I have frequently made a box for transporting new swarms, out of an old tea-chest. When a new swarm is brought in this way to its intended home, the bottom-board may be unscrewed, and the bees transferred at once, to the new hive; (See p. 168.) In some cases, it may be advisable to send away the new hive. In this case, if one of my hives is used, the spare honey-board should be screwed down, and all the holes carefully stopped, except two or three which ought to have some ventilators tacked over them: the frames should be fastened with a little paste, so that they will not start from their place, and after the bees are hived, the blocks which close the entrance should be screwed down to their place, keeping them however, a trifle less than an eighth of an inch from the entrance, so as to give the bees all the air which they need. I very much prefer sending a box for the bees: one person can easily carry two such boxes, each with a swarm of bees; and if he chooses to fasten them to two poles, or to a very large hoop, he may carry four, or even more.
If the Apiarian wishes, to be sure the first season, of getting some honey from his bees, he will do well to procure two good swarms, and put them both into one hive. (See p. 213.) To those who do not object to the extra expense, I strongly recommend this course. Not unfrequently, they will in a good season, obtain in spare honey from their doubled swarm, an ample equivalent for its increased cost: at all events, such a powerful swarm lays the foundations of a flourishing stock, which seldom fails to answer all the reasonable expectations of its owner. If the Apiary is commenced with swarms of the current season, and they have an abundance of spare room in the upper boxes, there will be no swarming, that season, and the beginner will have ample time to make himself familiar with his bees, before being called to hive new swarms, or to multiply colonies by artificial means.
Let no inexperienced person commence bee-keeping on a large scale; very few who do so, find it to their advantage, and the most of them not only meet with heavy losses, but abandon the pursuit in disgust. By the use of my hives, the bee-keeper can easily multiply very rapidly, the number of his colonies, as soon as he finds, not merely that money can be made by keeping bees, but _that he can make it_. While I am certain that more money can be made by a careful and experienced bee-keeper in a good situation, from a given sum invested in an Apiary, than from the same money invested in any other branch of rural economy, I am equally certain that there is none in which a careless or inexperienced person would be more sure to find his outlay result in an almost entire loss. An Apiary neglected or mismanaged, is far worse than a farm overgrown with weeds, or exhausted by ignorant tillage: for the land is still there, and may, by prudent management, soon be made again to blossom like the rose; but the bees, when once destroyed, can never be brought back to life, unless the poetic fables of the Mantuan Bard, can be accepted as the legitimate results of actual experience, and swarms of bees, instead of clouds of filthy flies, can once more be obtained from the carcases of decaying animals! I have seen an old medical work in which Virgil's method of obtaining colonies of bees from the putrid body of a cow slain for this special purpose, is not only credited, but minutely described.