can be placed a dozen or so together at appropriate intervals in separate boxes prepared for this purpose, also placing them above the hive plug, which will be appropriate especially in non-dismountable hives, or by placing them in center of the hives into a space separated from the nest using a grid sheet. It is easier for bees to build such frames inside the hive, but it is always a mess for both the beekeeper and the bees. Tiny pieces of fresh wax should be stuck into these frames so that the bees can build them properly. The size of these frames is arbitrary, but you must remember that the smaller they are, the more difficult it is for the bees to build them, therefore, in the case of Slavic hives, it is most appropriate to give them such a size that four of them put together will be as large as the frame of the Slavic hive. . The most convenient way is to arrange them in such a way that you make an ordinary Slavic beehive frame from thin strips 4-5 mm thick, then place two long thin strips in the middle from top to bottom, right next to each other, which divides the frame into two halves lengthwise. , then two slats are also placed in the middle across each half, which divides the frame into four equal parts. We glue the beginnings to these quarters and insert entire frames into the center of the hive after demarcating the queen with a grid sheet. When the bees are well fed or heavily fed, they build such frames quite quickly and pour honey over them, but if they do not completely close the lower quarters of the frames, we turn them upside down, and then the bees will soon fill and sew up all the cells. Each of the four frames weighs about 1'/2 pound after sewing, so they are very convenient portions for sale, the only thing is that each quarter can be separated separately. For this purpose, the frames are prepared while they are being nailed by cutting all the longitudinal strips as well as the upper and lower strips of the outer frame with a saw from the outer side to the middle, as a result of which, by pressing harder with the knife, each section of the frame can be easily cut from separate each other. The most convenient way to prepare such frames is as follows: With the outer frame already assembled and slightly cut on the outside in half of all sides, I make internal partitions for each half of the frame separately from suitably long strips; these partitions have the shape of the letter T, as Figure 132 shows, and the middle shorter arm is composed of two strips next to each other in the middle, nailed to a longitudinal strip, and the longitudinal strip is also half-threaded in the middle from the outside. Having prepared these two internal partitions, we insert them into the frame so that the latter is divided into four equal parts and nail them with nails. In this way, the compact frame looks like the attached figure 133. To nail these frames, you can use thin and smaller nails as usual, or the strips should be thinner and planed, as they will be quite strong anyway.

In America, they use much smaller frames for this purpose, the slats of which are up to four cm long. wide and folded with teeth, these lamellae close tightly together at the sides, and since the bees must have access to them, they make indentations in one side, and the lower one, through which the bees can get through. They stick the beginnings of wax in the middle of the upper strip of these frames, then put a dozen or so frames in one box and place them at the top of the hive. When the bees build these frames and sew honey in them, they take them out of the boxes, then put small glass panes on both sides and cover them with pieces of colored paper. They call such frames "Honey boxes". In our relations, the arrangement of such frames is not profitable.

If you want to produce honey in frames, as mentioned above, you need to separate the space in which the frames are located so that the ratka does not have access to them. Therefore, it is necessary to either fence off the queen in the rear part of the hive on several combs with a gate provided with a grid plate, or to fence her off with a grid sheet in the lower space of the hive under the frames, as described above in the section: "Limiting brood" . Anyone who would like to produce such frames of honey on a larger scale could build twin hives for this purpose with a partition in the middle and the eyes placed on two opposite sides, as described on page 117. Only the hive should be hibernated in such twins. on one side, and when it comes to a very strong force, then in the central, partitioned wall, remove the latch covering the grating sheet, then dismantle the swarm, find the mother, and, having set her aside for the time with the comb on which she is sitting, take her aside from the trunk, 1 comb with the covered brood and insert it with the bees sitting on it into the empty space of the twin, right next to the partition wall, and fill the remaining space with partition frames, giving the comb an ordinary comb covered with wax, which may contain honey, but there may be brood it shouldn't, then half of the frames are removed from the old trunk and, after putting a platform in place, the bees from these frames are swept inside into the newly opened space; Once this is done, the frame with the queen is placed back in the middle of the old trunk, the frames covered with bees are added, making sure that the brood is right next to each other, and by putting in a valve, it closes the nest, and then closes the hive on both sides. Having done this, the twin hive is rotated so that the eye of the newly created colony with partition frames falls in place of the previous one, and the other one will be on the other side. All this manipulation should be carried out during a good flight of bees, so that the returning bee will fly into the fenced-off space. In such a fenced-off space, the bees will be in some contact with the mother, and when they have brood, although only indoors, they will quickly start filling the frames with combs, and if the benefits are good, they will soon fill them with honey.

Farming Straight-trunk farming can be carried out in two ways: either the so-called swarming or honey farming. A hive farm means that we try to multiply the apiary as much as possible during the honey harvest, and after the honey harvest is finished, we delete the excess hives, take the honey and wax; Honey farming consists in the fact that we either don't let it grow at all, or we don't make it, but we try to make the trunks grow as strong as possible and take away the honey they lose. Both methods can give good results with straight trunks. With a large farm you need less knowledge and less work and time, but if the honey harvest is not very favorable you can be more easily disappointed than with a honey farm, which requires a greater skill of the beekeeper, more time and work, but also provides income. more confident.

If we keep bees in straight trunks, whether in beehives, hezdenkas or baskets, we should arrange them in such a way that they have a spigot in the bottom, and it is even better that they have a headrest next to the spigot to open, and it will be best if we have a middle removal frame, as described on page 45. When farming with swarms, you just need to make sure that the swarms fall just before or at the time of peak harvest; Therefore, at the right time, the trunks should be brought to the greatest strength by stoking them, and if they do not swarm at the right time, then the swarms should be forced by knocking out the swarms and by appropriately rearranging the swollen trunks, as it was said on page 228. Then, at the end of September or the beginning of October, start deleting the excess tree trunks. The trunks that need to be removed are: either very old, old mothers, too little honey, or those that turn out to be motherless. The old method of eradication was to sulfur the trunks, i.e. kill the bees; However, this is an inhumane measure and should not be used. How to best delete straight trunks will be explained in section 6.

When running a honey farm, we also try to make the trunks as strong as possible during the honey harvest, but we try to stop the swarming as much as possible, which can be achieved in the case of straight trunks by cooling them, for which purpose the plugs should be opened and, if possible, also provide ventilation from below; For this purpose, bottomless pits are placed on the ground, i.e. a 30 cm hole is dug in the ground under the bottomless bottom. deep, and after placing two slats or sticks on it parallel to each other, the bottoms are set so that the slices are directed perpendicular to the slats. Catching queens from straight trunks will not help much, because strong trunks will create numerous queen cells and will be even more swarming.

We can collect honey from straight trunks: either by cutting them, using supers, or using frame hives.

Intending to collect honey by cutting, we leave the trunks to their own fate and put the bottoms in the ground until autumn.

If we want to collect honey from straight trunks using attachments, we prepare a box in which we can put eight frames of any size; the most suitable frames will be half as high as those in the Slavic beehive, i.e. 22'7 cm. width, and 24 cm. height, because in a given case we will be able to combine two of them into a Slavic frame. Spacer nails should be inserted into these frames, and then either ready-made earwax should be inserted, an artificial knot should be glued on, or only the beginnings should be made. These boxes are made of thin boards, providing a permanent floor and a removable ceiling. Two triangular 6 or 7 mm strips are nailed lengthwise to the floor. high, on which frames are placed. In the middle of the bottom there is a hole as large as the plug hole of the hive. Having prepared the box in this way, we open the tenon in the relevant trunk, cover it with a grate sheet and place the box on the hive's ceiling so that the hole in the bottom of the box is aligned with the tenon hole, and then we attach it to the hive with hooks or a rope. so that it cannot move. Then we put on a visor or a hat and wait until the honey appears in the combs. The bees will willingly move into the upper empty space, but if they hesitate, a piece of wax should be inserted into the plug so that it connects the hive combs with the frames of the box, and then they will move to it more easily. We then use a honey extractor to extract honey from these frames throughout the honey harvesting process, right down to the last drop. After finishing the honey harvest, we remove the box and the grate sheet, install the spigot and store the frames as spares for next year.

According to our experience, the income from straight trunks can be significantly increased if the work of bees is exploited using demountable hives. For this purpose, you can build demountable hives from individual boards, as we described on page 118. To achieve this, in spring we place non-demountable trunks in pairs next to each other so that the hive touches the hive and cover each pair with one common roof. Shortly before the main hive, or when we see that the stronger trunks are ready to swarm, we start turning these trunks towards each other so that after a few days the eyes of each pair of hives almost touch each other. We should turn them slowly every day so that the bees change their position. the eyes almost didn't notice it, so only by 2-3 cm. per day and only on those days when the bees go to work. At this time there is no need to worry that the bees of two trunks whose eyes touch each other will cut each other down. Once we have turned the trunk so that the eyes of both eyes are almost touching each other, we then put a common bench on both eyes and wait for 2 or 3 days until the bees get used to flying together. Obviously, it will be best if both hives are the same and have eyes of the same height, otherwise the hives need to be placed one higher and one lower so that the eyes are brought to the same height. This manipulation can be most easily carried out with bottomless hives with a moving middle comb, which we described on page 47.

When the main honeyflow begins, we start the bees' flight at the peak of their flight, i.e. before noon on a beautiful day, to remove swarms from each pair of bees and simple bees, which we will place together in one demountable hive. We proceed as follows: First, we mark the location of the eyes of both straight trunks with a stake stuck in the ground, then we put both trunks together in a completely different place in the apiary, and in their place we set up a demountable hive, filled with frames of stones, if possible with ready-made wax, with what would be good if, right next to the pond, we put a comb with the brood and the bees sitting on it, taken from another trunk, and next to the bottoms with a removable middle frame, we take out the frames of the bottomed bottoms, too, and since they are half as big as the frames in the Slavic hive, so we'll line them up opposite the stitch above each other. We cover the hive with the same roof that used to cover both bottoms together. The bees, which used to be in the same hives here, returning from the field, will fly straight to this hive, because the pond is in the same position, the roof is the same, and the patch with the brood and bees right next to the pond will encourage them to go inside, so that often they won't even notice the difference. Now we move on to the set aside non-dismountable hives and, using the method described on page 225, we knock out a swarm from each one into the basket separately. We pour the raised swarms into the hive with the help of a board placed in the former place, while we try to see the queen, and if we find her, we put her in the cage and insert her into the tenon hole at the top of the frame. If we catch the queen from one swarm, we no longer need to be careful when adding another swarm to the queen. However, if we cannot see either one or the other queen when pouring the swarms, we will leave them to their fate, and the bees will usually clear out one queen themselves; and if there were no queens in the raised swarms, it would not do any harm, because the bees will set up queen cells on the frame with the brood, which contains the unmated brood, and will soon calm down, especially since during good times there is less mothers care. In the case of bottomless bees with a removable middle frame, it often happens that when you carefully remove the frame, you will find the queen on it, in which case we immediately pick her up in the queen bee and take her to the hive. In place of the middle frames removed from the bottoms, of course, you should immediately insert another frame, if possible with a ready-made plaster, or at least with a glued beginning.

By doing this, we will have an extremely strong swarm in the removable hive, composed of two trunks, which, if the weather is favorable, will produce a large supply of honey. So on the second or third day we will immediately start shaking the honey from the combs. When dismantling the hive, we check whether there are fresh eggs in which comb, then we look for the queen and kill it, and we put the comb with eggs and the old comb with brood at the back of the hive so as not to shake the honey out of them. We can extract honey from such trunks with a honey extractor every other day, if the need is favorable, and from all frames, except the two rear ones. The rear frames should be inspected on the ninth or tenth day after the queen is taken away and the existing queen cells, except for one, should be broken off.

Weaned and buckled trunks should be given water in troughs so that they have a supply of water needed to feed the brood until the bees start flying out into the field. These non-dismountable trunks will no longer swarm, because they have lost many flies, and if only the benefit is favorable, they will get the necessary supplies of honey, because they will not have new brood to feed for a long time.

After the honey harvest is finished, we will check the non-removable trunks to see if they have fertile mothers, and if one is missing, we will add it from the removable trunk in the same way as in §. described on the 8th. We will not store the folded swarm for the winter, especially since it is located in a lightly built hive, so once we have examined the non-removable stumps and provided them with queens, we will start deleting the foldable stumps. First, we look for mothers in them and kill them if we do not need them for another purpose. There will be very little brood in these trunks anyway, but after killing the queen we wait until the 21st day until all the brood comes out of the cells, then we drug the bees using the method in §. 8 described and divided into two halves, we sprinkle them with honey and sprinkle them on the old, non-detachable tree trunks. The honey that is found in the two rear frames, which we did not take into the honey extractor, can either be stored as a spare, or it can be given to non-detachable trunks if their reserves are insufficient. We clean up the hive and, after plugging it tightly and burning sulfur to kill any fluke embryos, we store it together with the combs until next year.

By proceeding in this way, we can have an apiary in very cheap, and very comfortable for the bees, simple hives, and the profits from it will be the same, if not greater, as if the bees were placed in expensive demountable hives. Working in such an apiary will also be easier and simpler, and there will be no need to chase swarms, as is usually the case in apiaries with non-demountable trunks.

You can also make your job easier by removing only one pair of non-dismountable trunks from the stronger swarm, and removing only the fierce bee from the other trunk by setting it aside. In this case, however, it may happen, although rarely, that a swarm will emerge from the trunk that has only been set aside and not knocked out.

§ 6. Caring for bees after honey harvest and in autumn.

Immediately after harvesting honey, you should start tidying up the tree trunks so that they can winter properly. In most parts of our country, the harvest ends already in the middle or at the end of July, so at the beginning of August you should start examining the tree trunks more thoroughly in order to prepare them for wintering. This should not be postponed, because now is the easiest time to remedy any deficiencies, but on the contrary, if we postpone this activity until later autumn, it will often be impossible to properly prepare the trunks for winter.

Since there is no use in the field at this time, the bees are prone to robbing each other, so you can work with the bees only in the mornings and before evening, or on rainy days, and be careful not to spill the honey anywhere or Do not place even empty combs in the apiary, as this could give rise to robbery. At this time, the hives should be tightly packed, and if there are any gaps, they should be carefully sealed and the holes should be narrowed so that only two or three bees can pass through them side by side.

In areas where the honeyflow occurs even later, e.g. on heather in August, you can of course supply the bees for the winter only after the honeycombing period ends, but here too you must remember that the wintering stumps should be completely tidy by mid-September at the latest, because To assume that we will be able to do this or that with bees in the second half of September or at the beginning of October is very deceptive in our climate. It should also be remembered that the bees immediately after honey harvesting start filling up all the cracks and therefore this work should be respected as much as possible, so you should not dismantle the hives later on, i.e. remove valves and frames that are sealed according to their needs. . If, for any reason, it is necessary to do this, the valve should be carefully taped.

The bees themselves teach us that after they have finished honeyting, they need more or less peace and quiet, and they usually limit all their work to preparing for the overwintering period, i.e. they drive away the drones as they are not needed for the overwintering period, the queens gradually stop brooding and limit themselves to reddening the combs right next to the pond. , the bees take putty and fill the cracks with it, and often even partially take the honey from the lower parts of the hive, move it up and sew it, in other words, they prepare the inside of the hive so that it is most comfortable for them to winter; they also fly out into the field less and less, so that in September, even on beautiful days, very few of them fly out of the hive, unless a new crop opens up somewhere or an opportunity for robbing arises.

A trunk that is to winter well should meet the following conditions:

a) he should have a healthy, fertile mother, not older than two years.

b) there should be enough honey and all together, without interruption in the upper parts of the combs.

c) it should have sufficient bee strength, i.e. the bees should occupy 5-6 black Slavic frames.

d) a well-built, warm hive with a mesh not lower than 30 cm. from the ceiling.

e) slices of at least 35 ctm. highly earned.

f) for the sake of next year, he should have as many combs as possible only with bee work.

Due to these conditions, the following activities take place in the autumn period, which, we repeat once again, should be dealt with immediately after the honey harvest is finished:

An inspection of the trunks behind the mother trees should be carried out as soon as the honey harvest ends. Only those trunks in which we find covered bee brood, standing compactly together, can be considered as having a good fertile queen, and we will know her age from the relevant records that should be kept for each trunk. Brood, even if it looks beautiful in the bee cells, but is not covered, cannot give us a guarantee about the goodness of the mother, because it could be a drone mother, so we should look into such a trunk again after a few days, when the brood is covered. Since it sometimes happens that the first eggs that the young mother lays are drone eggs, and only a little later she lays bee eggs, you should wait a week or two to see if the mother will correct herself. If this does not happen, the queen should be deleted and either a good spare queen should be added, or by adding working brood or a queen cell from another stock, the bees should be able to raise a new good queen.

If the brood turned out to be a good bee, but did not stand compactly, but was either shot or covered with cli among the cells, there were worms of various ages and scattered eggs, this would indicate that either the mother is sickly or the stock is affected by foulbrood. Therefore, first of all, we should inspect the covered, and mainly collapsed brood cells, and if we found rotten brood presenting a brown, sticky mass, we would be dealing with foulbrood, and then it would be best to remove such a stump immediately, while maintaining the caution that is described in Part I of Beekeeping on we provided on page 199. If there were healthy worms in the mated cells, or dead but white worms, it would mean that the queen was sickly, so she should be destroyed immediately and the stock should be provided with a new queen in some way, only then the bees should not be allowed to warm the mother. from your own brood.

If we found brood in only drone cells and eggs in these cells, several together at the bottom, this would be proof that such a trunk has a drone, and then it should either be immediately joined to another one, if it is a weaker trunk, or immediately to cure him of poison, as in §. described on the 8th.

In straight trunks with a removable middle frame, you can also easily convince yourself of the presence and goodness of the mother, because on this frame, as it is attached to the eye, there will always be brood, at least at the bottom. In simple hives, without such a frame, the bees can be accused of the absence of a queen or of the existence of an abnormal one when they still have drones at such a time, when the drones have already been expelled from other stumps.

Testing honey supplies. During the wintering period, from October 1 to April 1, they need bees, as in the first part of Beekeeping, page 177, we showed about 6 kg of honey if the trunk winters on a toque, and about 3 kg. when it winters in a lockstitch or underground. However, since in our climate there is very rarely a year when the bees can collect some food in April or even in May, it would be best for the beekeeper to prepare for the worst possible conditions, and therefore the trunks should be left for the winter in the hibernating area. about 12 kg of honey on the toque, and about 10 kg of honey in the overwintering plant or underground; however, in our case there is no use in autumn, and the trunks should be provided with honey immediately after the main honey harvest, i.e. in the second half of July or in the first days of August, so an additional 2 kg should be added. honey for each trunk, i.e. supply each one so that after the honey harvesting is finished, they will weigh 12 to 12 kg. honey, and then we can rest assured about the apiary, even if the winter was very unfriendly to bees.

In demountable hives, the best way to check the honey supply is to weigh the frame with honey, deducting about 200 gr from the total weight. for the weight of the frame wood and wax. Weighing the frames, however, is tedious and can only be recommended to beginner beekeepers so that they can become skilled at measuring honey by eye. An experienced beekeeper can assess the supply of honey by the weight of the frame in his hand and the area occupied by the honey sewn in the frame. The frame of a Slavic hive, if completely filled with sewn honey on both sides, contains about kg. honey, so it can be assumed that the space is 15 cm. honey sewn on both sides to the entire width of the comb, it contains kg of honey, so you only need to measure the sewn area of the comb by eye from top to bottom, or by applying a centimeter measure on the side, and you can quite accurately assess the honey content in the comb, or be guided by this that half of the sewn Slavic frame weighs 1/2 kg. a */ 4 frame part 3 / 4 kg. Honey that is not in a frame is out of the question, unless there is a lot of it and we want to precisely assess the amount of honey. Since sometimes the thickness of the sewn patch is smaller or larger, in addition to assessing the amount of honey by eye, you should also take into account the feeling of the weight of the frame in your hands. With such skill, you can accurately assess the amount of honey even with your eyes closed by simply weighing the comb in your hand. In Slavic hives, next to the standing frames, who has spacing strips nailed to the walls of the hive at one height, e.g. as described in Bartnictwo on page 73, at a height of 1 j and 3/4 of the frame, can take into account the signs that the spacing strips leave on the frames. assess the amount of honey.

In non-demountable hives, we evaluate the honey, or only by eye, e.g. in bottomless hives with a removable middle frame T, but it can be assumed that if in such a hive from 20 to cm. There are 7 combs wide and there is honey about 30 cm on them. sewn from the top, there is enough of it for wintering, or you can put such trunks on a scale, and subtracting the weight of the empty hive from the total weight, which we should know, and about 3 kg. based on the weight of the combs and bees, we will get the amount of honey contained. A skilled beekeeper will be able to assess light hives, e.g. straw or wooden bottomless ones, quite accurately when he puts the hive in a horizontal position on his knee and sees where he needs to support it with his knee to maintain balance. If such a hive were empty, the place of support for maintaining balance would be in the very center, and the more honey there is in the upper part, i.e. in the heads, the closer to the ceiling the place of support for maintaining balance will be. In baskets, and also in light straw bottoms, you can approximately estimate the amount of honey by simply lifting them by their weight in your hands. When a beekeeper weighs several such trunks first on a scale and then in his hand for several years, he will become sufficiently skilled at assessing honey by simply lifting the trunks. In a bottomless box with a removable middle frame, after removing this frame, you can assess the amount of honey quite precisely, having the opportunity to look also at the adjacent combs, and if this frame is entirely covered with honey, you can be completely confident about the good wintering of the relevant trunk, because even on there will be enough honey for the rest of the combs.

Supplying trunks with honey. If the examination shows that the trunk does not have enough honey for wintering, the missing amount of honey should be supplemented by feeding it. There is no need to delay feeding, but do it immediately after the main honeycomb is finished, because then the bees are even more active, ready to work and the heat is more uniform than in the later autumn. Whoever delays feeding and leaves this activity for late autumn usually ends up badly, because the bees then take the honey more slowly, and often, due to the cold weather, they either do not take it at all, or do not sew it up, and then for reasons such as... These parts of the beekeeping industry will undoubtedly fall during the winter. Ultimately, you can postpone feeding the bees until the first half of September, and anyone who postpones it until October will almost always lose the bees.

The missing amount of honey should be given to the bees immediately in large portions, placing appropriately large troughs covered with floats, either into the center of the hive or, if the roof is double, into the empty space of the roof. The troughs should be large enough to accommodate about 2 kg of honey at a time, as strong bees can take that much in one warm night. When feeding the trunks inside the hive, the trays should be inserted after sunset, and in the morning just after sunrise they should be removed from the hives, because if they remained in the hives, robbery would undoubtedly start. When feeding, the troughs may remain on the floor, but care must be taken to ensure that the honey does not spill anywhere. The honey is given to the bees as thick as it came out of the honey extractor, but if it is slightly saccharified, then it should be warmed and about 1 liter of water added to 1 liter of honey.

If we do not have our own honey to feed, it is not worth buying it, but it is best to feed the bees with white head sugar. Then, for each kilogram of sugar, add 3/4 liter of water and heat it over the fire until the sugar dissolves. This sugar syrup is given to bees instead of honey, and the bees willingly take it and overwinter on it perfectly because it does not turn sugary. Especially later in the season, sugar syrup is the most suitable for feeding, because even if it is not sewn, it does not harm the bees as much as unsewn honey, because it absorbs water less easily than honey and is more difficult to ferment.

Bees should not be fed in small portions, as this would encourage the queen to shed more abundantly.

How should the nest be arranged for wintering? Arranging the hibernating nest should be done immediately after the honey harvest is finished. Bees hibernate best when the nest area is proportionate to their strength; therefore, the weaker the trunk, the fewer frames it has for a nest, and the stronger, the more. A trunk in which bees, for example, have 4 black combs, winters best on 5 or 6 frames, while for a trunk, even the strongest one, 7 to 10 combs are enough in a Slavic hive; the best are trunks that are strong enough to overwinter on 7 combs, because then the heat in the hive is distributed most evenly on all sides. Patches intended for wintering should be at least 30 cm long. from the top, starting uniformly on both sides of the honey, because if there was one or the other comb with less honey in the nest, it could happen that the bees - which, as we know, during wintering, start eating honey from the bottom of each comb and move upwards, - before the warm days of spring arrive, they would consume all the honey on these combs and then die of hunger, even if there is honey in the neighboring combs right next to them; bees do not move to the side combs in cold weather. This case of bees dying of hunger in winter despite a significant supply of honey on the combs attached to the withers of hibernating bees, often happens when overwintering in a nest, in a lockstitch, or underground - it happens less often because the bees can move there in uniform temperatures. also for side slices. Bees hibernate best when they hibernate on frames right next to the pond, so if this is possible, when arranging the nest, place combs containing brood in the center, i.e. near the pond. However, if any patch with the brood was not to be 30 cm from the top. sewn honey, it should be removed from the nest and placed either on the last part or given as a valve, as we will describe in a moment.

As we know, bees settle for the winter on empty cells right under the honey, so if we want them to settle in a winter cluster near the pond, there must be combs that are only about cm long. honey sewn from the top, and the comb is empty or red. Most often, it happens that on the combs that are standing next to the pond, the bees leave the cells right next to the pond, unfilled with honey, while on the other side of the comb the sewn honey flows much lower; such combs should be left when arranging the nest near the pond, as long as they contain about 2 kg of honey.

From what we have said here, it follows that the bees' nest can be arranged in various ways for the winter, but it should always be remembered that the 3 or 4 combs next to the eye should be at least 1'/2 kg each when wintering in the lockstitch. sewn honey, and in the case of wintering, at least 2 kg. and further, that swarms do not have combs of at least 35 cm. closed, should not be taken into hibernation, because either they would not have enough honey for the winter, or if they were completely covered with honey, the bees would have no place to settle for the winter.

If the trunk does not have a large supply of honey, it is best to arrange the nest in a burrowing manner. 133 shows, i.e., three slices of 25-30 cm each at the pond. honey sewn from the top, and towards the back and towards the valve we will place combs with gradually less and less honey. When the trunk has more honey, we place combs or, like burrowing. 134 shows, i.e. we bake the combs with the most honey, and gradually place the combs with less and less honey towards the valve, but also here, making sure that the three combs next to the eye are 30 cm above each other. sewn honey, or we arrange the combs as if they were burrowing. 135 shows, i.e. starting from the oven, we give combs with less honey, and moving towards the valve, we give combs with more and more honey. This method of arranging the honey is so much better that during the spring inspection we can see right from the first combs whether the trunk still has enough honey. Finally, if the trunk has a lot of honey, we arrange the combs in such a way that we put the combs with the largest amount of honey in the oven and then towards the pond. combs with a smaller amount (but not less than 25 or 30 cm of space sewn at the top), and again we gradually add more and more honey towards the valve. However, you should not overwinter the tree trunks on too much honey, as this would be an unnecessary waste.

When arranging the nest for the winter, we should also be careful not to place combs with drone work inside the nest as much as possible, but if we have to do it for any reason, we should mark it on the hive immediately, so that later in spring, when If possible, remove the frame with the drones completely from the hive, or move it right away from the hive, so that the queen can't breed on the drones unnecessarily. Under no circumstances should a comb be placed in the center of the nest, whether it is completely empty, with too little honey, or one with honey sewn only on one side.

As we have already said above, you should arrange a nest for the bees for the winter immediately after honey harvesting, so, taking the number of combs to the strength of the bees, we set the appropriate number of them as described above, then put on the valve slat, and behind it we place these frames from the valve. , which were unnecessary for the nest, and which may either contain honey or even brood. The sewn honey found on these combs should be uncovered completely or only thickly cut with a knife, and then the bees will extract it from the cells and bring it back to the nest; if there is already enough honey in the nest, these combs, without disturbing the sewn honey, are left only as long as the uncovered bees take the honey from them, and then they are cleared away and kept as spare bees. By turning the combs upside down behind the valve, you can encourage the bees to take the honey faster, as well as by lightly spraying the sewn honey with sweetened water.

If there are brood on these combs, you should make sure that the queen does not remain here, because then the bees would want to settle here next to the mother for the winter, so you should sweep all the flies from these combs into the nest and then place them behind the valve. There is no need to worry that the brood will catch cold here, because at this time it is still quite warm and the bees will soon return to the brood. For this reason, the grating plate is left open in the gate.

After a few days, you should look into the trunks to see whether the bees are taking honey from these fenced-off combs and whether the queen is still brooding on them, because then you would have to drive her back inside the nest. And repeat this until we achieve the desired effect. Having arranged the nest in this way and provided the trunk, we leave it alone until it is ready for the winter.

Deleting stumps. Trunks that do not meet the conditions given on page 261 should be deleted, unless we want to supplement the conditions that do not suit them for good wintering, which would only be advisable if we wanted to maintain a certain number of trunks, and this should always be done remembering that a weak or honey-damaged trunk will be a constant problem for us not only during the winter, but also in the next spring, and that even next summer we will not have much comfort from it.

Wintering a weak but honey-rich trunk may only be exceptionally advisable, i.e. in order to have a spare mother for next spring. In such a case, such a trunk winters next to another stronger one, i.e. in the above-described semi-twin hives, because here even a weak hive in two or three frames with a supply of about three to four kilograms of honey can winter well, being heated by a strong neighbor.

When keeping bees in simple hives, especially if we run a swarm economy, we remove not only weak and motherless trunks in the fall, but also those that have a large supply of honey, in order to get proper benefit from the apiary. In such a case, we select for deletion the trunks that have not swarmed at all, or the swarms of primroses, because here we have old mothers. In addition, we also delete trunks that have very old work. We leave trunks with young mothers and fresh work for breeding.

When we delete straight stumps because they have insufficient honey supply and we do not want to replenish it, we do not remove the work from them, but store the hives together with the work for the next year's hive. In such a case, after expelling the bees from them by knocking them out, burn a sufficient amount of sulfur in the hive, close the pond, all holes and gaps tightly and cover them with clay, and place the hive preferably in the attic so that the work does not get moldy and the fluke does not nest there. .

We delete straight trunks only in late autumn, i.e. in the second half of September, because then there is no more brood in them, but if we wanted to delete straight trunks earlier, we would have to knock out the bees, find the queen, put the bees back into the trunk and only after 21 days, when then all the brood will come out, remove the trunk.

When removing tree trunks, bees should never be sulfurized or killed in any other way, as this would be barbaric. At worst, only the mother can be killed if we cannot use her to save our own tree or to do a favor for a neighbor. Bees from removed trunks should be combined in the manner shown in §. 8. described with bees, especially weaker trunks, but if we do not have such trunks, they can be connected even with stronger trunks, but in such a case the nest of the connected trunk should be enlarged and N should be applied to the strength; There is no need to worry about the fact that such a very strong trunk consumes a lot of honey unnecessarily, as experience shows that a very strong trunk, e.g. one that needs 9 or 10 frames for wintering, consumes only about x / 2 kg during the winter. . more honey than a strong trunk that winters on 7 frames. Overwintering too strong trunks can only be disastrous if the trunks are wrapped up too warmly for the winter, if the eyelet in the hive is very low, or if they overwinter in a warm lockstitch. Therefore, when hibernating on a toque, such very strong trunks do not need to be placed inside the hive with a mat, while when overwintering, the valve in the lockstitch should be left ajar.

Autumn cutting in straight trunks can only be recommended if we run a honey farm or if the trunks are covered with wax up to the very bottom. In any other case, it is better if we postpone cutting the tree trunks until spring. We cut the combs in straight trunks only as high as they are covered with drone work, we leave the bee work intact, otherwise next year we would attract bees to replace it with drone work. If the trunk is covered with work all the way to the bottom, it should be cut to a depth of 12-15 cm. there is an empty space under the work, otherwise this part of the combs will become moldy and crusty during the winter. If we wanted to take honey from the trunk in autumn, we could safely take away only the honey that is found in combs below 40 cm. from the ceiling. Honeycombs from the upper part of the hive should not be cut out in autumn, because it can easily happen that the central combs will not have enough honey for the winter, especially if the mother broods heavily. Therefore, not wanting to risk loss, it is better to wait until spring to harvest the honey, because the bees will not produce any unnecessary honey during the winter.

Narrowing the meshes. As soon as the harvest comes to an end, the bees begin to look everywhere to see if they have managed to find some sweet. They fly there to the honey stashes, to the sugar refinery, to the confectionery shop, to the meadery, they fly over all the trunks in their home and in the neighborhood, breaking into wherever the smell of sweetness comes from, and for this reason they sometimes die in large numbers, and when they find a trunk with eyes guards are less careful, or where there are undefended gaps, they attack it in droves and soon completely destroy it. Therefore, immediately after the end of the honey harvest, all gaps in all hives should be sealed as carefully as possible, and plugs and valves should be closed tightly; and if the valve does not close tightly enough, the gaps should be covered with clay. In hives that have a valve made of double boards and fitted with a rebate, it is rare that a room does not close properly. However, for greater certainty, you can cover the rabbet with cloth selvedge.

You should also remember to narrow the meshes to make it easier for the bees to defend them against intrusions. For this purpose, there should be latches at the eyelets with tiny holes that can be closed so that only two bees can pass next to each other. When the days get colder, it would be a good idea to cover the eyelet with an obliquely placed slat, or if the saddle is foldable as shown in the figure on page 83, by tilting part of the saddle up above the eyelet. Covering the ponds against winds and sun rays is necessary, especially for the trunks that winter on the toque.

§ 7. Imagination.

The principles of good overwintering are described in greater detail in Part I of Beekeeping, page 151. Here we only repeat that the bee trunk will overwinter well if it is placed in conditions such that the bees can easily maintain a constant temperature of 10-12 degrees in the nest. For then, having enough honey, they will also have enough water. If the trunk were in such conditions that the bees would have to struggle to maintain a constant temperature in the nest when the cold pressed in, then they would overwinter, but they would lose more of their companions and consume more honey. A trunk that would find itself in such conditions that it would not be able to maintain this constant temperature in the nest, but the temperature would decrease and it would freeze. Similarly, the bees will die in a trunk whose nest is warmer than it should be during the winter, and it will die due to lack of water, and its death will be preceded by the bee molting and getting lost by flying outside the hive. This means that it is best to winter the bees coolly, i.e. in such a way that no outside heat higher than 10° C reaches the inside of the hive, nor does any cold press in.

As can be seen from the table in the first part of Beekeeping on page 177, it would be best to hibernate the bees either buried underground or in a place where the temperature is constant at about 18° C, but then the place must be completely dark, and the bees should be regularly supplied with water, because if there was light in a place where there was light, the bees would fly out of the hive and get lost, and if they were to run out of water, they would all die of thirst. So we can see that with such a winter, we would not only have to spend on heating, but also a lot of trouble with providing water. Therefore, in practice, we only take into account wintering: a) in a box, b) in a cool lockstitch, c) buried underground.

Supply of trunks for the 2nd name. If we arrange the trunks after harvesting as described in the previous section, then in our climate we leave them completely alone until the second half of October. Even if there were small frosts earlier, as sometimes happens in our country, they will not harm the bees. Therefore, in the second half of October we start to stock the tree trunks for the winter, and we will do better if we do it at a sunny, warm time rather than delaying it until later, when the cold weather sets in; in cold weather, the supplied bees will become anxious, scatter around the hive, and many of them will clot unnecessarily.

Providing bees in Slavic hives for the winter (previously prepared) consists in opening the hive, sweeping up the bees, taking out the frames that remain between the valve and the valve, putting on a mat, and throwing a few handfuls of shredded straw under the frames at the bottom of the hive"276 or dry hay. Then we will put on the barrier and, if necessary, cover it with clay. The roosts with spare queens should be warmer, and a cushion can be placed under the frames. We put the mat so that the cold from the mixture does not press in, and we put straw or hay under the frames because so that moisture can soak in there and all the waste accumulates during the winter, which can then be easily thrown away together with the bedding during the spring inspection. Since Slavic hives have walls, ceiling and bottom that are uniformly thick, therefore warm, they do not need any other protection and will even overwinter. in the case of severe frosts, it is certainly good. Excessive covering of the hives from the top and bottom may even be harmful, especially in the case of very strong wintering trunks in a tight nest, because in warmer times the trunks may be too hot even when wintering on a toque tree. If the bees are to hibernate in an underground lockstitch or buried underground, they should not be given mats, but rather put some straw or hay on the bottom of the frames, and give them mats only in the spring, after they are exposed to the bees.

Then you should no longer look inside the hives, because we have already secured the good condition of the trunks and the frames and valve; they are already sealed; only if there was a grate plate in the gate that was already open, it would of course have to be closed.

In bottomless boxes and baskets, we put a bottom adapted to their opening and also throw a few handfuls of straw or hay at the bottom under the slices. If they are moved, either to the lockstitch or to the pit, the bottom should be tied crosswise to the hive with a string.

Hives with less warm walls, in which bees would winter outdoors, should be 5 cm thick. cover it thickly with straw from the sheaves and tie it with ropes or ropes, making sure that the mesh area is uncovered.

Wintering on a toque. In the case of wintering on a toczek, after fertilizing the trunks, check the foundations to see if they are secure enough, and attach the canopies to the hives so that winter storms do not cause any damage. The trunks, provided in this way, will survive the winter well and will not be harmed, even if they are completely covered with snow. Therefore, in the case of a winter beetle, the beekeeper can no longer do anything with his bees, unless he wants to check in winter to see if the pond has frozen or the hive has not been blown over by a storm. The holes should be narrowed for two bees and covered with slats against the sun and wind, so that air can freely enter the nest and sick bees that usually go outside the hive can escape through the hole.

If there were a warm day during winter, so warm that the thermometer in the shade would read 8° II. i.e. ° C. the hibernating bees should be released for flight. In such a case, the slats covering the eyes are removed, the eyes are opened wide and the bees are encouraged to fly by blowing or knocking on the hive. In the case of tree trunks where the bees do not come out to browse, put your ear to the pond and at the same time knock briefly with your finger to listen to the sound they make. If they make a short and strong noise, it is a sign that the trunk is fine and in good condition, and the bees do not need a visit at all; and when we hear a long but strong voice, i.e. a mournfully buzzing or howling sound, it is a sign that such a trunk is motherless. If we notice it in winter and not in spring, we should leave the trunk to its fate until it overwinters. If this happens already in spring and it is a nice day, you can immediately dismantle the trunk and, having found out that it is indeed missing a mother, connect it with another one, or if there is one, it can be removed. spare mothers give him a roost with such a mother.

If, after knocking, the bees make a faint sound, similar to the rustling of leaves blown by a light wind, it is a sign that they are hungry and about to die, then you should immediately open the trunk and, having found out that this is indeed the case, bring it into the room and, as we described in help with spring works.

If a stump did not respond at all when knocked, it would be necessary to immediately dismantle it, check by warming the mother in her hand whether the bees could still come to life, and as soon as the mother showed any reflexes of its members after warming, take the stump into the room and, by warming it and administration of honey, as described in the place mentioned, save.

By far the largest part of bees dies in winter because they are hibernated in too warm a place, i.e. because they are very strong, their nest is too tight, or they are packed too warmly, or because they hibernate in a place where the temperature itself is 10°. C. exceeds, because in such cases the bees will not be able to lower the temperature in the nest to 10° C., and if they are not given water, they must die of thirst, or if the pond is open, they will fly out of the hive and die until they are left. only a handful are so small that the heat of their bodies will not raise the temperature in the nest above 10 to 12° C. We talked about this at length in the first part of Beekeeping, page 161.

In our climate, bees will not die from the cold, even in lightly built hives, unless they run out of honey.

Wintering in the lockstitch. Wintering in a lockstitch is more advantageous than wintering in a lockstitch, especially if the lockstitch is well-arranged. The beekeeper has a little more work to do, but he saves so much honey that building a good lockstitch will pay off either in the first or second year. A good lockstitch for wintering is one that can maintain a constant temperature of 6 to 8° C, both during severe frosts and during the thaw, when the air temperature outside increases significantly during the day. Such a constant temperature in winter and spring can only be maintained in lockstitch rooms, which are like basements, built entirely in the ground. In lockthouses built above the ground, a constant temperature can only be maintained if they have very thick walls, double walls if possible, and a hollow space. air space between the walls, and a double ceiling; but even then, especially in spring, it will be necessary to check the interior often to see if the temperature does not rise above 8° C during the day, in which case it would be necessary to immediately provide all the trunks with water in troughs, and the lockst itself should be tried to cool down, either by placing containers with ice, or by opening the vents in it at night and closing it tightly during the day.

Construction of Stebnik. The lockstitch should be completely dark, which is why in some areas it is called temnik or dark. For this reason, there should be a vestibule at the entrance, with a close-fitting door both on the side of the locket and on the outside, because only then can it maintain adequate privacy and constant warmth. Both external and internal doors should open into the vestibule. There should also be at least two ventilation holes in the ceiling of the lockstitch, i.e. openings leading to the air vents made of boards, sticking out above the lockstitch's roof. These air vents should be arranged in such a way that they can be closed with two flaps, one from the inside and the other from the outside.

If the lockstitch is built on a flat surface, in addition to the vestibule, there should be a sloping entrance to it, the so-called neck, which should also be boarded and closed with a door so that water cannot leak out. In the interior doors leading to the lockstitch, there should be a sliding opening in the lower half, secured with a dense iron grate. In spring, especially in warmer weather, the outer door of the vestibule and the latch in the inner door, as well as both air vents, are opened at night, and everything is closed tightly during the day. In winter, it is enough to open one or two vents for a while to cool and purify the air.

Dig. 136. Vertical section of a lockstitch.

The lockstitch must be dry, so the place for it should be chosen in such a way that water cannot get under it, preferably on a slope if possible, in which case the entrance should be from the side of the slope. For safety, the face wall, which is not covered by soil, can be made of brick. The ceiling of the lockstitch, even if built underground, should be double, empty inside, or filled with moss or dry sand. For fire safety, you can also use clay rolls or a layer of bricks laid with lime on the ceiling. A roof with a lockstitch is best made of straw, and it should have eaves protruding far on all sides, from which water should flow into a ditch, and a surrounding lockstitch with a good slope. (Be. 136). The side walls of the lockstitch should be protected with a layer of earth from the outside, up to the very roof purlin, with a rake, and it will be even better if we sink the lockstitch into the ground up to the ceiling, and the roof is made of appropriately thick boards, on which we put up to 20 cm. the ground, and we will spread it evenly on the ground. In such a lockstitch you can not only maintain the most uniform temperature, but it is also safe from fire. If you want to arrange the lockstitch in this way, you should make it long and heavy.

Dig. 137. Horizontal cross-section of a lockstitch.

The attached figures 156 and 137 show us the model of a good lockstitch for two hundred trunks. The length of the entire building should then be 12 meters. (Be. 137), of which 9 m 60 cm is allocated to the lockstitch proper, 2 m 40 cm to the vestibule, the width is to be 4 m 50 cm and the internal height is 2 m 50 cm. The material for the lockstitch should be oak, especially for the parts located underground; pine material can be used for the roof. We can build a lockstitch either by laying foundations at the bottom, on which the poles supporting the side walls rest, or by sinking the poles on which the walls rest by 50 cm. into the ground. 25 cm beams should be used for the foundation. thick, and 30 cm. wide, 20 cm beams are enough for the side poles. thick, and 25 cm. wide. Crossbeams and spreading lockstitch may be 15 cm. thickness a 20 cm. width. The distance from the pole to the pole can be 1 m. 20 cm. measuring from the left side of one pole to the right side of the other pole. The side poles are placed so that their wider sides face the center of the lockstitch. From the outside, 2-inch oak planks are nailed to the side poles. The roof can be attached as with any other building. A lockstitch with side poles sunk into the ground is much cheaper than a lockstitch with the side poles embedded in the foundation, and it is also more durable and convenient, because the bottom is completely even, so the trunks can be placed in it more conveniently and more easily. clean it.

Preparing the lockstitch for wintering. Before putting the trunks into the lockstitch, make sure that it is completely dry, clean and not musty; During the summer, the lockstitch should be carefully ventilated, and a week or two before adding the bees, clean it thoroughly, i.e. rake the bottom, sprinkle it with fresh dry sand, wipe the walls, then light sulfur in it and close the door tightly overnight. On the second day after sulphuring, the lockbox is opened and aired, and then a few logs of wood are placed in the middle of the lockstitch and set on fire to dry it thoroughly. When firing the lockstitch, you need to be constantly supervised so that the flame does not burn high and the lockstitch could catch fire. The lockstitch is fired for two or three days, i.e. until its walls are completely dry. At night the fire is extinguished and the locket is closed. After completely drying the lockstitch, wait until it cools down completely and only when the temperature in it drops to 6 or 8° C can you put the bee trunks in it. In spring, after leaving the bees out of the lockstitch, it should also be cleaned, sulfurized and thoroughly ventilated.

When to take bees to the lockstitch. There are very different views on this matter, some advise taking bees early, others only when the frosts begin. The middle path is, as always, the best here. If you put the bees into the lockstitch too early, you may run the risk of the bees starting to get worried in the fall, and if you put them too late, you expose the bees to the cold unnecessarily, as a result of which they consume more honey, and most often you have to run away with the bees to the lockstitch in the middle of frost or bad weather, and both will be evil, because in the first case many bees will die, scattering around the hive when they are disturbed, and in the second case, we put wet hives into the lockstitch, which should not be the case. In our climate, bees have a subdued life since the beginning of October, and from then on you can start thinking about putting them in a lockstitch. However, if autumn is very nice and warm, you can postpone it until the beginning of November. The best time to bring bees into the lockstitch is the second half of October. In any case, you should wait for sunny days until the hives are completely dry and it will be a good idea if, before placing the bees in the lockstitch, you stimulate the bees at noon on a warm day by humming into the pond and knocking on the hive to cover themselves and clean themselves. Wet hives should not be placed in a lockstitch under any circumstances.

How to position the trunks in the lockstitch. The trunks should be placed in the lockstitch in such a way that we have free access not only to the eyelet and valve of each trunk, but also so that we can remove each trunk individually and take it out of the lockstitch; Therefore, the hives should be placed in such a way that there are 70 cm of streets between them. wide for the passage, towards which the eyes of the trunks would face, and the walls in which the valves are located should be at least 10 cm higher. separated from each other, so that the valve can be opened at any time. For this purpose, we arrange in rows, at appropriate, pre-measured intervals, the foundations on which the hives will be placed; under the rear wall, we can place the hives in a whole row without interruption from one side to the other, in the middle we leave a passage from the door to the depth of the lockstitch, about 1 m. wide T from this and on the middle path there will be rows of hives to the left and right, which can always be juxtaposed by two side walls. You can put two or three of them on top of each other, but you need to make sure that they stand firmly and firmly, so if they have pins protruding outside, you should put appropriate pieces of wood under them. The hives should not touch the walls of the lockstitch, but should be at least 10 cm from them. distant. In the same way as Slavic hives, bottomless, basket-shaped hives and other hives are also placed, but in the case of straw hives, care should only be taken to ensure that if they are stacked on top of each other, they do not crumple too much * in this case, they should be separated with patches or arranged separately. scaffolding. The eyes must be open, or at most closed so that the mouse cannot pass through them.

If the lockstitch is as it should be, i.e. not allowing air to enter the interior, it will be there. the temperature was constant at about 6° C and even during the strongest frosts it would not drop below zero. In such a lockstitch, you can even tilt the openings at the top of the trunks, which would be especially necessary if the trunks had mats inside, otherwise the bees would get too warm in the nest and suffer from a lack of water. For this reason, the bottoms in such lockstitches can be placed lying down, just so that the slices run from top to bottom. You can also then move the bottoms completely away from the bottoms and turn them through the holes towards the paths.

When bringing the trunks into the lockstitch, the eyes should be interlocked, but as soon as the trunks are placed, the eyes should be opened immediately. After placing the trunks in the lockbox, you should check the thermometer hanging inside the lockbox in the evening to see if the temperature inside is higher than 8°C. In such a case, you should ventilate the lockbox at night by opening the outer door, moving the latch in the inner door and opening both air vents in the lockbox. awesome. If the bees were to show anxiety, i.e. hum, the valves and bottoms would also have to be removed.

Tree trunk care in winter. In a lockstitch. During each change of air in winter, you should look into the lockstitch and check whether the specific heat inside is correct, i.e. whether it does not rise above 8° C during a thaw and does not drop below zero during severe frosts. Bees will hibernate best if we manage to maintain the temperature between 4 and 6° C., but remember that lowering the temperature is less harmful than raising it, and even if the temperature drops below zero, the bees will hibernate well, but they will eat slightly more honey, if it rose above 8° C, the bees would, for obvious reasons, suffer from a lack of water and if we did not remedy it, they would get covered in sweat, leak through the pond, and some of them would even die completely. For this reason, when we notice that the temperature in the lockstitch already reaches 8°C, we should immediately lower it by ventilating the lockstitch, or, if we do not want to do this, immediately give each trunk, without exception, water in the pond or just before the pond in the trough. and make sure that they never miss it. When looking into the lockstitch, be quiet so as not to disturb the bees with their clattering noises. Since it must be completely dark in the lockstitch, you must enter it with a covered lantern. The light from a lantern that works temporarily will not harm the bees.

Mice often cause great damage to the lockstitch, so traps and good bait should be kept there at all times. A cat should not be allowed into the lockstitch, because it would disturb the bees by jumping on the hives, unless a rat were to show itself in the lockstitch, in which case the cat is safer than any paw or poison.

Having carefully entered the lockstitch, we can simply listen to see how the bees hibernate. If there is complete silence in the lockstitch, it is proof that the bees are wintering well; and if we hear a faint rustle, as if in the distance the pebbles of a babbling stream, especially if we carefully put our ear to the eye, then the bees are hibernating well, but apparently the temperature in the lockstitch has dropped significantly, and when we hear that one or the other trunk is rustling loudly, this is a sign that the bees are too warm and that either it is already too warm in the lockstitch, or that the relevant trunk has a tight and warm nest, in which case the buzzing trunks should be immediately given water through a pond, and the lockstitch should be cooled down a bit by opening the drafts. If we do not give such a tree trunk water immediately, it will start to roar more and more loudly, the bees will start splashing out of the hole in masses, they will perish, and most often they will die completely from thirst. If we notice that single bees are buzzing in a trunk, it is a sign that this trunk is motherless, and then it is best to take it out of the lockbox and place it in the vestibule so that it does not disturb the other trunks with its buzzing.

As we can see, wintering in a lockstitch requires more work than wintering in a toczek. However, in a good lockstitch, where the temperature is quite constant, this temperature decreases significantly, and the great advantage is that the bees consume very little honey and can be safely kept in complete peace, at least until the end of March. In our climate, it is not worth taking them out of the lockstitch before the beginning of April, because there is no use for them at that time anyway.

Various other ways of hibernating bees. Because bees wintering on the toque always eat more honey, and therefore, during very harsh winters, it often happens that after eating the honey from the combs on which they have settled for the winter, they cannot move to other combs due to the cold and die of hunger, so beekeepers resort to having lockstitches, for any other way of hibernating the bees, as long as they are not left exposed to the influence of winds and severe frosts. So they either put together all the trunks in the apiary under the blade and cover them completely with straw, or they take them to sheds, barns, rooms, or to the attics of buildings and leave them there either uncovered, or cover them completely with straw, hay, and cover them with chaff. , and even some people hibernate them in piles of grain.

If the winter is uniformly cold, bees hibernated in this way can survive the winter very well, especially if we take them outside as soon as it is warm outside; However, in winters where the temperature changes frequently and warm days occur from time to time, the bees overwintered in this way become very thin and sometimes suffocate and die. Why this is so will be understood by anyone who has well understood the principles of wintering, presented in the first part of Beekeeping, page 161. Since the bees will be in such conditions that the temperature in their nest will rise above 10-12° C., there will be a shortage of water and if we do not give it to them immediately, they will definitely suffer or die completely. Since in such an overwintering period this condition will always occur as soon as the temperature outside rises above 8° C, it is therefore necessary to immediately expose the bees to a nest or give them water and repeat this until the temperature returns to it will decrease outside. For the same reason, there should be a place where the bees are hibernated in a completely dark place, otherwise the bees will splash out of the pond in the warmer season and die in droves; In such a case, blocking the holes will be of no use, because the bees will not be able to get out of the hole, and they will become even more anxious and angry, until they finally suffocate completely.

Hibernation of bees buried in the ground. A similarly good way to overwinter, as in a lockstitch, is to bury the bees underground. This method can be highly recommended, especially for smaller apiaries, because the cost of putting up a good lockstitch is significant, while in the case of numerous apiaries, it will be better to build a good lockstitch.

Bees can be hibernated underground in two ways: either in sunken ditches or in mounds above the ground. Where the ground is so dry that in a ditch there is 20 cm at 1 m. In dug-out areas, the sole is dry and there is no water, the bees hibernate in ditches, and where the sole is wet in such a ditch, they hibernate in a mound above the ground.

In the second half of October, we dig a 1 m. cm trench. deep and 1 m wide, any number of trunks of the calculated length to be buried. When the ditch is ready, we put some straw on the bottom, arrange the joists and place the tree trunks on them, taking care not to break off the edges of the ditch, we leave the holes in the tree trunks open, then cover the ditch with boards across 1 m. 50 cm. long ones, on which we shake straw to cover all the cracks so that the earth that is to be poured on top cannot get into the middle of the ditch, finally we put the earth thrown aside during digging onto the boards, covering them tightly and giving it the shape of a mound. The earth should completely cover the boards so that water dripping from the mound cannot get into the ditch in any way. The trunks in the ditch are placed standing upright, with the eyes turned inwards, i.e. crosswise, so that there is about 5 cm between one hive and the next. spacing. You just need to make sure that the ditch does not get wet during the work and that the hives are dry when placed in the ditch. Trunks going underground do not need any protection with mats. If there was a fear that water from rain or melting snow might flow into a ditch, e.g. made on a slope, a groove should be provided around it to ensure good water drainage.

Bees hibernated in this way can remain in peace even until the second half or the end of April, and only then are they taken out of the ditch, when the temperature outside is well established, and as we can see from the table given in the first part of Beekeeping, they consume the bees in such a way. there is currently very little honey, and they are probably hibernating.

If we want to hibernate bees in a mound, we should choose a place for this purpose, preferably on the northern side of a building, so that the spring sun does not affect the mound as much as possible. Having chosen a suitable location, you can either dig a shallow trench if the ground is quite dry, or place the trunks on the surface itself. In any case, we place 10-20 cm on the bottom. thick straw, arrange the joists and place the hives evenly on them, at 5 cm intervals. one from the other, then we place the prepared rafters, arranged as for the roof, at intervals of 1 m to 1'50 m, we nail them to the top of the rafters on one and the other side on one side, and provide supports for them in appropriate places so that the rafters cannot move. Then we put the boards on the rafters and nail them on all sides to create a tightly closed space, we shake the straw a bit to completely protect the gaps, and on top, i.e. on the straw, we sprinkle 30 cm of soil. thickly, making sure it couldn't get anywhere.

From time to time, in autumn, the mound should be checked to see if the earth has settled or cracks have formed, which should be immediately filled with soil. Near the mound, a ditch will be created by excavating the ground, from which an outflow should be created for the water collecting there, and if there was no slope, the outflow of the ditch would need to be directed to a deliberately dug pit, about 2 m deep. diameter having. Such a pit should be covered with boards for safety. And here in the mound, bees with open eyes hibernate. The rafters should be arranged in such a way that they do not stick to the hives and cannot be removed, so anyone who has to winter over a large number of tree trunks should avoid laying the foundations around the mound, fastening them tightly and then placing the rafters on them. This device can be stored from year to year, so in any case it will pay off well, because the bees in such a mound also hibernate well and as long as they are covered with a thick layer of soil on all sides and protected against the effects of the sun, they eat little honey and can remain unharmed until until the air warms up completely.

Disadvantages of winter birds. When hibernating bees, you should first of all make sure that the bees are not too warm, so you should not close the nest too close, do not stuff and bedding the hives too much, or place them in a place where the temperature may rise above 8° C even temporarily. . If, for any reason, the bees become warm, they should be immediately given water or, by appropriate cooling, they should be allowed to maintain a temperature of 10-12° C inside the nest, so that, as we know from Part I of Beekeeping, the necessary amount of honey can be obtained from the air. absorb water. The bees die not because of the heat itself, but because the heat in the wintering bees causes a lack of water.

It is similarly harmful to hibernate bees on raw honey. Then, as we know from the first part of Beekeeping, unstitched honey will absorb too much water from the air, and with the heat in the nest, it will begin to ferment, leak from the cells, and the bees, eating it, will become imperfect. If for any reason we need to feed the bees in late autumn, we should use thick sugar syrup, not honey, because sugar syrup is more difficult to ferment than honey.

Water leaking into the nest is disastrous for overwintering tree trunks. This type of water leakage most often occurs in hives that are opened from the top. The bees immediately move away from the place where the water is leaking, and it often happens that when they move from the combs containing honey to the combs containing less honey, they die of hunger. Sometimes, when water flows into the center of the nest, the bees move away from the nest to both sides and hibernate, but most often one half of them dies.

Any disturbance during the winter is also hostile to the bees, so you should try to hibernate the bees in a place where there is no knocking, noise or shock. Monotonous noise does not harm bees because they get used to it; for example, the constant rattle of the mill does not harm them and it often happens that they hibernate safely just below the wall of the mill, while temporary rattle and shocks always have a negative effect on the hibernating bees.

Bees winter poorly in bad hives, i.e. in hives that are not built in such a way that the bees can effortlessly maintain a uniform temperature in the nest in the cold, but not higher than 12° C. Overwintering on a toque in hives with thin walls, the bees will consume a lot of honey, the hives will sweat, the combs will become moldy, and most often the bees will get stuck. In hives with warm side walls and a thin, unprotected ceiling, the combs will become moldy, the walls will become damp, and the bees will most likely become embroiled. In even warmly built hives, which have an eye lower than 40 cm. from the ceiling, the combs will become crusty and moldy, water will accumulate abundantly at the bottom, and the bees will become more or less dead almost every winter.

Therefore, a hive suitable for overwintering on a toque should have all the walls equally thick and be relatively warm, and should have a mesh between 40 and 40 cm wide. from the ceiling (a higher position of the pond is less harmful than a lower one), it should be arranged in such a way that the space for bees overwintering can be used to accommodate the size of the swarm; the stronger the swarm, the larger the space must be, the weaker the swarm, the smaller it must be. A strong swarm will burrow and bathe in a tight space in a warm hive, while a weak swarm in too large a space may freeze during very severe frosts, or at best consume a lot of honey unnecessarily.

Bad honey, such as honeydew honey, and crusty honey, can also cause the bees to become clogged and scattered; Therefore, such honey should be replaced preferably with sugar syrup.

Queenless bees usually have a bad winter because the anxiety in the swarm causes the bees to scatter around the hive, often becoming embroiled, and often slowly dying out.

Various animals are also harmful to wintering birds, as we know from Part I of Beekeeping, e.g. mice, tits, woodpeckers, etc. d., against which bees should be properly insured.

§. 8. General comments.

How should you behave towards bees? We know from experience that a professional beekeeper is much less likely to be stung by bees than a beginner. The reason for this lies to some extent in knowing and getting used to bees, but mainly in skillful handling of them. First of all, anyone entering the apiary should be completely resigned to bee stings, which are painful but not dangerous; he should therefore behave freely, not make any sudden movements, and above all, not shy away from the bees, even if they come towards his face; at most, he can raise his hand in front of his face and cover his eyes and nose with his hand, as if with a fan, from being stung. Any sudden movements should be avoided in the apiary, and even if you receive a sting, you should remain calm if you do not want to experience a large hail of stings. A bee that attacks, even with a malicious buzz, will not sting us if we calmly endure its attack, because only then does it realize whether it is worth stinging. The more dangerous bee is the one that attacks its perceived enemy with the flight of an arrow, because it will always sting without delay.

The smell that humans emit also has a great impact on bees. Bees cannot stand the sweat of some people, nor do they like the smell of garlic and onions. Horse sweat bees also hate them, so you should not approach them immediately after having any contact with horses. However, it affects the bees by soothing the smell of honey, lemon balm and wax. Therefore, a beginner can significantly protect himself against stings if he washes his hands and face with water to which a little honey or Melissa decoction has been added, and rubbing his hands with earwax also protects him from the sting. However, these are measures that reduce the bees' malicious streak, but obviously they do not protect against the sting.

You should use one and the same clothes to work in the apiary, because over time they take on the scent of bees and the bees soften under the influence of this scent. Similarly, the body of a human being, who often lives among bees, is filled with their scent, the best proof of which is the fact that bees and even wasps often alight on the beekeeper at a considerable distance from the apiary.

You should avoid entering the apiary wearing black clothes, but also wear a black head covering, as this color apparently irritates the bees. It is most appropriate to wear light-colored clothing and headgear. A beginner beekeeper, as well as one who, due to his activities, must take care to avoid a red nose, a swollen eye or a swollen lip, should always use a net, and the most convenient one is a delicate net made of silk gauze (organtin), which we described it on page 138 because you can always have it in your pocket with you. A beginner beekeeper should also, until he is comfortable with the bees' stingers, wear large, non-fitting single-finger gloves made of thin cloth, as we described on page 137. Tight leather, wool or even rubber gloves should not be used, as the bees irritate each other and their great power is wasted unnecessarily by drowning their stings in such gloves.

How to dismantle a tree trunk. When approaching the trunk, you should have a smoking cone ready; Smoke from rotten wood and tobacco works best for bees; the smoke of dried cowgrass or burning rags is less tolerable for them. They are very irritated by the smoke of burning wax or bee bodies, so be careful not to accidentally get earwax or a bee into the hen.

Before opening the hive, blow some smoke into the hole to intimidate the bees, then the valve is slightly tilted without knocking or shaking, and just enough smoke is blown through the gap to blow it inside. Then we open the valve completely and start dismantling the trunk; Therefore, you should always take care to avoid any shocks, sudden movements and impacts. If, despite this, the bees were to burst out and angrily attack the opening person, they should again be intimidated with smoke. However, it should be remembered that it is better to use less smoke rather than more, because excessive smoke does not soothe the bees, but rather enrages them, so that sometimes the beekeeper has to shamefully run away from the field. If, for any reason, the bees show unusual malice and cannot be calmed down by a few puffs of smoke, it is better to close the trunk for now, leave it alone and look at it at another time or on another day. Sprayed water has a soothing effect on angry bees; so you can try to soothe them by spraying them with a sprayer. The frames in Slavic hives are relatively easy to remove because they are attached to the triangular side slats of the hive only at four points. Therefore, we remove them from the hive without the use of any tools, grasping the corner of the frame at the top of the hive on the right side with the fingers of our right hand, and the lower slat of the frame on the right side with our left hand, we carefully and uniformly pull the frame towards us until the putty releases and the frame slides out a little, then we grab the lower strip of the frame on its left side with our left hand and pull the frame out of the hive completely, holding it slightly obliquely, i.e. with the right side forward. By removing the frame this way, we will never cause a significant shock and we will not damage either the frame or the patch. Always hold the frame removed from the hive in a vertical position, supporting the upper right corner of the frame with your right hand and the lower left corner of the frame with your left hand; If we want to turn the frame to the other side in order to view it, we turn it in the same vertical position around both of its corners being supported, as if around an axis, making sure that it does not end up in an inclined or horizontal position, because then it could easily the plaster may break off, especially if it is made of fresh earwax and filled with honey or brood. We place the frames taken from the hive either on a trestle standing on the side of the hive, or by placing the valve and valve on the ground on the side of the hive, we place them on the same in a slightly inclined position, leaning against the wall of the hive; we place them on the side of the pond so that the bees that come down from them to the wall of the hive can then easily get inside through the pond. Only when the sun is shining strongly on the side of the pond should the frames be placed on the shaded side. After examining the trunk, we put the frames back inside, preferably in the same order in which they stood before, unless we have some important reason, either to change the order of the frames or to turn one or the other upside down. You should always keep an eye on the frame on which the queen is located and therefore it is best to place it slightly separate from the rest of the frames, so that later, when you put the frames back into the hive, you pay special attention to the queen so that she does not get crushed. Removing hanging frames is generally more difficult, because the bees' whiskers of such frames at the top strongly stick to the hive and when removing them, it is usually necessary to use a hook or pliers. The hook and pliers are inserted into the upper corner of the frame on the right side, hooking the upper strip, and holding the frame in its lower right corner with our left hand, we carefully pull it towards us until we move it from its foundations. If the frame was glued tightly on the left side, then the left side of the frame would also have to be removed with pliers and by hand. Then the hook or pliers are put aside and the frame is removed with bare hands, or it is held in place with forceps in the right hand. It's best to have the tongs and the hook hanging on a string around your neck so that you don't have to look for them after putting them away. In the case of hanging frames, it often happens in spring that the frame is so strongly attached that even with tongs or a hook you cannot move it from its base with one hand, so as not to disturb the bees with a sudden jerk, you should place your left hand on the right side of the hive and support it use it with your right hand and slowly pull out the frame.

When inserting the frames back into the hive, they should also be inserted diagonally forward on one side and only when this side has been covered by about 1 cm. away from the previous frame, screw on the other side so that the frame stands flat, and then push it to the previous frame using both sides at the same time. By doing this, we can easily avoid that the space nails of one frame will not get behind the strip of the other frame. Planting hanging frames is also incomparably more difficult than standing ones, because here you have to tilt your head upwards and be careful not to crush the bees, which always cluster under the ceiling of the hive.

How to make finding your mother easier. In frame hives, finding the queen is usually not difficult, because the frames can be removed without any major concern for the bees, and most often the queen can be found walking calmly among the bodyguard on one of the reddish combs. However, sometimes it happens that the queen hides somewhere on the edge of the comb, between the frame slat and the wax, or goes to the wall of the hive, and then it is difficult to find her.

In that case, it's best to give up the matter for now, check the frames again, put them in the hive and put the valve on lightly, and only an hour or later take the trunk apart again, avoiding the use of smoke and disturbing the bees, and then we will find the queen sooner, than if we had wanted to do it out of impatience the first time.

To make it easier to find queens before harvesting honey from a larger number of trunks at the same time, we can achieve this by placing a comb with beautiful drone work on each trunk in the evening the previous evening, placing it right next to the nearest comb with brood. If we carefully open the trunk the next day, we will almost always find the mother on this freshly inserted comb. At this time, the mother wants to lay drone eggs, and in well-maintained trunks there is almost no drone work, so as soon as the mother feels a fresh drone comb, she will immediately move to it. In straight hives with a movable middle frame, the queen can be caught in the same way by replacing the old frame with a new one with drone work.

How to make clearing a swarm easier. We have described the procedure for removing bees from straight trunks on page 225, and it is not at all difficult when only a small number of trunks are involved, but if larger numbers of swarms need to be removed in a larger apiary, this operation becomes quite difficult. burdensome. You can make it much easier by hanging a comb with the brood and the bees sitting on it in a box or basket into which you want the bees to go. The buzzing of the bees here will soon attract bees from the stump.

In the case of straight hives with a movable middle frame, a frame previously removed from the same trunk is hung, and sometimes there is even a queen on it; for simple hives that do not have such a frame, you can use a frame with brood and bees taken from another trunk for this purpose.

How to recognize trunk orphanage in simple hives. The orphanage of a swarm in demountable hives is easily recognized by every beekeeper who knows the nature of bees; However, it is more difficult to verify this in a non-removable trunk. The following signs can be used for this purpose. If we notice for several days in a row that during the midday bees the bees of which trunk do not lose, then that trunk can almost certainly be suspected of being an orphan; the same if in one trunk the bees do not like to be shoveled at a time when the bees are walking briskly with a strong shovel on other trunks. The longer the orphanage of the trunk, the more noticeable this difference is, because such trunks do not have young brood for which they need to carry a feather and they also lack a young bee to fly around.

To find out if such a trunk is really missing a mother, we put a frame (or a piece of comb) with an uncovered brood in the middle between its combs, and when it establishes queen cells on it, we will have irrefutable proof that it is an orphan.

How to insert a frame or a piece of comb with brood into such a trunk, every practical beekeeper will be able to figure out on his own, because he will cut out either comb from the headrest or from the bottom and replace it with a new one, securing it with wooden pins or struts.

The presence of drones in a trunk at a time when there are no drones in other trunks (in autumn) or not yet (in spring) makes us suspect the trunk in question either of being an orphan, or of having a drone mother or a drone fly. And then if the test with the brood fails, then the stump has either a drone queen or a poison beetle, and then such a stump should either be destroyed or cured of defects by knocking out or intoxicating the bees.

How to treat a stump With poison. It is relatively easy to cure a stump that has poisonous disease in spring, by proceeding as described on page 177; However, it is more difficult to cure such a stump in summer or autumn, because it is stubbornly impossible to accept queens and establish nurseries. If it is a weak trunk, it is best to destroy it by sprinkling bees, either swept from the frames, knocked out or intoxicated, after previously sprinkling them with honey or syrup, or on a healthy trunk. If the trunk is quite strong, or if we need to maintain it for some reason, then we should proceed as follows:

Such a stump is moved a few dozen steps away, and in its place a hollow hive similar to it is immediately put up, as far as possible, into which we have placed a comb with the brood, together with the bees sitting on it and the healthy queen, taken from another strong stump and sprayed with sweet water or honey. This hive should be positioned so that its eye is in the same place as the eye of the removed trunk. Both bees coming from the field and those flying out of the placed stump will return to this established hive (as to their former place).

Having prepared the new hive in this way, we immediately move to the removed stump, select one comb after another, sweep all the bees as carefully as possible back to the old hive, and take the combs emptied of bees to the newly placed hive. At the same time, we must be as careful as possible to ensure that we do not transfer a single bee on a comb to a new hive, because it could be a poison and all the work would be in vain. When selecting the combs, you can also cut the drone brood, which, as we know, the drone always plants.

Having thus removed all the work from the left-over stump, we close it together with the swept-up bees and leave it in peace. The bees now have no work to do in the hive, they start to get worried, they slowly fly out of the hive and go to their old place to the new hive. If we wait a day, we will no longer find in that old stump more than a handful of bees, which faithfully accompany the foster mother, because the latter, as concerned with the seriousness and habits of the real mother, does not leave the hive, just like the other one. The remaining cluster of bees is swept up in the evening and, after being satiated, is thrown into the pit of any other strong tree with a good mother, where the bee will either be cut down or abandon its egg-laying hive. Some people claim that there is not one poison bee in such a trunk, but more, but this does not affect the method of treatment at all. Sometimes a trunk with a beetle can also be cured by placing a comb with brood and eggs in it, taken from a healthy trunk with the bees sitting on it. The young bee sitting on this comb will create queen cells, and when the mother comes out, the nest will disappear on its own.

Adding a queen or queen cells. When managing the apiary wisely, we often come to a situation where we need to add a mother or nursery to this or that trunk. Well, in this case, we must remember the rule that only fertilized queens and mated queen cells can be added, because the bees usually do not want to accept unfertilized queens and unmated queen cells. However, it sometimes happens that the fertilized queen or the covered queen bee will be destroyed, so it is better to be prepared for the worst case and to exercise some caution when doing so.

Experience shows that it is easiest for bees to accept a queen or a queen cell when they are convinced of their inertia. Therefore, we should make sure that the trunk to which we are to add a mother or a nursery is orphaned for 12 to 24 hours, after which time it can be safely helped to obtain a new mother. If we want to add a queen, we close her in a regular cage and place it, preferably just above the nest through the hive plug on frames. The next day we open the plug carefully so as not to disturb the bees and observe how the bees behave towards the queen. If they are sitting in the cage and flap their wings by raising their abdomens, thus showing their contentment, you can carefully open the cage lid and leave the mother free to leave; you can also carefully remove the cage, open the plug and cover the hole with a thin sheet of wax so that the bees can chew through it and free the queen. However, if we notice that the bees are besieging the cage, but they are pressing into its cracks and maliciously trying to enlarge the gaps with their jaws, we should close the hive cap again and postpone the release of the queen until a later time, because if we let her out now, the bees would undoubtedly they would immediately start to pull her by the wings, they would cover her in a mass, wrap her in a ball and strangle her in their deadly embrace. It often happens that the queen has to be trapped and kept for several days until the bees become familiar with her.

Instead of a cage, you can also add a mother in an artificial knot; for this purpose, a piece of artificial hose is rolled around a finger into a tube, a hole is clamped in one end, the mother is inserted into the tube and then the other end is also clamped. We put the closed queen through the spigot onto the frames, and the bees will release it themselves. You can sometimes add a mother to a gentle trunk by putting it straight through the hole in the tenon onto the frames. You can also add the queen bee using a cover, in which case you put the mother on the comb with the older work, cover it carefully with the lid, which should be pushed so deep that it reaches the central wall of the comb. The next day, when we see that the bees are friendly around the mother, we lift the lid a little on one side and the bees themselves, having bitten the cell, will release it. If we placed the cap with the queen on a fresh comb (without sleeves) or did not clamp it to the central wall of the comb, it could happen that in the first case the bees would bite the middle wall on the other side of the comb and choke the queen, while in the second case they would bite from the side cells and got under the cap without disturbing the middle wall.

Nurseries are usually placed on an orphaned trunk without any further precautions, and it is rare that any trunk convinced of its orphanhood destroys them. However, when such a trunk is found, the added nursery must be secured by planting a cover over it, which is removed only after the mother leaves. . It is best to place the nursery from the side on the patch next to the eye, trimming it as described on page 216.

Intoxication of bees can be used in various cases, such as when removing straight trunks, when adding a queen, when combining* and sprinkling bees, etc. The best intoxicant is purhawkawielka (Lycoperdon Bovista Iiyc. 138). This purhawk grows in pastures and sometimes grows to the size of a child's head. It is a spherical mushroom, dirty white in color, which when mature is filled with olive-colored pollen, i.e. seeds. It is collected before ripeness, i.e. when it still has white tissue (meat) inside, cut into pieces and dried in the sun or in the shade. To intoxicate the trunk, you need to use a dry piece, the size of a walnut. If you want to intoxicate the trunk, for example, you take glowing coals into the hen, put a piece of purhawk on it, cover it with a net so that the bees falling from the combs do not fall on the coals, place yourself in a hole under the combs, close the hive, close the mesh, and glue all the cracks, so that smoke cannot escape. At first the bees will begin to hum, but they will soon become silent and after 3 to 5 minutes they will lie mostly at the bottom of the hive, numb, as if dead. Once the bees are quiet, we open the hive, and if we shake it slightly, the rest of the bees from among the combs will fall to the bottom of the hive. Intoxicated bees remain in this state of torpor for 15 to 20 minutes and during this time they need to be dealt with, because after 20 minutes they wake up and come back on their own. The queen usually lies on top of the bees and can be easily found. This means can be used to replace the queen, i.e. take away the old queen, and introduce a new queen among the intoxicated bees, which will then be accepted without any problems.

Intoxicated bees can be sprinkled on a meal and sprinkled on any tree trunk, and they will be accepted without being cut down. Intoxicated bees also seem to lose, at least to some extent, the memory of the place of their former flight, because once settled in another place they do not return to the old place, but remain in the new one; Therefore, this method can be used when placing swarms of beetles in the same apiary. Some people also use chloroform or rags dipped in saltpeter to intoxicate bees, but these substances are not as reliable as purhawk, and when they are used the bees suffer health problems, while purhawk works only temporarily, without any further consequences.

Transplanting bees from simple hives to Slavic hives. The most appropriate time to transplant bees from simple hives to Slavic hives is during swarming, because then we can do this without any hassle for ourselves and the bees, while at any other time this activity requires a lot of attention and caution.

If we want to transplant bees from a straight trunk during swarming, we should first of all make sure that the bees come to a considerable strength early, which we can achieve by keeping the trunk warm in spring and carefully feeding the bees with honey when there is no use in nature; that the trunk should also have sufficient honey reserves to feed the brood, it is almost unnecessary to mention it, because every beekeeper knows that feeding with diluted honey, i.e. satiation. It can only be effective when the bees feel abundance in the hive.

When the strength in such a trunk has increased to such an extent that we can expect a swarm in the near future, which we know either from the bees hatching in the evenings in front of the pond, or from the queen cells established on the combs, or finally from the presence of a larger group of drones, then we start making an artificial hive out of the trunk in any known way, preferably by knocking it out. We place the stump swarm in a Slavic hive, which we place in the place of the stump, and then set it aside somewhere in the apiary.

On the eleventh or twelfth day after creating the swarm, we start to transfer the remaining bees along with the combs from the permanent hive to the Slavic hive. By this time, we will have very little brood in the trunk and, most often, a young queen that has already been hatched, and a large number of young bees that have emerged from the cells since the swarm was formed. In the morning hours of a beautiful day, we prepare a Slavic hollow hive and put it in place of a straight trunk, making sure that the eye falls in the same place where the eye of the old trunk was, and we put the hive nearby in a convenient place in the apiary, under the shade. a tree or under a shed to work comfortably. In this place we should have a table with everything we may need for this activity, such as: a knife for carving and edging plasters, some thin nails, a few pins, a ball of cotton or thin twine, a ball, a hammer, pliers, and a honey bowl.

You can first knock out the bees from the straight trunk and immediately pour them into the Slavic hive that you have set up, to which the bees that were previously flown out of the straight trunk to use for bees will also fly; However, anyone who is not skillful enough in knocking out bees can abandon it and start moving the combs.

In a bottomless hive, the headboard should be torn off and the combs removed from the sides should be carefully removed one by one on this side; In the valve hive, the combs are carefully removed using a valve. For this operation, you do not need to cut the hive in half lengthwise, as some people advise, because with such care you can remove all the combs without the slightest damage, either through the valve or the headrest. Having carefully extracted the slice from the straight trunk, we first sweep the bees from it to the Slavic hive we have set up, return to the table, place it flat on the table, place an empty frame from the Slavic hive against it, and carefully trim the slice along its internal borders with a sharp knife like this: , so that he can comfortably enter the frame without expanding it, making sure that the upper part of the patch fits under the upper bar of the frame, i.e. T so that we do not insert the patch into the frame the other way around. If the patch was quite large and filled the entire space of the frame, then we tie the frame and the patch together with cotton thread or twine at the top and bottom, so that the patch cannot move out of the frame, and immediately insert it into the Slavic hive. Slices that still have brood should be handled more carefully - they should not be crushed on the table, but pinned to the frame in the air, making sure to save the part where the brood is when trimming the comb. If, however, the patches are small and do not fill the entire frame, then they are inserted in pieces, cut into straight lines, and, having thus created a patch that fills the space of the entire frame, the frame and the patch are covered several times crosswise and lengthwise with cotton. , and the pieces of plaster bound in this way will be held together for sure. It may also happen that for some reason we will be forced to insert only a piece of plaster into the frame, e.g. taking up half of the frame, then we cut such a piece exactly to the width of the frame, we cut a strip as long as the width of the transverse space of the frame, we place the frame on upside down on the table, we put the baked piece of plaster in it, put the baked strip on it and either fasten it with a few nails or pins and tie it with cotton, or we tighten the frame a little more tightly with cotton, passing it crosswise under the inserted strip, as a result of which the strip neither the comb nor the comb can slip, even if such a piece of the comb was loaded with honey.

If the slices are attached to the snozes, do not cut them off, but try to attach them to the frame together with the snoz, which can be most easily achieved by removing the upper strip of the frame and the snoze sticks to itself. on the table with a ball large enough to replace the upper slat of the frame. However, we do not advise anyone to insert the snoz into the middle of the frame so that the frame is divided in two, in which case it is better to cut off the snoz and add a patch and tie it with cotton. The stones in a Slavic hive should not be separated by bars.

In this way, we put all the slices of the old trunk into frames, but we are careful not to take the drone work into the nest, but to cut as many frames from it as possible, which we place away from the nest, and we should also be careful not to destroy the young mother. and therefore, if there are nurseries in the trunk that have not yet been carved out, leave one or two on the slice.

On the second or third day after this operation, the Slavic hive is opened, the frames are removed and the bees check whether the bees have properly attached the combs to them; any defects found by accident should be repaired immediately. Most often, everything will be in perfect order, the patches will be sewn properly, and the cotton will be already chewed. To make it easier for the bees to work, we remove the cotton shreds and remove the slats that we may have used to support the combs in the frame. kacli, we put the frames back into the hive and the whole process of transplanting the bees from the straight trunk to the Slavic hive is finished, but we also have the advantage that we will now have two from one trunk.

When transferring bees from one hive to another, you always need to have someone to help you, even if you have some bees, because sometimes you need to hold this or that, give this or that.

If you want, you can also transplant bees from one hive to another in early spring or even autumn, proceeding exactly as we described above, except that we do not make a swarm from such a stump. In spring, however, putting the combs into frames is a bit more difficult due to the abundant brood, and when trimming the combs, the brood may sometimes have to be injured, and in the fall, this activity is also more difficult due to the honey contained in the combs, which can slide more easily in the frames due to their weight.

Finally, we will add two more practical tips, namely:

1) to attach a slice to the frame, you don't cut it right through, but use a sharp, pointed knife, preferably dipped in water, and cut it lightly, across the surface, digging the knife deeper and deeper into the slice until it is completely cut through;

2) if we are to trim the snoz to which the plaster is attached, we turn it upside down and put the snoz between two nails stuck in the table so that the plaster cannot move, the helper holds the plaster up so that it does not tilt, and we hold it snoz, bv didn't slide and we cut it lightly with a ball.

Taming a robbery. It is easier to protect yourself from an attack than to stop it. For this reason, the beekeeper should focus his attention in this direction above all. Therefore, he should first of all avoid dismantling the tree trunks at a time when there is no harvest and bees are chasing him; he should, in spring and autumn, make sure that there are no gaps anywhere in the hive, and if there are, he should carefully cover them with clay; he should also narrow the eyes at this time; he should avoid leaving dishes with sweets and combs next to the hives, and, at the same time, avoid spilling any sweets and leaving wax crumbs in the apiary, and when feeding the bees, he should do it after sunset or just before sunset, and before sunrise he should remove all vessels and troughs from the hives ; he should keep only strong and healthy trunks, because weak, diseased and motherless trunks are most easily robbed. It is also important that the trunks do not stand in the sun, but in the shade, because when the hive gets hot in the summer and starts to smell of honey and wax, robbers will soon attack it. It is for this last reason that a secret robbery very often occurs in apiaries during the peak harvest time, in which bees fly from some trunks to others with impunity and take honey from them.

If the trunk being robbed is very weak or motherless, it is best to delete it and immediately remove the reason for the robbery; because the robbing bees, having practiced themselves on weak and undefended trunks, often become bold and then unite with each other, attacking and destroying even the strong trunks.

We have various methods to curb robbery, the better of which we will mention here. If we notice a robbery in a tree trunk, we should immediately close the pond for a moment, quickly get some flour or mixed lime, and then, opening the pond, sprinkle or sprinkle the bees leaving in droves with lime or flour, and be careful about which trunk the bees marked in this way will return to. If it is your own tree trunk, you should immediately put a sieve on it and take it to a cool basement, and in its place temporarily set up an empty hive with a comb of brood taken from another trunk, making sure that the pond is located in the same way. Before the evening, the bees collected on this comb should be placed together with the comb into a trunk kept in the dark. If such a stump stays in the basement for two days, it can then be put back in its original place, and if we have tidied up the robbed stump, the attack will stop. If the robbing bees come from another apiary and the owner does not want to stop them from robbing by locking them in the basement, the robbed stump should be immediately moved to the basement, and an empty hive with a comb should be placed in its place, so that the bee returning from the field can rest on it. gather; which is given to him again in the evening. Such a robbed stump should be kept in the basement until the robbing bees stop sniffing around the empty hive. Every day, or at least every other day, the trunk must be taken out of the basement after sunset, the bees should be stimulated to fly by knocking and breathing, and then hidden again; in the meantime, also check this trunk. and tidy up.

A small, initial attack can be interrupted by placing a glass of ordinary glass diagonally in front of the eye of the trunk being robbed. The bee will hit the pond despite the glass, and the robbers will crash into the glass, especially when they are attacked by defending bees, and this will discourage them from further robbery. In such a case, you can also put a lilac tube in the mesh so that inside the hive it ends flush with the wall, and outside the hive it extends at least 10 cm. slowly into the air. It is difficult for robbers to get inside through such a pipe, but a bee will already pass through it and gather in front of the pond, from where we will then let it into the trunk in the evening. Instead of a lilac coil, you can stick clay on the eye and make a long or narrow hole in it, e.g. with a pencil. Larger robberies can be stopped by spraying the robbers into the pond with water, and closing and moving the pond at short intervals so that the robbing bee leaves the hive and its own enters it, but after some time, when the robbers are scared away, the robbed stump must be hidden for a few days. to the basement.

Hidden robbery during honeying can be curbed by placing some garlic or camphor inside the trunk being robbed, which will give the bees of the trunk such a distinct scent that they will then be able to easily recognize robbers who smell differently.

Connecting and adding bees. It is often necessary to remove one or the other stump in the apiary, which is necessary, especially in a swarming economy, as we said on page 254. In such a case, the bees should never be killed, but only the queen should be removed and the bees should be reunited with another trunk. We remove straight trunks only in autumn, when there are no more brood in them, i.e. in September or at the beginning of October. If we want to remove such a stump, we push the bees out of it in the manner described on page 225 into the nesting colony, and during this activity the bees, at the moment of their first anxiety, rush to the open cells of honey and take it from them, so we can knock out the bees, as if they were sucked in honey, without everything, throw it to another trunk under the slices. The thing about bees is that they willingly welcome any guest as long as he or she can prove that he or she does not come with an empty stomach. To be more sure, you can sprinkle some sugar or honey solution on the bees that are about to be buried, and then, when you pour them down into a foreign tree stump, lightly throw a handful of hay over them so that the bees join together slowly, not abruptly. The bees must slowly get through the hay to each other and in this case there is never any crowding.

You don't have to worry about the queen at all, because the bees will take care of her themselves; and since in autumn the bees do not leave the hives, or only very few of them, the bees buried in the new stump will remain in the new stump even more securely since their old hive will be removed immediately. See also the section on bee intoxication, page 303.

Repairing moth-covered tree trunks. The beekeeper himself is responsible for the damping of the trunks if he does not sweep the trunks carefully or if he maintains very weak trunks. If you know the way of life of a butterfly (see Volume I, page 228), you can easily fight it effectively. A butterfly-covered trunk should be carefully cleaned of the fluke's strands and any patches with any trace of the fluke on it should be removed. In a demountable hive, the removed combs are replaced with new ones, the nest is closed with a plank, and if it is a weak trunk, as is most often the case, it must either be covered with bees or it must be replenished with bees by moving it with another strong trunk.

In a non-removable trunk, the work is carried out down to the brood and it is fed with bees, because if the strength is not strengthened, such a trunk will soon become one butterfly nest, and the bees will emerge from it as a swarm of misery.

Exterminating drones - In an apiary with removable hives, there should be no question of exterminating drones, because a careful apiary should have trunk nests made only of combs made of bees, and only during honey harvesting, after removing or demarcating the queen, combs made of drones should be installed. However, if it happened that there was a larger space in the trunk than 10 cm. in a square covered with drones, then the drone brood should be removed (after shaking the honey from the comb), preferably when it is already mated, and the bees will remove the dead cells from the cells and clean the comb.

In straight trunks, however, it is not possible to defend against the hatching of drones effectively enough, and as we showed in the first part of Beekeeping, page 68, already developed drones consume a lot of honey, so they should be caught and destroyed when they appear in larger numbers. However, cutting out the drone brood in straight trunks will not be of any use, as the bees will only lose by having to re-stretch the comb with the drone's work and feed the young brood again.

You can catch drones very easily in the following way: make a box made of thin boards up to 15 cm in diameter. wide and long, and 5 cm. high without a lid, instead of which wires are inserted at a distance of 5 mm. one from the other, or a grated metal sheet is nailed to separate the mothers. A hole is cut in the bottom of the box as large as the beehive's eyes, and the paw is ready.

On beautiful days, these paws are hung at 11 o'clock on a nail driven above the eyelet, on the trunks from which we want to catch drones, in such a way that the hole made in the bottom of the box fits exactly to the eyelet of the trunk. After hanging the box, the bees come out, walking comfortably between the wires of the box, and the bees coming back from the field this way enter the hive, while the drones that want to fly out of the trunk to the ground cannot get out through the bars and will wander around in the box, so it is necessary to just remove the leg from time to time, plug the hole in the bottom and wait a while for the worker bees to fly out through the grate, and then throw the drones together with the leg into boiling water, where they will die in the blink of an eye. If you do this several times, you can completely eradicate the drones.

Storing earwax. In larger apiaries, the fluke often causes great damage when storing spare combs, but it is so easy to protect yourself against it. When storing earwax, first of all make sure that the patches do not stick to each other, because then the fluke will most likely roll them off. The spare earwax can be stored without the care of bees either in tightly closed places, e.g. in hives, boxes, closets, or in airy places such as in the attic, under the shed, etc. In the first case, it must be burned in such a closed place in spring, summer and autumn. every other week a piece of sulfur to destroy any fluke embryos with the sulfur smoke generated in this way. Therefore, it is a laborious and quite expensive method, and therefore it should only be used in non-dismountable hives, if we want to store spare work in them, or when we store honeycombs.

However, the second way of storing wax is easy and very convenient for many reasons, i.e. in a well-ventilated place, protected only against rain and mice. For this purpose, strings are stretched or thin poles are hung on strings in the attic, under a thatch or a shed. Double hooks are placed on these ropes or poles, made of wire the thickness of an ordinary match, at 6 cm intervals. from myself. One end of such a hook is placed on a rope or pole and squeezed so that it cannot move, while a frame with a plaster is hung on the other end, placing the hook in the corner of the frame. Patches hung this way will not touch each other and will never be damaged by the fluke. This method of storing patches also has the advantage that when we need a patch, we can easily look through all of them, and having found the right one, we can remove it without anything, without disturbing the adjacent ones.

Making patches. If you want to have combs with only bee work or with drone work, you sometimes have to resort to making them from pieces. To do this, we place the frame on the table, then cut and adjust the appropriate pieces of earwax so that they fill the entire frame, making sure that the cells all face one side. After sculpting the patch into the frame in this way, we take a thread of thin cotton and stretch it across the frame in width and length so that no piece of the patch can fall out. Then we place the frame wrapped in this way into a strong trunk, and the bees will soon put together the patch and attach it to the frame. On the second or third day, we look into the trunk, and when we see that the patch is already sticky, we untie the cotton from it. If we hadn't untied the cotton, the bees would have chewed it up and taken it out of the hive, but that would have made a lot of work for them. Cotton thread is better for this purpose than linen or hemp thread because it does not cut into the comb and it is easier for bees to chew through it.

Stirring the comb with honey or brood. It often happens that you need to place a piece of honeycomb or brood in the frame, although it is not easy, but it can be done. For this purpose, we cut a 3 cm strip. wide and as long as the internal width of the frame. Then we place the empty frame on the table upside down, cut the piece of plaster that will fit into it, and place it, taking into account the correct position of the cells, on the upper strip of the frame, then put the trimmed strip on its opposite edge, press it lightly and tie it under it. cross the cotton thread several times so that it does not allow the slat that is supposed to support the comb to slip, finally we cover the frame with cotton lengthwise and crosswise several times and after such attachment we can safely turn the frame over and insert it into the trunk so that the bees can attach the comb properly . Saving hungry trunks. We have already talked about how to save hungry trunks on page 173 and we have nothing new to add here, except to admonish every beekeeper to try, on the one hand, to provide the bees with a sufficient supply of honey early in the winter, and on the other hand, to accident, he kept a certain amount of combs with sewn honey for winter storage, so that in an emergency he could save this or that trunk in the simplest and best way possible. We will not describe here the method of making large caramels, which in Germany are advised to be given to tree trunks in frames when there is no honey, because it is a toy, and we consider the methods of feeding poor bees that we have given above on page 172 to be the simplest and best.

Protection of trunks against theft and fire. The apiary is most likely protected against foreign thieves by a high fence and good dogs, and against domestic thieves by the watchful ear and watchful eye of the owner. Theft in frame hives is easier to detect, but in straight hives it is more difficult, because here it often happens that a skilled thief will take out the honey with the combs in the heads, and then fill the place with straw and clay and the trunk will remain as heavy as it was before, while another one will be able to remove it again. honey from straight trunks using a thick wire, obviously not caring about the fact that it will injure the combs, the brood and the bees.

Locking the trunks with locks will not help much, because there is no lock that provides sufficient security for a good thief. However, securing tree trunks against thieves using electricity can provide a good service. For this purpose, beehive valves or locksmith doors are arranged so that when they are opened, the current is immediately closed, or the current is interrupted and a signal is emitted in the beekeeper's apartment. Anyone who knows the principles of arranging electric bells will easily be able to make a similar connection of all the trunks in the apiary, while those who don't know it will do best to go to an appropriate electrical engineer, because a detailed description of such a device, without a specimen, would be incomprehensible to him.

Tree trunks standing on a track are quite protected against fire, as long as they are not too dense and among other buildings. However, trunks placed in piles or pavilions are very exposed to this danger, which is why we strongly advise against keeping bees in pavilions, which are bad for this reason, because when examining the trunks in spring and autumn, they often experience a severe attack because the beekeeper The person working inside the pavilion is not aware of the fact that the trunks, stimulated by the stench of honey, have started to be robbed outside. Moreover, placing tree trunks in piles and pavilions causes many other inconveniences, which we consider unnecessary to describe.

If we want to be insured against fire when wintering the trunks in a lockbox, we should either insure the entire apiary and the lockbox against fire with a fire insurance company, or build the lockbox completely underground and make a roof on it also made of earth and turf.

Beekeeping notes. Accurately recording work in the apiary not only gives us a lot of pleasure, but also brings incalculable benefits. How many times, if you have good notes, can you find in them in later years a clue as to how to best direct your work, or avoid making a mistake. The whole difficulty of keeping records undoubtedly lies in the practical form, which should be arranged in such a way that it does not cause any difficulties for the person writing it down, is as simple and short as possible, and yet gives a clear view of the state of affairs, even after a dozen or so years. With this in mind, I am providing here three forms according to which records have been kept in my apiaries for over a dozen years.

Notes made in the form of similar tables are the most convenient because they make reviewing much easier. However, you should avoid having too many fields, as it makes writing things down very difficult and will eventually get messy. It is best to make occasional notes near the eyelet on each trunk, immediately after each inspection, and then transfer them to the form. For this purpose, a piece of black or ordinary wooden board is attached next to the eyelet, on which it is best to write with shortened chalk characters.

Notes on grating sheet metal. A good grating sheet should have gaps of exactly 4.4 cm. wide or any long, and the edges of these gaps should be rounded so that the bees do not damage their wings when squeezing through them. When using a grid sheet in a hive, it should be placed so that its gaps lie horizontally, not vertically or in another direction, because only horizontal gaps can be comfortably passed by bees. Instead of grating sheet metal, you can use hard cover paper (tarpaper) with good results, in which you can cut out gaps of exactly 4.4 cm. wide, but such paper must be stretched with some kind of varnish to make it stiff, because if it were bent, the gaps would widen slightly and the mother could pass through them. You can also make a lattice board, but not by cutting slots in it, because it would be difficult to determine their exact width, but by nailing very thin strips (e.g. cut from furnier) at intervals to a larger hole made in a thin board. strictly 4.4 ctm. distant.

§. 9. About honey.

In a well-run apiary, we try to make a profit mainly only from honey, while the profit from wax is secondary. We discussed how to proceed in order to obtain the highest possible income from the trunk in honey in § 5, and we discussed the properties of honey in Part I, page 262. honey in combs, coming from straight trunks, must be properly separated from the earwax before use.

Draining honey from combs. If the combs containing honey are in larger pieces, not broken or crumpled, we can extract honey from them most quickly using a honey extractor. Honey is best extracted from broken and crushed combs by slowly draining it and using moderate heat; and we can accomplish this either by the sun or by fire. If we want to drain honey from the combs in the sun, we place them on a sieve, which we place on a suitably large pot so that it fits tightly into its opening, and we also cover the sieve tightly with a glass pane, or with another sieve that overlaps it. We place this entire device in a safe place in the sun, and as the sun heats up, the honey will begin to drip from the combs and flow into the pot. When the sun heats up strongly, the wax melted from the combs will also flow out and then collect from the surface of the honey. We can also use the same device when melting honey with fire, and then we place this device either on a moderately heated kitchen, or we put it in a bakery oven, deliberately heated, or after baking bread. Instead of an ordinary pot and a sieve, you can make a pot made of sheet metal and a sieve adapted to it, with a sheet metal rim and a wire mesh, tightly closed with a sheet metal lid.

When melting in the sun, the apparatus shown in Figure 139 may be advantageously used. This device is made of tin-plate and has a base with forks in which a semi-cylindrical box is mounted on an axis, upside down and on one side, with the b open. A wire mesh frame is placed in this box, on which are placed pieces of slabs intended for melting, and then a well-adjusted pane is placed on top of it, with a side latch and well-fitting panes. The device arranged in this way is placed in the sun, tilted obliquely so that the sun's rays fall on it almost perpendicularly, and soon the sheet will heat up and honey and wax will begin to drip into the vessel placed under the drain coil.

It is obvious that when melting honey, the device should be placed in a closed place behind glass so that the bees cannot access it, while when melting wax from dry combs, it can also be placed outdoors.

Honey in this way is almost as pure as honey extracted from a honey extractor. Since there will still be some honey left in the earwax remnants, you can rinse them with warm water and use the resulting sweet liquid to make either beer or vinegar.

If we intend to use honey in combs to make drinks, there is no need to drain it from the combs first, but simply pour warm water (30 to 35° C.) over the combs and rinse them until all the honey has dissolved.

Processing honey into drinks. We make drinks from honey either directly without cooking or by brewing it first. Drinks made without cooking are called wines, while drinks made from brewed honey are called rich honey. We can make wine and rich honey either from honey alone or with the addition of various fruits. So we have, for example, honey wine, honey-gooseberry wine, currant wine, apple wine, etc., as well as saturated honeys with different names according to various methods of brewing, and saturated fruit honeys, called according to the fruits used in their production: dereniaki, agrestniaki, currant honey, wishniakaini etc. Again, according to the amount of water added to honey when making the above-mentioned drinks, we distinguish wines and meads: dwójniaki, trioniaki, czwórniaki, etc. d. are j. that have once or twice as much water as honey. I described the method of preparing various of these drinks in detail in "Miedosytnictwo" *), to which we also refer those who want to learn more about this branch of home industry, and here we will give only a few more important recipes in a summary.

*) Love from satisfaction, or the art of processing fruit and honey, written by Dr. T. Ciesielski. Lviv, 1898. Third edition.

If we make a drink from pure potoka, it is easy to calculate its strength according to the amount of honey and water mixed together, for example 1 liter of honey and 1 liter of water will give two niaks; After mixing 1 liter of honey and 2 liters of water, we will get a Trójniak it. d. However, when we prepare a drink from honeycombs or from the washings, the strength of such a liquid, i.e. the honey content in it, must be measured with an appropriate device called a "saccharometer". However, when producing drinks on a smaller scale, there may be no saccharometer available. hand, so we give here a method, although less precise, but convenient and economical, for calculating the strength of a liquid containing honey. For this purpose, fresh chicken eggs are taken (old ones, with more air under the shell, would show inaccurately). The liquid whose honey content we want to test is heated to 14° C. (11° R.) and then fresh eggs are placed in it. If the fluid being tested is bicarbonate, the eggs will float to the surface and lie flat, showing an unsubmerged ellipse (longitudinal circle), one axis of which will be 4 cm. and the transverse axis is 3 cm. If the liquid is three-dimensional, the eggs are placed almost vertically, leaving an unimmersed space of an ellipse of 3 cm. longitudinal axis a 2 t / 2 ctm. transverse axis. If the liquid is a quartz liquid, the eggs will flow completely perpendicularly, leaving a circle with a diameter of 1 T / 2 cm emerging above the surface of the liquid. The less honey there is in the liquid, the deeper the eggs are immersed.

Honey beer - honey can be used to make a light, refreshing and very healthy drink, similar to beer made from barley malt. This honey beer is very cheap, and once you taste it, you will value it higher than various expensive imported beers. The product is very simple.

For this purpose, a 12 or 11% wort is prepared, i.e. 88 or 89 liters of pure water, 12 or 11 liters of pure patoca. After mixing thoroughly, it is brewed on a steady fire until it is completely boiling, adding enough water during cooking so that after the cooking is completed, there is as much liquid left as there was at the moment when the honey started to boil, which is the same amount as during boiling. saturated honey, you should then mark it on a perpendicularly placed oar or other stick. This way, after cooking, we will have wort containing the same percentage of honey, i.e. approximately 11 or 12°/0. Higher percentage wort is not suitable for beer because it produces a drink that is too sweet; less percentage results in beer that is too weak and is easily sour.

After skimming the wort, 200 grams of hop cones are taken for each 100 liters of liquid, which should be of the best quality. These hops are placed lightly in a large bag made of thin fabric, e.g. muslin, or poured directly into the wort; then put the fire on low again so that the hops and wort boil evenly. If the hops are in a bag, you can collect the scum that now comes out in abundance; and if the hops are thrown in loosely, the scum should be collected only after half an hour of boiling. After boiling the wort with hops for about half an hour, the bag is removed, the liquid is squeezed out and, having once again collected the scum, the fire is extinguished. When the wort cools down to 30° C, it is poured into a barrel to ferment. If the hops were placed loosely, after skimming, the wort should first be strained through a clean sieve or thin cloth, as some of the hops will remain in the liquid. If you want to proceed carefully, you can first strain the wort through a thin cloth when pouring it into a barrel.

To quickly start the fermentation, a quarter of a liter of clean, fresh top yeast from a good brewery is added to the wort poured into a barrel; if there is no such yeast, you use pound yeast, i.e. pressed yeast, counting on 100 liters of wort, 20 grams of such yeast. Pressed yeast is first spread in 1 liter of wort heated to 30° C; then it is kept at warm room temperature for several hours, and when abundant pearls begin to appear, this leaven is poured into the wort to be fermented. At the same time, you should make sure that the wort is not hotter than 30° C, because then the yeast would boil, i.e. it would simply be killed.

The wort is poured into a barrel, first thoroughly scalded and washed, and set to ferment in a warm place, at a temperature of about 16° C, e.g. in a heated room or kitchen. It is best when the size of the barrel is proportional to the amount of liquid, i.e. when the poured wort fills the barrel almost completely, leaving a free space under the knob the length of the index finger. The wronka is covered with a clean sheet, and soon the wort will begin to ferment, and larger and larger worts will begin to emerge. If storm storms were to flow outside, the barrel next to the crow should be cleaned from the edge every day, wiped clean, and the flake should be washed, dried or replaced with another clean one. Liquid flowing out of the barrel or dripping under the barrel should not be poured back into the barrel, as it could spoil the beer.

When the turbulent fermentation has passed, which will take place in 3 to 5 days depending on the higher or lower temperature, i.e. when the storms stop flowing out of the cap, or when the noise that initially comes from the barrel turns into a rustle, then the cap is closed with a tight cork (plug). ), and after turning the barrel with its spigot upwards, a spigot is inserted into the spigot and the barrel is moved from the warm room to a cool place, e.g. a cellar, placing it on a raised surface.

Here, the barrel is left unoccupied for two to three days, and then, using an inserted tap (pip), the finished beer is poured straight into clean bottles, which should be immediately corked well and placed in a cool cellar. After a few days, the beer is ready for use, and over time it gains even greater strength and better taste.

This beer is light and strongly effervescent; Therefore, when uncorking the bottles, be careful not to let it spill out. The better and more precise the corks, the tastier the beer will be; beer in poorly capped bottles may turn sour after some time.

If you want to store beer for a longer period of time, you must place the bottles horizontally in the cellar, otherwise the carbonic acid will escape through the cork over time and the beer will spoil. All light beers are preserved by the carbonic acid they contain; when this is missing, acetic fermentation begins.

Hunter's berries are made in the same way; only after boiling the wort, in addition to 200 grams of hops, 100 grams of fresh juniper berries are added per 100 liters of liquid, which are cooked together with the hops. You can also add no hops at all, just juniper berries, but such a beer will not be pleasant for everyone; however, the beer seasoned with hops and juniper tastes very nice, healthy and is very similar to the Grodziski beer, which is produced in Grodzisk, in the Grand Duchy of Pozna?, and which is distributed to various parts of the world as a therapeutic beer.

Mead, i.e. satiated. Saturated honey can be made with different strengths and flavors, depending on the ratio in which we mix it with water and what spices we use. The healthiest is pure honey, without any roots.

If, when brewing honey, we use half as much water as pure honey, i.e. patoki, we will get half torak honey; if we add equal parts of honey and water, it will be dwójniak; and taking twice as much water as honey, we will make a trout. Pó?torak and dwójniak must be kept for many years before they are good for drinking; Therefore, it is best to make Trójniak for home use. The production of all these honeys is the same.

We will describe the Trójniak product in more detail here. Take one part of pure honey, patoki, mix with two parts of pure water and place in a suitably large vessel on the fire for brewing. The vessel can only be half or at most ^/ 3 full, otherwise the honey will run out during brewing. Let the fire burn slowly and steadily; if the honey threatens to run out, spread the fire or add some cold water to the vessel, which you must have at hand just in case.

When the honey is so hot that it begins to boil, put a clean stick in the pot and mark how high the honey is in the pot. The honey should slowly simmer for 3 to 4 hours; then collect any scum that comes to the surface; and be careful lest he run out. Once the scum stops rising after several hours of cooking, use a stick to measure how much liquid is left; if there is more of it, cook until it reaches the designated quantity; if there is less of it, add boiled clean water to the required amount.

Now cool the brewed honey to a temperature of 30° C, i.e. so that your finger neither gets cold nor burns, and pour it into a barrel or flask to ferment. To speed up the fermentation, add yeast as instructed when making honey beer. You can do without adding yeast, but then the honey will ferment slower.

The barrel or bottle intended for fermentation must be washed and scalded as carefully as possible; You cannot use acidified vessels, because instead of saturated honey you would get vinegar. The barrel or bottle should not be filled completely, as the liquid will rise to the top during fermentation, and if it overflows, it can easily turn sour. The opening of the barrel or flask is lightly covered with a clean sheet or bag filled with sand. Honey will ferment best when it is placed in a place where the air temperature is around 16° C. Once the liquid is boiling, i.e. fermentation stops, cover the barrel or bottle tightly with a cork and put it in a cool place, e.g. a basement, where it will remain in the peace until it is completely clean. This will usually happen only in spring next year.

Once we have completely cleansed ourselves, we pour the honey out or into bottles, which we keep corked but not sealed for use; or we drain it into another clean cask, where it may remain well corked for any length of time.

Honey made in this way is an extremely healthy drink and is stored for a very long time, gaining a better taste with age.

Fruity and honey wine. The climatic conditions of our country do not allow us to grow vines on such a scale that we could turn the pressed grape juice into a drink enjoyed by the inhabitants of warmer climates; However, this does not mean that we should be condemned to drinking a drink as intoxicating as vodka, or as soothing to the spirit as heavier beer.

The healthiest alcoholic drink is undoubtedly wine, because it contains a relatively small amount of alcohol - the strongest natural wines contain only 12 to 15 percent - and the alcohol contained in it is relatively pure, as it does not contain the harmful so-called downsides that alcohol with kneaded flour, and further that wine contains some tartaric and citric acid, which have a refreshing effect.

Nature has indeed spared us sweet grapes suitable for making wine, but it has also generously provided us with other juicy fruits and nectar, abundantly collected by our bees, from which, through skillful combination, we can make drinks that are as good as grape wine. It is truly strange that, given the widespread poverty in our country, we prefer to waste money on buying expensive wines, vodka or beer, instead of, wisely using God's gift, to make a healthy drink not only for our own needs, but also to supply others with it. . *

All fruits are suitable for making wine, such as: currants, gooseberries, raspberries, sweet cherries, cherries, barberries, dogwoods, apples, pears, plums, plums, wild strawberries, blackberries, blackberries, grapes, etc.; in short, all fruits that contain sweetness or acid, but are not poisonous, harmful or distasteful.

Making wine is very simple. And so: the ripe fruit is collected, crushed into a pulp in a vessel with a fork, and then the juice is extracted from it in the usual way. Water and pure honey are added to the juice, it is fermented, i.e. pickled, and when it is finished, the wine is ready. The juice should be squeezed quickly and immediately seasoned with honey or sugar, because if left without seasoning for longer than 12 hours, it would start to sour, and then we would get vinegar instead of wine. It's also about how much water and honey to add to the juice, and how to ferment it.

Experience has taught that for sour fruits - such as currants, cherries, barberries, dogwoods, plums - for each liter (or any measure) of pure juice, liters (or the same measures) of river water or clean well water should be added, plus 1 1 / 2 liters (or l T / 2 of the same measure) of patoki honey. For sweeter fruits, such as gooseberries, raspberries, apricots, sweet cherries, pears, wild strawberries, blackberries, 3 liters of water / 4 liters of honey are added for each liter of pure juice.

The juice, water and honey are poured together and the meat is then mixed well.

When pressing the juice, you can pour some water over the pomace again, crush it again and squeeze it out; but this second juice counts as water, not as pure juice. So let's say: if we have 1 liter of pure currant juice / 2 liters of watery juice from the second pressing, we will only add 2 J / 2 liters of pure water and 1V 2 liters of potoka. Instead of honey, you can also use regular white sugar, instead of 1 liter of patoka, you use a kilogram of sugar, or you can use half honey and half sugar.

There is no harm in mixing several types of fruit together; blackcurrants, raspberries, wild strawberries and dogwoods can even be considered a very beneficial addition to any wine.

This must, seasoned in this way and well mixed, is poured into any very clean vessel, e.g. a barrel, a pot, a flask; — the opening of this vessel is covered (tied) with cloth or clean paper, in which holes are made with a thick needle, and placed in a dry place in a not too cold basement, or if there is no basement, in a cool room. After a few days, the liquid will begin to ferment, or fizz, which can be recognized by the "sizzling" sound that comes from the liquid when you open your ear. This sizzling is caused by tiny bubbles of carbonic acid that escape from the liquid during fermentation.

The cooler the place, the longer the liquid will ferment; finally, after the end of fermentation, after 3 to 6 months, the sizzling stops completely and the initially cloudy liquid becomes completely clear, i.e. clarified. Once the drink is clear, it should be capped tightly. After the liquid has completely cleared, the wine is ready and can be carefully poured from this vessel into the bottles, taking care not to disturb the yeast at the bottom. You can also pour the wine into another barrel or leave it in the same barrel, just remember to cork or plug the wine well in the barrel so that it does not air out, because if it is not plugged it may turn sour. After fermentation, the wine should be kept cool; so if you don't have a basement, it's best to bury them in the ground in a shady, dry place.

Making this wine, as we can see, is very simple and cannot go wrong; you just have to keep everything as clean as possible. Therefore, all vessels and utensils used for making wine must be thoroughly washed and scalded with water. Barrels used for fermentation must be clean and perfectly scalded; whoever can, should sulphurize them, i.e. buy sulfur in a sheet and put the lit sheet on a wire into the barrel through a plug and plug it. After a few hours, the spout is opened and the barrel is rinsed with water to remove the sulfur smell. A barrel containing any sour liquid, e.g. vinegar, cabbage, etc., must never be used for fermentation. If someone uses a pot for fermentation, it should be either whitened and well washed, or, if it is a so-called "carded" pot, not whitened, it must be new and perfectly scalded.

It does not matter whether the barrel or vessel is full or not. As long as we maintain the exact ratio given here and exemplary purity, the wine will always be successful. You can also use a higher honey ratio, like the one I gave above; then we will get sweet wine. However, I do not advise anyone to use a smaller ratio of honey than the one given, because then they will most likely get vinegar, not wine*).

Whoever uses our recipe, we ask him to also teach his other neighbors. First of all, let's plant currants and gooseberries in our gardens, and we will have excellent wine every year. The difference between honey wine and saturated honey is that raw honey is used for honey wines, while for saturated honeys it must be boiled or brewed.

*) Detailed and accurate knowledge of the production of fruit wines, rich honeys, fruit honeys, sparkling wines, beer, etc. was written by Dr. TeofiL Ciesielski titled: Mead making. Price: 3 crowns.

Wi?niak, dereniak, raspberry, etc. However, cherry or dereniak is a very tasty drink. For this purpose, a barrel is filled halfway with cherries or cornels, and after boiling the fill of one part of water and one part of patoka, or at most one part of water and two parts of patoka, the barrel is completely filled. Cover the opening of the barrel with a piece of cloth and place it in a warm place of about 16° C, let it ferment there completely; then plug it and put it in the basement, where it will remain until the liquid is completely clear. Then it should be poured into bottles and corked. Poured mead over the remaining cherries or dogwood trees will, after some time, produce delicious cherry or dogwood fruit.

Raspberry is made in a similar way, but here you don't pour rich honey over the raspberries, because they would run off and turn sour, but you mix in the rich juice squeezed from the raspberries. The same is done for gooseberries, currants, etc

Making gingerbread and cookies. A healthy and delicious delicacy is gingerbread, which anyone who has honey can easily make, especially since this bread can be kept for a long time without losing its goodness. To do this, boil and simmer half a liter of patoka and half a pound of sugar, add some roots, cinnamon and cloves for flavor, and when the syrup cools down, mix it with half a liter of rye flour and one liter of wheat flour. Add two egg yolks and two tablespoons of bicarbonate of soda to the minced dough and knead well again. Make loaves or pancakes from the dough that is supposed to be hard and dense, just like for bread. Having smoothed the tops of the loaves, place them in a moderately hot oven on a baking tray and let the gingerbreads bake; then store in a dry place.

English gingerbread. Heat 500 gr on the fire. patoki, sum it up and add 200 gr. sugar, 150 gr. good butter and mix well, then add approximately 1 kilo of rye or wheat flour, 20 gr. crushed cinnamon, gr. crushed nails and one tablespoon of bicarbonate of soda, first dissolved in a small amount of boiling water. A hard dough is kneaded from this while still warm, adding more flour as needed. After kneading thoroughly, it is placed on baking trays and baked for 1/2 to 2 hours in a moderately hot oven.

Kisses. Heat 500 gr. honey and simmer (if you prefer, you can caramelize the honey a bit), add 20 gr. crushed cinnamon, 50 gr. grated lemon or orange peel; then grind 6 egg yolks with 150 grams of fine sugar and add it to the previously heated honey, and add enough wheat flour to make a hard dough, knead it and knead it perfectly. At the end, pour either 2 glasses of rum or a spoonful of bicarbonate of soda (dissolved first in boiling water), knead and knead the dough perfectly, finally flatten the dough, cut out round pieces from it with a glass and bake it on a baking tray rubbed with butter or clean wax. . (The added rum, like bicarbonate of soda, causes porosity in the baked cake).

Toru? gingerbread. Boil until caramelized 1 kg. patoki, add 750 gr. fine sugar, mix, remove from heat; when it cools down enough to handle meat, add about 1 kg. the most beautiful wheat flour and knead perfectly into a thick, hard dough. Put the dough in a stone pot, tie it with paper and put it in the cellar for a week or even a longer time. Then remove the dough from the pot, clean it if necessary, warm it up a bit (which will make it softer), and gradually knead 6 eggs and 10 gr into it. bicarbonate of soda, first dissolved in a glass of rum or arrack with the addition of 10 gr. crushed cardamom, 2 gr. grated nutmeg and 5 gr. cracked white pepper. Knead all this perfectly for at least an hour, then roll out the dough, cut out long sheets of it, shape them as you like, and bake them on a baking tray in a moderately hot oven.

Farm gingerbread. Boil 750 gr. honey and skimming, pour into a bowl, add 500 gr. fine sugar and about 1 kilo of wheat flour (or half wheat and half rye), first mix the dough with a spatula, and when it cools down, use your hands for at least 1 hour. During the cooking process, gradually add 6 eggs (with egg whites) and 10 or 20 gr of roots of your choice. such as cardamom, cinnamon, nails, anise, lemon peel, almonds or crushed nuts, etc. Finally, dissolve a heaped spoon of bicarbonate of soda in a glass of warm water and pour it into the dough, knead it thoroughly. The dough should be as hard as bread, so add more flour if necessary. After. After kneading thoroughly, place it on a greased baking tray or on wafers and place it in a warm place for an hour to allow it to rise, then put it in a moderately hot oven (just like for pancakes) and bake it. You can also bake gingerbread together with bread, putting it in the oven half an hour later, and then taking it out together with the bread.

§. 10. About wax.

We talked about the properties and nature of wax in the first part of Dyeing, pages 15, 43 and 271, but here we will only talk about the ways of using wax. Nowadays, wax production in a well-run apiary plays a minor role; for well-understood reasons, we try to save wax and only render wax from cut, cleaned or accidentally broken combs.

A comb filling one frame in a Slavic hive will yield about 100 gr of wax, if it is fresh; and if he is older, he will spend from 100 groszy. up to 50 groszy, depending on their age. In straight trunks, in better years, the harvest yields about 200 grams, while a well-cut trunk yields from 500 to 700 grams of pure wax. From 100 kilos of honey in combs, after separating the honeycomb, there will be about 3 kilos of wax after melting the remains of the earwax.

How to store earwax before melting it? Since, in today's apiary management, we only obtain small amounts of wax from the stump on various occasions, it is not worth smelting it every time, but it is necessary to store it for some time until more of it is collected. Earwax cannot be stored loose because the fluke will destroy it, and storing fragments in a sulphurized box is both laborious and expensive; it is best to throw the remaining wax residues into hot water each time, and when they soften, remove them and knead them into balls in your hand, which should be placed in a well-ventilated place to dry well. However, balls of such clumped wax should not be stored for longer than 3 to 4 months, because if stored for a longer period of time, they lose their value because fungi and bacteria nest in them, which destroy the wax so that little of it remains in the balls.

How to melt wax? Anyone who has the device described on page 322 can melt even the smallest pieces of earwax using the sun's rays every time on a sunny day. In the wax melted in this way, there will always be about 1/4 of the wax left between the bees' sheaths, so it is best to collect a larger amount of wax in the form of balls and then melt it together over a fire. When melting, you should not mix the waste from the sweepings with clean wax, because the wax obtained from the sweepings will be dirty, gray and will completely spoil the wax obtained from the healthy earwax, which, depending on the age of the earwax and the color of the perha and honey used by the bees when melting the wax. colors, from white to yellow and even reddish. If you want to extract wax from the garbage, you need to throw it into cold water for several hours, and then other impurities will absorb the water and drown, while the wax remains will remain on top, and then they can be collected and melted separately to make lower wax. Various devices are used to melt wax, but experience shows that the best ones are those in which melted wax is pressed from the earwax to the point of boiling water heated. However, all devices in which wax is extracted from the earwax by heating and dripping without using a press are more convenient, but less good, because in all these cases about 1/4 part of the wax will remain between the cell covers.

If you want to melt wax using a press, you must first get a strong bag. The best are bags made of strong material, such as those used by millers, 90 cm is enough for one bag. this matter. The wax is placed in such a cleanly washed and boiled bag, tamped, tied, placed in a large pot of boiling water and held under the surface of the boiling water with a spatula until the melted wax begins to float to the surface of the water. Then the prepared press is poured with boiling water so that its walls are properly heated, the bag with melted earwax is taken out, placed on the press and pressed vigorously until the wax drips into a vessel filled with warm water. Once the earwax has been extruded, it is poured into boiling water with the bag for a second time and, after it has melted again, it is extruded again.

If you want the press to work properly, it must be kept hot, otherwise the wax in the bag placed in the press will congeal very quickly and will not flow out despite the strongest pressing. For this reason, it is also good if we have melted earwax in several bags at the same time and every time we take one bag out of the press, we immediately put another one in it. If there is a larger amount of earwax, it is boiled loosely in water in a cauldron, stirring constantly so that it does not burn and when the water begins to bubble, then the melted earwax is removed, poured into prepared bags heated in boiling water and put into a press. When boiling earwax in bags, place a wooden disc with holes in it at the bottom of the vessel so that the bag with earwax does not stick directly to the bottom of the vessel, as it would then burn and spoil. Similarly, in pressing plants, grates made of round rollers (ordinary thicker rods) strung on wire should be placed under the bags so that they stick to each other. The bag will stick to such grates, but will not clog the gaps between them, because they are wider at the bottom and therefore the wax flows easily when pressed.

Presses made of a thick block with screws are the best for extruding wax, because once the block is heated, it retains a uniform temperature for a long time, and the screw can be pressed quickly, uniformly and strongly. Ordinary presses used for cheese press the wax quite well with proper practice. The wedge press shown in the attached drawing is less good because it works inconsistently, which means that when the wedge is struck, the wax falls out, and furthermore, the manipulation is more difficult and slower, so the press cools down too much each time. The lever press is simpler than the wedge press and is characterized by the fact that it is easy to operate, but it presses with less force. We provide here a description of the wedge press, improved by Jedrzej Sredniwski, and a description of the lever press by the late. Mr. Fr. Mikolaj Nazarewicz.

Mr. Sredniwski writes: "Ironing with an ordinary wedge press between two boards has the disadvantage that the wax inside the bag must escape through the thick layers of wax to the edge where there is a gap, which makes quick pressing difficult, because the mass cold and puts more resistance to the wedges. Again, these boards are usually tied with a rope at the lower end, so when beating the wedges, the bag with wax usually slides sideways along the smooth boards, and the rope will allow them to open on this side. If you want to improve, you have to knock out the wedges again, straighten the bag and beat again, not being sure whether it won't happen again. During this second manipulation, the mass in the bag cools down, which largely frustrates the work, and sometimes during beating, the rope breaks. Having experienced these inconveniences for three years, I decided to improve the press, or rather, I built a new one, more precisely made, similar to the old one, only I fundamentally changed the crushing boards.

“Instead of trying to describe it, I am attaching a drawing that will best explain it.

“Figure 1 shows the entire press with crushed boards, a footing, b boards, c a thinner wedge, two trays are needed, which are placed right behind the boards, d a thicker wedge; two are also needed. Figure 2 shows one of the crushing boards with nailed slats e. Figure 3 shows two folded boards, cut crosswise, showing the intersection of the slats (rollers) and the gaps between them, widening at the board, which facilitate squeezing and drainage of the wax.

"The crossbars on which the boards hang should be screwed so that the press can be disassembled if necessary. The screws must be inserted into the tree, both the cap and the screw cap, so the length of the screws must be proportional to the thickness of the tree. There should be a wider recess near the screw cap so that pliers or a wrench can be inserted when loosening or tightening the screw.

“The press must be made of hard wood, preferably oak. The hinges must be very strong, otherwise they will break. Such a press can be very useful for squeezing juice from fruit, e.g. when making apple pie, etc.

“I use a bag made of thick and strong canvas, sewn in a regular form, the width is the same as the width of the boards. Before pouring the wax mass, I pour hot water over the crushing boards, put a bag there, previously dipped in water, and attach the edge of the bag to 4 pins driven into the crossbar of the boards. During the second ironing, I take out the bag, shake it, tighten the lid better and iron it some more. One inconvenience with this press is that after the last ironing, some wax remains in the grooves, but it can either be poured with boiling water and it will flow out, or after it has completely cooled, you can push it out with whole sticks of nail, because it will stick out from the tree.

Fr. Nazarewicz expresses himself as follows in Bartnik 1875:

“Experience has taught me that when using a wedge press, it takes a lot of effort, splashes, and often burns, and yet there is still a lot of wax left in the wax boins.

"To prevent such inconvenience and loss, I have installed a stool press, convenient and simple, which I highly recommend - its construction and method of use are as follows:

“I had a stool made of a log 3 inches thick, 13 inches wide and ö 1 /» long, commonly called a stool. — To both sides of the stool, in its smaller half, which is 1'/s high, I nailed half-inch strips, protruding 3'/s of an inch above the surface of the stool. Then I wrapped the end of the stool and the slats with a angular bar made of a strong iron bar, which I had nailed to the stool and slats with studs to make sure it would not move. - This lever is to rise above the surface of the 37* inch stool to allow for the free insertion and removal of the end of the 3-inch thick upper beam. Finally, I prepared the upper press of the appropriate length and thickness for the one from which the stool was made - narrower only by Va inch in width - and the press was ready.

“When I need to use it, I place the end with the slatted and slatted end over the tub - for this purpose I use two bricks which I place under the hind legs. Then, I place a bag with the wax mass at the end with a handle, I put the end of the bag under the handle and exert pressure on the bag, at first with the weight of the bag itself, then I help a little with my hands, and finally I sit on the other end of it - and after changing the position of the bag a few times, I will shake the remaining mass towards its end, tie the bag tighter and press it again. In this way, I get wax waxes as well pressed as I have ever had from any press before - and what's more, the helpers used in the work give me some satisfaction, claiming that the tedious work of squeezing wax using such a press turns into a real toy.

“However, noticing that a certain part of the wax still remains in the wax bags, and that this is a consequence of the longer journey the wax has to travel before it flows out of the bag, I improved the described press in this way:

“I provided the end of the stool on which the waxing takes place with three parallel grooves, 3 inches apart, lV 4 cubits long, 1 inch wide, 3/4 inch deep, and reaching to the very end of the stool. So that the bag with the wax mass carved in the stool would not clog the grooves and allow the wax to flow freely, I covered the part of the stool with the grooves with a board half an inch thick, 42 cubits long, and the width corresponding to the width of the stool, in which I drilled a centribore into the board towards the grooves underneath. holes as thick as a finger, spaced 3 inches apart.

“When a bag with wax mass is placed on such a drilled board and pressed with a stone block in the already known way, the wax, which facilitates the flow into the grooves, disappears from the bag in a shorter time and with less pressure and leaves the wax-bonnets without any value.

“When preparing such a press, the legs of the stool should be no higher than 13 inches, because a higher stool is not as convenient for work; the legs should be placed 12 inches from the ends of the board, and the pair of legs at the end where the wax is pressed should be made of strong, thick oak; because the weaker legs cannot withstand the pressure and should be wedged as carefully as possible, because the smallest crack when the bag is pressed allows the wax to fall onto the ground and cause disorder; and it's best to exercise your legs without digging through the brusa.

“For a bag, or rather for a wax bag, it is best to use cloth woven from twine, which is used by mills to create dustbins for grain harvesting. One and a half elbows of such cloth for one bag is the most appropriate amount, sewing only a bag from the specified cloth is a bit tedious, because before using it, you first need twines, which are in the fabric warp, and tied carefully and firmly to prevent fraying. A narrower bag is more practical than a wider one, the widest one should not exceed 12 inches.

The extruded wax should be collected in a vessel filled with warm water, which should be slightly wider at the top, and in any case not narrower than at the bottom. The water should be warm so that the wax hardens slowly, because then the impurities collect at the bottom under the hardened wax disk and can then be easily removed from the wax by scraping them, whereas if the wax flowed into a vessel with cold water, it would harden quickly. , impurities would remain among the wax, and it would have to be melted a second time and cleaned in warm water to clean it.

They also often recommend various types of pots for melting wax; the best yet is Pauli's double-walled pot. Water is poured between the double walls of this pot, wax is placed in the central space and covered with a lid. When the water begins to boil, steam escapes from it and through small holes in the inner side wall of the pot, it reaches the earwax and slowly melts it. The melted wax flows out through a coil running from the bottom of the pot's internal space through its double wall and flows into a flat container with warm water placed underneath. Although this pot is convenient to use and the wax flows out very cleanly, there is still a lot of wax left in the melted wax, which can only be squeezed out using a press. You can easily check whether there is still wax in the wax sticks by taking a handful of warm wax sticks, squeezing the water out of them, then spreading the substance and seeing if, after cooling, there are traces of congealed wax.

Other beekeepers recommend a large pot into which an iron screw press is inserted for melting the wax. The pot is filled with water and then an iron press loaded with earwax is lowered into it. When the water boils, the wax begins to melt in the press, and then the screw of the press is slowly tightened until the wax is completely pressed. The emerging wax is collected on the surface of the water, from where it is either drained through a coil placed on the side, or left to solidify in the pot itself.

It would seem that this press, placed in boiling water, will squeeze out the wax best, because the wax does not cool down, but experience shows that even here, a significant amount of wax remains in the wax rolls, especially the middle part, so that if you want to squeeze out the rest, , the wax-boins must then be mixed and extruded again.

From all this it turns out that the most practical is an ordinary, strong screw press, the socket of which for receiving the earwax boiled in boiling water is carved out in a thick stump, because once it heats up, it keeps the earwax melted for a long time, so that the bag can be shake the earwax several times and press it again, without the need to boil it several times.

§. 11. Seven honey hunting secrets.

As in any profession, in beekeeping there are certain secrets that must be strictly followed if you want to be successful. And yes:

Secret one: Keep only strong trunks. It follows from our entire treatise on bees that only a strong trunk can give us reliable income and profits, while weak trunks can only bring us trouble and expense. Therefore, weak trunks should either be quickly repaired and strengthened, or connected with others. In Slavic ulacles, we consider as strong trunks which during the honey harvest have 7 to 8 red frames and in which the bees not only occupy all 10 black frames, but also hang under the frames with their beards.

Secret two: Have spare honey. A prudent beekeeper should always be prepared for the possibility of being surprised by a spring that is unfriendly to bees. Since excessive amounts of honey should not be given to the trunks for the winter, he should have spare honey either in combs or in vessels in the storage room, so that he can supply the bees with something if necessary. The beekeeper who prefers to sell all the honey he sells should set aside a certain amount of money to buy sugar if necessary.

Secret three: Benefit the bees. There are two ways to achieve this goal: a) transporting bees for a certain period of time to places where a large number of one and the same plant blooms, e.g. among hreczki, rapeseeds, fields with Swedish clover, esparzeta, linden forests, etc. b) planting in the vicinity apiaries of melliferous trees in larger numbers, as we mentioned on page 70, and sowing in large areas of fodder and honey-producing plants that are beneficial for both cattle and bees, e.g. mustard, hreczki, esparzeta, saradela, vetch, field bean, etc. Sowing even very melliferous plants in small quantities will not be of any use, and it is also not advisable to sow plants on a larger scale that are melliferous but do not provide any farms, in addition to honey, there are also other benefits, such as borage, meadowsweet (phacelia), lepnica, beewort, beewort, reseda, etc. *

The fourth secret: Take all actions in time. No branch of the farm is more susceptible to carelessness than the apiary. Neglecting one day of work in the apiary can result in a whole year's loss. Therefore, a beekeeper should always take advantage of the right time as carefully as possible and never postpone any activity until later. For example, there was a beautiful spring time, and the sluggish beekeeper postponed the inspection of the tree trunks from one day to the next, and finally decided to get down to work, when it was rainy and cold, and most of the apiary died of hunger. Or also: the honey harvest is approaching, the queens need to be removed, a lazy person puts off this rather tedious work from one day to the next, suddenly there is a rainy season and the capture of the queens is lost, and with it the benefits from the honey harvest. This again postpones the breaking out of the queen cells until the last moment; it was a sunny day, everything could be dealt with, but the innate lazy whispers in the ear: "it will be better in the afternoon", the afternoon came, but with it a three-day long rain; finally the weather began to shine, and with it swarms poured in as if from a cornucopia, half of them flew out into the world, and what's more, the benefits of honey harvesting were lost. And how many times does it happen that a lazy beekeeper postpones the regularization of the trunks for the winter until a later time, the good season passes, the cold and rain come, and the consequence is either a great mitre, or a significant loss of poorly stocked trunks. For this reason, I have always believed that the motto for a good beekeeper should be: "What you have to do tomorrow, do what you can today", or in any case: "don't play the postponement game".

Fith secret: Prepare a worker and limit the brood during the honey harvest. We can only get good use from the apiary when the trunks are as strong as possible during the honey harvest and when the brood does not interfere with the extraction of honey and does not distract the worker from tending it. How to achieve this, we discussed in §. 4. page 187 et seq. and §. 5th page 236 et seq.

Sixth secret: Proper use of honey extractor. A honey extractor is an invaluable tool in a well-run apiary, but in the hands of a greedy or unscrupulous apiary it is a razor cutting the thread of life of billions of bee creatures. For this reason, a prudent beekeeper should be very careful when using the honey extractor, so that later he does not need to repair what he has done wrong inconsiderately. How to proceed when using a honey extractor is described in §. 5. st. 239 and further.

Seventh secret: Winterize the bees coolly without water, or warmly but in the dark and with water. We showed why bees should be hibernated this way and not differently in Part 1 of Beekeeping §. 12 pp. and further, as well as in Part II of Beekeeping §. 7 p. 274 et seq.

Whoever follows the above secrets conscientiously will never complain that he does not like bees and that he has no use for them.

§. 12. Plants useful for bees.

Here is a list of plants that are most important for bees, sorted by their flowering time. Flowering dates are taken on average from fifteen-year-old records in the Lviv area. The flowering time of plants is slightly different in each region, sometimes earlier or later, so whoever wants to use these notes must first check on several spring plants how much earlier or later they usually bloom in his area than in the Lviv area, and then, according to this, he can approximately calculate the flowering time of other plants in his area.

It should be added that the flowering time of plants varies every year, depending on the end of winter and spring, rains and the temperature of the atmosphere, but the time intervals between the flowering of some plants do not change significantly. If you want to create such a calendar of plant flowering, you need to observe the same individuals every year for trees and shrubs, and for one- and two-year-old plants, record their flowering from one and the same location; If this is not observed, the dates for one and the same area may differ significantly from year to year.

The plants that are more important for bees are the gray ones, and they are very beneficial and are very beneficial.

Honey Time -N 03

The name of the first flower - Ü

flower <%•

MARCH.

Galanthus nivalis, Snowberry G?adysz. 6

/2-3%

Hepatica triloba, Hepatica Trojan 17

Leucojum vernum, Spring Snowball 19

Crocus vemus, Spring saffron. . 20

Salix Capraea, Willow Iwa. . . 25 1

"viminalis" Witwa. . 25 1

Anemone Pulsatilla, Anemone Pasque 26

Corylus Avellana, Common Hazel 26 — 1

Daphne mezereum, Wolf's phloem 26

Tussilago farfara, Common coltsfoot. 26

APRIL.

ZJlmus campestris, Common elm. . . 7 1 — 1

Lamium purpureum, Lamium purpureum 8 1 — 1

" album, White Light. . . . 9 1 - 1

Corydalis bulbosa, Corydalis bulbosa 12 1 — 1

Time Honey .N-

Name of the first flower plant - U

flower towy $

Primula elatior, Greater primrose. 14 — —

" officinalis, Primrose Klucze 15 — —

Cornus mas, ?widwa Dogwood .... 15 1 —

Anemone nemorosa, wood anemone. 20 1 —

" ranunculoides, " buttercup 29 1 —

Caltha palustris, Kniat Lotacz .... 20 1 —

Gage a lutea, Common goldenrod ...... 20 1 —

Populus alba, White poplar ..... 20 1 —

" trem ula, Topól Osika ... 20 1 —

" nigra, " black. . . 22 1 —

Pulmonaria officinalis, Common lungwort

common . . . 20 1 —

" mollis, Downy Lungwort 24 1 —

Prunus avium, Gzeresznia. . . . . 24 1 —

" insititia, Lubaszka 26 1 —

" spinosa, Tarnina 26 1 —

“ Gerasus, Wisznia 28 1 —

Fritillaria imperiulis, Imperial Crown 26 1 —

Orobus vernus, Spring pea plant. 29 1 —

MAY.

Larix, europaea, Common Larch. . 1 - 1

Fraxinus excelsior, Ash ". . 2 1 —

Card?mine pratensis, Meadow Crescent 3 1 —

Taraxacum officinale, Brodawnik Mni

Szek 4 to Jes. 1 —

Rhamnus cathartica, Buckthorn 4 1 —

" Frangula, " Kruszyna 10 to jes. 1 —

Rib es grossularia, A grest. . . . . . 5 1 —

" rubrum, Common currant ... 9 1 —

" nigrum, " black ... 12 1 —

" aureum, " golden... 16 1 —

Acer pla?anoides, Norway maple ... 5 11

"Pseudoplatanus, Maple Jawor. . 20/11

" tataricum, Tatar maple ... 25/11

Narcissus poeticus, Narcissus 5 — —

Ajuga reptans, Ajuga reptans. 6 1 —

: " genevensis, " hairy. . 9 1 —

Betula alba, Common birch ..... 6 1 —

Prunus Armeniaca, Apricot ...... 6 1 1

“Persica, Peach. . . . G 1 1

“ Domestica, ?liwka 6 1 —

" Padus, Czeremcha 13 1 —

350

Honey Time

The name of the first flower

flower

Pirus communis, Grusza 7 1

Ä Malus, Jab?o? 9 1

Convallaria majalis, Lily of the valley .... 9 1

Lamium maculatum, Spotted moth 10 1

Carpinus betulus, Hornbeam 11 1?

Galeobdolon luteum, Yellow warbler. 11 years old

Sambucus racemosa, Elderberry. 11 1?

Brassica Napus olelfera biennis, Rapeseed

winter 12 1

Quercus pedunculata, English oak 12 1

"sessihflora, "winter. 12 1

Abies pectinata, Fir 12 —

'excelsa, ?wierk (S merek). . . 13 —

Spartium scoparium, Broom beetle 13 1

Vaccinium Myrtillus, Blackberry (Black

berry) 13 1

, uliginosum, ?ochinia . . . 15 1

“ Vit is Idaca, Borówka Ka

muonka (Cowberry) . . . . 20 1

Fagus silvatica, Beech 13 ?

Barbarea vulgaris, Winter mustard 15 1

Cytisus ruthenicus, Szczodrzenica Nawrot 15 1

"Laburnum" gold. . 23 1

" supinus " peak 26 1

Pinus silvestris, Pine 15 —

Polygonatum anceps, common lacewing 16 1

" multiflorum " Liczyd?o 18 1

Anchusa officinalis, Czerczeniec Wo

language hunting . . . . . . . . . 1 8 1

Fragaria vesca, wild strawberry. . 17 1?

" collina " hilly 18 1?

" elatior " Strawberry 18 1?

Orchis Morio, Cuckoo Orchid. . . 17 i

" militaris " kukawka . . . 17 1

' maculata ' spotted . . . 23 1

Symphytum tuberosum, Comfrey bul

wady 17 1

" officinale, " lekarski 28 1

Chelidonium majas, Celandine, Swallowtail

herb (Cyndalja) 18 1?

Juniperus communis, Juniper.... 18 —

Yicia sepium, Fence vetch .... 18 ?

Sorbus aucuparia, Rowan .... 18 1?

Syringa vulgaris, common lilac. . 19/1?

" persica, " Persian.... 20 1?

Aesculus Hippocastannm, Wild chestnut 20 1

351

Time Honey 'N

Name of the first flower plant •"O

Flower

flower ©4

thats you •}? £ii

IN

Berberis vulgaris, Berberis vulgaris 20 1

Salix fragilie, brittle willow. . . 20 1

Orobus laevigatas, yellow pea plant 20 1

Caragana arborescens, Caragana arborescens, ta 22 1

Carum, Carvi, Kmin Karolek. . . . 22 1

Lonicera tatarica, Tatar honeysuckle 23 1

L^dum palvstre, Swiniebagno . . . . 23

23 1 - 1 1

Medicago sativa, Alfalfa 24 1?

Bunias orientalis, Oriental cress 24 1 —

Alnus glutinosa, Common alder. . . 2 5

25 1 - 1 1

Crataegus oxyacantha, Hawthorn 26 1 —

Melittis Melissophyllum, Honeyeater

jownikowy 26 1

Paeonia officinalis, Peony officinalis. 27 1

Vinca minor, Common periwinkle. . . 27 1

Aquilegia vulgaris, Common Columbine. . 28 1

Cynoglossum officinale, Ostrze? dog's tongue 28 1

Vmcetoxicum officinale, Hellebore lekarstii 29 1

Onobrjchis sativa, Esparzeta. . . . 29 1

Sinapis arvensis, Field mustard. . 30 to autumn 1

" alba, " white . . 30 1

" nigra, " black. . 30 1 — .

Raphanus Raphanistrum, Radish

Rzepie? (Ognicha) . . 30 to autumn 1 —

Trifolium repens, White clover,

Orzeszek 30 1

Viburnum Opulus, Common viburnum. 30 1?

Lycium barbarum, Legus willow tree

(Koziróg) 30 to jes. 1 — 1 —

JUNE.

Lychnis flos cuculi, Meadow frog

(Cuckoo) 1 1? —

Lychnis Viscaria, Firletka Smó?ka. . 1 1? — 1

?tubus Idaeus, Malina 2 1 —

" fruticosus, Blackberry 10 1 —

Melampyrum arvense, Grasshopper 3 ? _

" nemorosum, " forester 4 ? —

" pratense " meadow 4 ? _ - —

Tragopogon pratensis, Kozibród meadow S

Vaccinium oxycoccus, Cranberry. . . 4

Linaria vulgaris, Common flax. . . A 1

Verbena officinalis, Common witch hazel 4 . —

Evonymus europaea, Evonymus europaea 5

352

Honey Time

The name of the first flower

flower

Evonymus verrucosa, Evonymus verrucosa,

dose 3 1

Papaver Rhoeas, Field poppy 5 1

"Argemone" nail fS 1

Spiraea filipendula, The one in the bulb hive 5 1

" Aruncus, " a cnid. 20 1

" opulifolia " callinaceae 28 1

Symphoricarpus racemosa, ?nie?yczka 5 to jes. 1

Phyteuma spicatum, Ear pickle. 5 1

Salix alba, White willow .... 5 1

Salvia pratensis, Meadow sage. . 6 1

"verticillata" whorled. . 6 1

"officinalis" medical. . 15 1

Trifolium pratense, Red clover 6 sometimes

" hybridum " pink (Swedish) 10 years old

" incarnatum " Incarnatka. 25 1

'rubens' reddish. 29 years old

Vicia villosa, Hairy Vetch.... 8 —

n sativa, 'seeding'. . . . 8 —

"Faba, "Bób. . . . 25 years old

Philadelphus coronarius, Ja?minowiec 9 —

Robinia Pseudoacacia, Acacia. . . 9 1

Dracocephalum Ruyssiana, Beekeeper 9 1

Atropa Belladonna, Wolf's Scream

blueberry . . . . . 10 years old

Helianthemum vulgare, Helianthemum vulgare, 10 l

Pisum sativum, Common pea. . . 10 sometimes

Rosa canina, wild rose. , . . . 12 years old

Sambucus nigra, Elderberry. . . 13 p

Orobus niger, black pea plant. . 13 i

Solanum Dulcamara, Psianka S?odkogorz 14 i

Centaurea Cyanus, Blue. . . 15 i

Lilium Martagon, Lilia Zawojek. . . 15 i

Malva silvestris, Wood mallow .... 15 i

" rotundifolia, round-leafed mallow. 15 i

Allium Cepa, Garlic Onion. . . 15 i

" oleraceum " wild . . . 15 i

Asclepias syriaca, Syrian milkweed. 15 i

Linum austriacum, Austrian flax. . 16 ?

" usitatissimum " plain . . . 26 ?

Stachys recta, Simple Purgatory .... 16 i

Cirsium rivulare, Three-flowered thistle 17 i

" arvense, " field. . . 25 i

"Erisithales" sticky. . . 25 i

"oleraceum" vegetable. 26 i

Delphinium Consolida, Field larkspur 17 i

Honey Time

The name of the first flower

flower

Digitalis ambigua, Foxglove 17 1

Thalictrum aquilegifolium, Rutewka or-

Likowa 17 1

Bryonia alba, Blackberry 18 1

" dioica, " red agoda 18 1

Clematis recta, Foot and mouth disease. 18 1

"Vitalba" regular

(Butterfly Bindweed) ....... 18 1

Hypericum perforatum, St. John's wort

plain 18 1

Althaea officinalis, Marshmallow 18 1

Knautia arvensis, Field Scabies. 20 1

Lonicera Gaprifolium, Honeysuckle

drill 20 1

" Xylosteum, Honeysuckle Cherry 20 1

Lysimachia Numularia, Toje?? Pieni??ek 20 ?

"vulgaris" ordinary. 25 1

Verbascum nigrum, Black mullein 24 1

" Thapsus, " great 25 1

Vitis vinifera, Grapevine. . . . . . 25 1

Ligustrum vulgare, Common catwort

(Privet) 26 1

Thymus serpyllum, Tymian Macierzanka 26 1

" vulgaris, " garden. 26 1

Phacelia thanacetifolia, Bunch of

tyczowa 28 1

Calamintha acinos, Basil mint 28 1

Echinops sphaerocephalus, Przegorzan

spherical 29 1

Borago officinalis, Borage 29 dojes. 1

JULY.

Digitalis purpurea. Purple foxglove 1 1

Echium vulgare, Common echium. 1 1

Leonurus cardiaca, Motherwort 1 1

Melilotus officinalis, Melilot 1 1

Rosa centifolia, Rose centifolia ... 2 1

Salvia silvestris, Forest sage .... 2 1

" glutinosa " sticky.... 15 1

Tilia grandifolia, Bigleaf linden. 2 1

"parvifolia" small-leaved. 12 1

, argentea 'silver. . . 23 1

Inula salicina, Willow elecampane. . 3 1

354

Honey time -on

The name of the plant's first flower- '3 •£

ii . . Q , ®

flower in OH

Marubium vulgare, Horehound 3

Genista tinctoria, -gorse dyerski 4

Nepeta boredom, Catmint smooth. . . 4

" cataria, " common. . . 4

Linum flavum, yellow flax 5

Cannabis sativa, hemp. . 5

Delphinium elatum, Delphinium was 5

Foeniculum officinale, Fennel le

Karski . . . . 5

Origanum vulgare, Origanum vulgare 5

Rosmarinus officinalis, Rosemary 5

Campanula glomerata, Campanula sku

verticals 6

"trachelium" cross-

wowy 10

" rapunculoides" one

sided 13

Polygonum Fagopyrum, Hreczka (Ta

regular grater) 6

" sibiricum, Hreczka siwa. 6

Carduus acanthoides, Ruffled thistle 6

" crispus " curly 8

Lilium candidum, white lily. . . . 6

Papaver somniferum, Garden poppy. 7

Hyssopus officinalis, Hyssopus officinalis. 10

Centaurea Jacea Cornflower Outshot. 10

" scabiosa " Swierzbnica. 10

"paniculata" paniculate. 13

Lythrum salicaria, Common bloodwort 10

Ruta graveolens, Garden Ruta. . . 10

Onopordon Acantium, Common Mouth

solid 15

Spiraea Ulmaria, Broad-leaved meadowsweet 15

Cucumis sativus, Cucumber. 15

Impatiens noli längere, Yellow butterfly 15

Melissa officinalis, Melissa (Melissa)

medical . 15

Mentha aquatica, Water mint. 15

" arvensis, " field. . . . 25

"Pulegium, "Polej. . . . 25

Reseda odorata, Reseda odorata. . . 15

Stachys palustris, Mud Purgatory. . 15

Succisa pratensis, Succisa pratensis. 15

Gentiana cruciata, Gentian cruciferous 16

Cucurbita Pepo, Pumpkin Bania. . . . 16

Dipsacus silvestris, wood teasel. . • 16

355

Honey Time

First flower plant name- r3-

flower in CU

IN

Galeopsis ladanum, Galeopsis ladanum. 16

" tetrahit, " rough 16

Epilobium angustifolium, willow warbler

narrow-leaved 17

" hirsutum, Hairy Willow Warbler 20

Solidago Virgaurea, Piglet 20

Helianthus annuus, Sunflower 21

Nicotiana Talacum, Baku? Tobacco. . 25

Antirrhinum majas, greater snapdragon. 25

Ornithopus sativa, Saradela sativa. 28 years ago

Phaseolus multiflorus, Bean Jasiek. 28

AUGUST.

Nigella arvensis, Nigella arvensis. 1 1 — 1 —

" , sativa " sativa . 1 1 — 1 —

Centaurea phrygia. Phrygian cornflower. 1 1 — 1 —

Tilia americaiia, American linden. 2 1 — 1 —

Colchicum autumnale, Zimowit autumnale 25 ? — 1 —

Erica vulgaris, Common heather. . 25 1 — 1 —

There are also many spring flowers that bloom again, but these usually do not produce honey in the fall.

Final word.

In this book, I presented what I found to be the best and most appropriate based on over thirty years of experience in beekeeping, as I am familiar with the principles of nature. I can conscientiously say that the Slavic hive and the bottomless beehive with one movable frame, as well as the methods of beekeeping described in this book, are the most appropriate when running an apiary on a large scale, for economic purposes, and not for amateur purposes. Having maintained a farm apiary for over twenty years, with over 200 trunks, and a second experimental apiary, in which I subjected various hives to experiments, I can confidently say that the Slavic apiary and the bottomless beehive with a movable frame are the hives of the future.

Finally, I must mention the harm that happened to me at the hands of a certain Franciszek Molicki. In title by title, especially starting from page 19. Similarly, he took all my original engravings from my book. In the practical part of his book, he also appropriated many passages that I printed, first in Zeszyt IY-ty Bartnictwa, and already in Bartnik. However, in order to conceal this literary theft, Molicki did not include my books in the list of books from which he allegedly prepared his work, but only listed books by foreign authors. In line with this, I present all my own original research as the achievements of these foreign authors, although these things are not mentioned anywhere. With this act, Molicki harmed not only me, but also Polish science.

Molicki, accosted for this by the Warsaw periodicals, tried to get away with it in a very indecent way, for example, in issue No. 15 of "Przegl?d Du Tygodniowy" from allegedly in Bartnik he was accused of reprinting "only six columns", although it was in Bartnik that he was accused of stealing the entire first volume of my Bartnictwo, and from the second volume of Bartnictwo those passages that had already been published at that time. In No. 85 of Warszawski "S?owo", this Molicki went so far in his deviousness that he tried to present the matter as if he and I were drawing from common sources, and that is why the relevant passages were consistent.

Everyone will admit that this is the pinnacle. , not only to rob someone, but also to harm someone's good name! NO! Mr. Molicki, I wrote my book originally and did not draw any material for it from any sources, neither foreign nor ours, but only from my own experience and research, carried out over a long period of years.

The entire structure of my book, detailed research into the life of bees, the development of the brood, the whole principle of good wintering that I have researched, which consists in discovering that bees have warm blood, that I have examined how they obtain water in winter, then about foulbrood, etc. and so on, all this is my personal achievement, and anyone who wants to present it as the achievement of foreign researchers is not honest.

In this case, I went to Warsaw to find this Mr. Molicki, but in vain, I could not find out anything more about him either at the address given or from the police.

I have only one trace of this gentleman's existence, and that is a letter which I am reprinting literally here for illustration purposes, and from this letter everyone can get some idea about Mr. Molicki's mental state. This letter written to me in 1888 reads literally: Warsaw, January 7, 1888 Dear Doctor!

Having read the systematically written work of the Dear Doctor, devoted to progressive beekeeping, and having learned from beekeeping magazines and the criticism expressed in "Pasiecznik" about this scientific "beekeeping"; and as a young person, these works could constitute great spiritual food, so I dare to ask the Dear Doctor to kindly write me a few words (the letter may be without a mark) how it would be possible to import these works, and also what they cost Russian nete; Perhaps I could get it through the Gebetner and Wolf Bookstore, or directly from the Dear Doctor.

I hope that the Doctor will satisfy the desires of a young man who wants to work. —

My address: Warsaw ul. Wolska No. 4. Franciszek Molicki.

With deep respect and respect for the Dear Doctor. Unij. Servant Fran. Molicki.

The content of "The Newest Beekeeping" by Mr. Franciszek Molicki is completely on par with the content of this letter, especially as regards the value of the practical part. And those hives praised there, made of straw braids, held together with pins, pompously called by him Franciszek's hives Molicki and this straw bottom with all the plasters removable, this is the pinnacle of skills, knowledge and intelligence of Mr. "Bartnik - specialist".

Yes Yes! Mr Molicki! We still need to learn much, much more and work, and not judge others of their honor and faith and shout everywhere: look! here I am the only true prophet and "specialist beekeeper"; it is better to beat your chest and admit "I have glued together the newest beekeeper in the same way as I advise you to glue together your hives with pins and it will be just as "the newest and most durable, just like these highly praised hives of mine."

In January 1901

Dr. T. Ciesielski.