ey will protect it, even if it is
laid against the outside of their hive! If the bees in the weak stock,
are too much reduced in numbers, to be able to cover the brood comb
taken from another hive, I give them this comb with all the old bees
that are clustered upon it, and shut up the hive, after supplying them
with water, until two or three days have passed away. By this time, most
of the strange bees will have formed an inviolable attachment to their
new home, and even if a portion of them should return to the parent
hive, a large number of the maturing young will have hatched, to supply
their desertion. A little sugar-water scented with peppermint, may be
used to sprinkle the bees, at the time that the comb is introduced,
although I have never yet found that they had the least disposition, to
quarrel with each other. The original settlers are only too glad to
receive such a valuable accession to their scanty numbers, and the
expatriated bees are too-much confounded with their unexpected
emigration, to feel any desire for making a disturbance. If a sufficient
increase of numbers has not been furnished by one range of comb, the
operation may, in the course of a few days, be repeated. Instead of
leaving the colony to the discouraging feeling that they are in a large,
empty and desolate house, a divider should be run down into the hive,
and they should be confined to a space which they are able to warm and
defend, and the rest of the hive, until they need its additional room,
should be carefully shut up against all intruders. If this operation is
judiciously performed, the bees will be powerful in numbers, long before
the weather is warm enough to develop the bee-moth, and they will thus
be most effectually protected from the hateful pest.

A very simple change in the organization of the bee-moth would have
rendered it almost if not quite impossible to protect the bees from its
ravages. If it had been so constituted as to require but a very small
amount of heat for its full development, it would have become very
numerous early in the Spring, and might then have easily entered the
hives and deposited its eggs among the combs, without any let or
hindrance; for at this season, not only do the bees at night maintain no
guard at the entrance of their hive, but there are large portions of
their comb bare of bees, and of course, entirely unprotected. How does
every fact in the history of the bee, when properly investigated, poin