1108 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. 1. 



come, as it began to dawn upon him what 

 could be done with bees, as the great book 

 of nature opened to him as he turned leaf by 

 leaf, each one revealing some new thing, and 

 leading him further into the great mysteri- 

 ous field of knowledge that it is the lot of 

 only a few to explore! I see him put in the 

 hives. They fit; then the bees; they fit too. 

 Then comes the "good old summer time," 

 a crop of white clover, loaded with nectar, 

 honey coming in until all those boxes are 

 full of great white slabs of honey. It was 

 long before the days of the extractor, or sec- 

 tions. As he seats himself after dinner in 

 the shade out in the yard, he sees them come 

 and go; or when the day is ended, the even- 

 ing shades gather, and he seats himself to 

 rest and muse, under the magic influence of 

 the great hum which came from all those 

 hives. That sound has a lulling efi'ect; he 



hears conversation in the hives; hears them 

 telling of the events of the day, how hard 

 they work, how many trips this one made, 

 one telling of how he made a mistake and 

 got in the wrong hive— heard him telling 

 how the hive was just the same inside as 

 ours; heard— when "ma" came to the door, 

 and he heard " Pa ! are you going to sit out 

 there all night? come in and go to bed. Do 

 you know it is after 10 o'clock?" 



Then come the years of failure, when the 

 great God of the universe dries up the secret 

 springs of the flowers; their paps are empty; 

 the bees go not to the fields as in other years, 

 but stay at home and behave in a way that 

 tells him that even they are fearful of and 

 obedient unto Him who made them and pro- 

 vides for them. 



And so we come on down through the 60's, 

 with their war prices for honey; the 70's 



FIG. 2.— EAST SIDE OF THE HOUSE; PECAN-TREE 88 YEARS OLD. 



