90 



GLEAKIKGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



FEti. 



"Oil, see!" exclaimed Mary; "the tees 

 are all leaving the flour and bag of syrnp, 

 and going into their hives." 



"Yes." said friend M., "because our ex- 

 periments have cooled off the room ; but I 

 will bring them out again.'' 



lie then closed the ventilator very tightly, 

 and pushed some bits of tissue paper into 

 every crevice he could And around the sash, 

 which soon made it so warm they began to 

 take off their hats, and the bees came out in 

 great numbers, and began buzzing in the 

 sunshine, and finally bumping against the 

 glass. 



" There," said he, " you see that won't do. 

 If we should keep them long at this temper- 

 ature, without a l)risk change of air, we 

 should soon have the room smelling badly, 

 and they would leave the hives, and have 

 dysentery. It really begins to look to me as 

 if lack of pure air has as much to do with 

 the cause of dysentery, as lack of pure food, 

 l^efore I fixed my ventilating apparatus I 

 had as bad cases of dysentery here as you 

 ever saw in the spring." 



"Yes," chimed in Freddie, "they made 

 every thing so nasty that ma had to come 

 dowii with a basin of soapsuds. Why, they 

 even daubed the nasty stuff on the glass, 

 and lots of 'em fell down and died, and pa 

 couldn't fetch 'em to life again." 



I do)i't know but that Freddie would have 

 let a good many more " cats out of the bag " 

 had not liis pa, with a smile, here told him 

 he had said a plenty about it. 



"Please, Mr. M., may I open a hive?" 

 And John looked up wistfully into the face 

 of his kind old friend. 



" Certainly, my boy ; go on." 



" Do I need smokeV " 



" I think not ; the room is warm, and they 

 are pretty full of stores, and building comb. 

 Besides, smoke fills the room unpleasantly, 

 unless one is very careful." 



Brood was found in all stages, and the 

 queen was enlarging her circles in a way 

 that might look cheering to any bee-keeper. 

 The hoops of comb were passed around, and 

 examined and approved by all. 



"But what do you do on days when the 

 sun don't shine? " said Mary. 



" Oh ! I don't have the bees work then. I 

 cover the sash with the large straw mat you 

 see out there, and open the door into the cel- 

 lar, so it does not get very cold. Whenever 

 the sun shines enough to set them working, 

 I take off the mat and close the door." 



"Do you not lose some that get on the 

 glass, and do not get back'r* " said John's fa- 

 ther. 



" Very few, when the ventilation is kept 

 right. They are rearing lots of brood ; and 

 when the sun turns and gets warmer, I hope 

 to build them up so as to get them to swarm 

 by the time I can get a queen from some of 

 our friends in the South," 



" Why," said John," you can raise queens 

 and get them fertilized in here ; I'll bet you 

 can." 



" You mustn't bet, John ; and besides, 

 won't it be the best way, to get it done be- 

 fore we say very much about it? We have 

 got so far, and it works very nicely, does it 

 uotV " 



" Yes, indeed it does," came from a cho- 

 rus of voices. 



" Papa," said Freddie, "won't you show 

 them the machine you invented,' to make 

 sleds and things? " 



"Sleds and things," said John, "what 

 about ' sleds and things ' ? '' 



" Oh ! you come and see." At this the 

 party adjourned to friend M.'s neatly ar- 

 ranged worksho]), and Freddie took them up 

 to the scroll-saw. What they saw was sim- 

 ply a thin piece of board laid on top of the 

 table, with a strip of wood nailed to one 

 side, and a large screw near one end, put 

 down through into the table. Below is a cut 

 of the table, with the swinging board on top. 



MR. MERRYBANKS SCROLL-SAW ATTACHMENT. 



" You will observe," said friend M., " that 

 this device is to avoid the troublesome oper- 

 ation of marking out your work from a pat- 

 tern, and then trying to make the saw follow 

 the mark by your eye ; but of course it ap- 

 plies only to work where a great number of 

 pieces are wanted all alike, and are to be cut 

 on a true circle." To show how it could be 

 used, he took a strip of plank and laid it on 

 the swinging table, and in a moment had it 

 cut as in the dotted lines below. 



HOW TO MAKE TOY SLEDS. 



A tack in the swinging table served as a 

 stop, so that all the pieces were cut off just 

 alike. Next he unscrewed the machine and 

 cut the round lioles you see in half of the 

 pieces, by putting the screw through the 

 center, and then setting it into the table, 

 nearer the saw. The board was simply re- 

 volved around the screw, and the saw cut 

 the circle. Now the pieces were taken to his 

 circular foot-power saw, and those with holes 

 in were split through the middle, as in the 

 cut above. To make the pieces for the sled, 

 he had only to take off slices with his circu- 

 lar saw, of the thickness required, and plane 

 them, and ihe sled was ready to nail up. 

 Mr. lones planed the pieces, and nailed them 

 up with wire nijils, and in a twinkling friend 

 M., with a small pot of paint and a stencil of 

 a horse, painted on that animal, and the 

 name "Racer." 



THB SLEDS THAT WERE MADB IN JUST 15 MINUTBS. 



