PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY THE W T .FALCONER MANFG CO 



VOL. II. 



f\PRIL, 1892. 



NO. 4. 



Old Style or New Style in 

 Hives. 



BY E E. HASTY. 



Keep bees in old box hives? No 

 doa't you. Don't cut your grain with 

 a sickle ; get a twine-binder. Don't 

 try to kill game with bow and arrow. 

 Don't have the domestic meal ground 

 at home between two flat stones. Now 

 buttons have dawned upon the world, 

 don't toggle up your clothes with 

 hooks and pins and strings. All these 

 things can be done, have been done 

 by saints, but there's a better way 

 now. And there's a better way to 

 keep bees than to keep them in 

 bungle-boxes and abbreviated hollow 

 logs. 



Nobody does anything well when 

 he is ashamed of himself all the time; 

 and a man is pretty sure to be ashamed 

 of a box apiary. If you keep bees in 

 box hives probably you will do as 

 other people of that persuasion do, 

 wait till you get the hurry of haying 

 out of the way before you take time 

 to fuss with the "interestin' little 

 creeters." We see you in our mind's 

 eyes putting on boxes and sections and 

 things in fine old rural style — after 

 the honey harvest is over for the 

 year. 



If you use boxes for hives the rest 

 of your manipulation will correspond 

 with your hive. You will use old 

 second hand boxes as cases for your 

 sections. Except by a miracle the 

 sections will not be an even fit. The 

 waste space will be filled with prongs 

 and lugs of honey ; and a sweet and 

 dripping smash there'll be when you 

 take your treasures out. ''Fence 

 the bees out of the waste space" will 

 you ? You might almost as well 

 fence the ants out of the buttery, 

 after they have found the way in 

 there, as to try to fence bees out of 

 space where it won't do to have them 

 go. 



Honey is cheap in these years. We 

 have struggled against the decline ; 

 but inch by inch it got down to a low 

 level. Customers have grown habit- 

 uated to buy it at a low figure, and the 

 price is never going back where it 

 was once. To get pay for one's labor 

 in honey production things must be so 

 handy that the work can be done 

 rapidly — there's no other daylight 

 for us. In your imitation of the 

 antediluvians, the time you will spend 

 for each pound of honey will be three 

 times as great as there is any need 

 of — lucky if it isn't ten times as 



