CHAPTER VII.
SIZE OF THE APERTURE OR ENTRANCE OF HIVES.
It is of great importance to widen or contract the entrance, according to the season, or to the strength of the swarms; and for this purpose it is only necessary to have a few little wedges, or bits of wood, that may be taken out or put in at pleasure. Hives are weak in spring, because the bees are engaged in the interior, keeping warm, and taking care of the young, and the guard at the door is not strong enough to prevent invaders. Contract the door, therefore, and four bees will defend it better than thirty would do, if it were more spacious, and enlarge it again by degrees, according to the increase of the population. The working bees must have room enough to go out and in without hindrance; when they begin to crowd together in groups at the entrance, it is a sign of the interior being filled, and they should then have free access, as they will be strong enough to resist pillage. When the cluster becomes very large, which it will do as the drones increase, enlarge the entrance as much as possible. It is even advisable sometimes to open the hive a little at the top, in order to moderate, by a current of air, the excessive heat that forces the bees to the outside; and this is the only case in which there is any advantage in lofty hives. After the destruction of the drones, the population diminishes, and the bees no longer cluster outside, and then is the time to begin, by degrees, to contract the entrance, in order to prevent plunder.
For this purpose, I use little wooden wedges first, because they cost nothing, as any body may make them with a knife and a bit of stick; and, secondly, because they help to protect them from the moths, which make sad havoc when once they gain access to a hive. They deposit their eggs in the interstices between the wedges and the hives, and they are hatched by the heated vapour that is expelled by the constant vibration of the wings of the bees. In the fine weather of April or May, I inspect my hives twice or three times a-week, before the bees go out in the morning, take out the wedges, and scrape and clean them with my knife; and, in this way, I protect them from the moths.