A NOVEL BEE ESCAPE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1106, 12 May 1893, Page 9

A NOVEL BEE ESCAPE.

To those wanting super cleauers for next season, but who did not realise enough from this year's honey crop to pay for them (says a writer in Glean.' ings), I will try to explain my plan, which will not cost them for material, and but very little labour to try if. All that is necessary in order to clean a super of bees is to shut them oft' from communication with and the heat of the brood chamber, and then leave a door for their escape. But in warm weather this door must prevent them (or others) from going back. This I accomplished with seventy-five colonies without a failure last season, by simply fastening a sheet of newspaper over the pattern slats of an empty super or section-holder. This cuts off most of the heat, and leaves a four and a half inch space between the surplus and the brood when in position. Then for a door (connecting the two) or escape, takes a stick a half inch square, sharpened from' the four sides, and with it punch several holes down through the paper. Do this over the centre of the bee space, between the slats, and you will have a combination of the spring and cone bee-escape, and I will doubt its infringing on either of them. Put it on the hive in the evening, and if all the bees have not passed through it from the supers above by next morning, then something is wrong with the escape, or else, brood above. The same plan may work over a super, filled with empty sections, with only a bee-escape between the paper and the surplus to be cleaned, but I never tried it.