must be allowed them, nor must there be any obstacle to its admission, beyond the shade sufficient to protect them from the vertical rays of the sun, in hot climates. Hills, trees, woodlands, buildings, walls, and hedges, must act to the hives, or the whole bee-garden, as a screen from high winds, but not from the light of the sun; on the contrary, dark, damp, obscure places are unfit for them. The east side of a hill, on which extensive bee-gardens are established, is generally cut into gradual steps, about 5 feet wide, and 3 feet high. The hives on the second step are placed exactly between the spaces of those that are placed on the first step, and so on; to allow the morning dawn to fall upon the entrance of the hives (see frontispiece).

The ground prepared for the stand of the hive must be strewed with clean, dry sand, about an inch thick; on this the hive is to be placed without trestle, board, or any support whatever, and covered with a clay pan (see Plate II.).

The bottom of the hive must be laid round with dry chips, or clean dry moss, to prevent reptiles from creeping into the hive, and must be covered with earth proportionably thick, and well stamped.

XII. THE INCONVENIENCES OF STRAW HIVES AND THE STORIED SIDE AND EXTRA BOXES.

Nothing proves so destructive to bees as hives made of straw, which are so common in Great Britain. In Scotland and Ireland I have seen such hives placed under a miserable cover in cold, damp corners of stone buildings. I have seen some abandoned under hedges, where swarms of their enemies nestle; others were imprisoned in boxes; others, again, were surrounded by walls or hedges, planted very close together, and under shelter of a roof, which seemed as if purposely formed for breeding moths, spiders, and other vermin so injurious to bees.

Every person must be convinced that straw hives can never protect the bees from damp, mould, and consequently from pestilential smells, and broods of vermin, while their situation denies them the proper temperature and a current of pure healthy air; and if exposed to a vigorous winter, the utter annihilation of the whole community is the consequence. Those rags and turfs, too, with which skeps are covered in some parts of Scotland, are of a most hurtful nature, since they attract damp and generate mould and pestilence.

The hive of Poland, placed on the bare ground, promotes all requisite freshness in summer, so as

to make any artificial method of ventilation unnecessary. I can affirm safely, after having read a few English works on this subject, that in Poland hives are not so apt to swarm as they are in those pernicious skeps. Notwithstanding the rigour of the frost in winter, and the dampness of the melting snow in spring, they are kept warm, dry, and clean, which must always be observed as essentially necessary to promote their comfort and health. It is not requisite to wash their boards with chloride of lime, nor refresh their colonies with rosemary, treacle, ale, or sugar. A skep may be used merely as an ornament, and that only by the amateurs of the good old English times; but it is quite unfit for the culture of the bee, as a branch of husbandry.

An experienced apiarian of England says, “I do not hesitate to affirm, that the system at present followed by nine-tenths of the keepers of bees is founded on error and antiquated prejudices." This serves to corroborate my statements regarding the impropriety of using the skep as a hive for bees. Besides, collateral boxes increase the expense and trouble, and are not at all adapted to the habits of the bee. Every apiarian knows that it is natural to the bees to begin their operations from the top of the hive or eke, as it is technically termed in Scotland. He knows, too, that the commencement of their operations consists not of

honey-combs, but of those sort of cells which I have described under Section IV., which contain nothing else but the larvæ of the bee in various stages of existence,-pollen, or farina, and other substances, mixed with a very few honeycombs. Hence it may be easily conjectured that every story added to the hive must be filled with the above-mentioned substances, instead of honeycombs, all which arise from those useless inventions that tend to pervert rather than aid the natural propensities of the bees. In this manner they are employed through the best season of the year, "not in passing from flower to flower, to cull their sweets, and to fill the combs with honey," necessary for their own subsistence during the winter, and also for the benefit of their owner, but in constructing in each collateral box new substratum, all for the propagation and support of their species.

It is unnecessary here to say more on this subject, as it would require volumes to prove, with any degree of minuteness, the unfitness of those embarrassing articles which compose the several newly invented hives: as boards and blocks, hollows and ledges, legs and screws, bars and notches, drawers and slips, openings and pegs, grates and interstices, wires and hinges, handles and ekes, divisions and roads, apertures and knobs, framework and fillets, ventilators and slides, thermometers and covers, tops and bot

toms, &c., &c.; terms that serve only to embarrass the cottager, to whom the hive of Poland must be a most desirable introduction, because it does not want such a compound, however ingenious it may be. This embarrassing nomenclature made them fail to be brought into common use, and "because the outlay for them has not been met by results equal to those promised by the projectors."

The apiarian of Shepherd's Bush says also, that "in all the varied modifications of the class of straw and other hives, (the hives of Messrs. White, Huish, Gelieu, Palteans, Thorley, and Madam Vicat's, may be included,) they have no means by which the temperature of one part may be made to differ from another; so that, however great credit may be due to those ingenious men who have only improved the SHAPE of the hive, and reduced the risk, yet the palm cannot be awarded to them for having PRODUCED a plain and SIMPLE hive, by which pure honey may be easily taken, the lives of the bees preserved, swarming prevented, and their culture ADVANTAGEOUSLY FOLLOWED."

The hive of Poland is plain and simple; honey is taken from it by a very simple method, which will be described in the sequel of this Essay; the bees destined for winter stock are easily preserved from year to year; and swarming is also pre

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