He that is faithful in that which is least, is faitlil'ul also in much.— Lukk 16; 10. 



MYSELF AND MY NEIGHBOBS. 



If an J- of you lack wisdom, lot liitn sisk r,f God, 

 that giveth to all men liberally, anrl upbraideth not; 

 and it shall be given him.— James 1:5. 



'ONEY from basswood has about slop- 

 ped, or, at least, it does not come to 

 amount to much of any thing. Early 

 in the morning there is (piito a roar of 

 bees for a couple of hours, and then it 

 is over. I presume the reason is, that such 

 a very large force in one locality, in the 

 course of a few hours, visit all the "blossoms, 

 and exhaust all the Held, very mnch as an 

 ordinary apiary exhausts a ten-aci-e held of 

 buckwheat in a few hours in the morning. 

 Another cause is, I presume, that so many 

 of the trees have been cut down for sectious. 

 At any rate, robbing has commenced ; our 

 bees are coming into the wax-room, and 

 around the factory. One colony was used 

 up entirely, simply because it did not have 

 the right 'kind of entrance; and while I 

 think of it, I do not know of any better 

 kind of entrance for Simplicity liives than 

 the entrance-blocks, or alighting-boards, to 

 regulate the size of entrances by sliding the 

 hive backward or forward. 



There is something sad about this closing 

 up of the honey season. The bees get cross 

 and (luarrelsome and thievish and greedy, 

 and it does not seem as if they were the 

 same little chaps that were so peaceable and 

 merry, onl^ a week or two ago. Now, little 

 friends, it is not altogether the bees that 

 get out of sorts when honey stops coming. 

 From the complaints in the letters to-day, 

 it seems as though there were a great many 



who are disappointed and dissatisfied ; and, 

 come to think of it, I am one of that class 

 too. Why, it s^ems as if we never had so 

 many trving cases as we have had this after- 



j noon from that purple basket. Uur good 

 neighbor Henry Palmer, who lives right 

 near by, right in Michigan, sent us a little 

 bit of an order a week ago. I had not heard 

 from him for a while, and I was really glad 

 to receive just that little bit of a letter to let 

 us know he was still a bee-keeper. Among 

 other things, he wanted some If-inch wire 

 nails. AVhen he got them he said they were 

 not right— they were only U inch, and that, 

 as he wanted them badly, he came pretty 

 near getting mad about it. It was about 

 the Fourth of July when the order came, 

 and not many of the clerks were at woi-k ; 

 but I told one of them to be sure to send 

 him the right nails by the next express. 



; Thev did so ; but to-day he says we have 

 gone and sent H ((qain, and that he^does not 

 see any excuse for such blundering. This 

 time he tells us that the printed wrapper 

 called for the right kind, but that the con- 

 tents did not agree. Oh dear! oh dear! 



j Mrs. C, who has charge of the sample-room, 

 was sick a day or two, and some of her girls 

 went and did up a lot of U-inch nails, and 

 put them in papers labeled If. Another 

 man, who is in a great iuirry, and losing his 

 honey-crop, got a short arm for his extractor, 

 when he w anted a long one ; a third pleads 

 piteonsly for us to hurry up his order; but 

 we can not find such an order, or any tiace 

 of it. In fact, our orders are all tilled, and 

 we are hungry for more. And this last ob- 

 servation reminds me that some of the hands 



