REARING AND FEEDING OF ANIMALS. 403 



bourhood of bee-hives; and the honey produced from the three enumerated in 

 the second place as suspicious, should be carefully examined to determine the 

 fact with regard to them. 



JOB ROBERTS, Esq., a gentleman long and favourably known, especially to 

 the inhabitants of Pennsylvania as an enlightened practical farmer, says, in 

 his Treatise on Husbandry, published nearly forty years since, that honey 

 may be taken without destroying the bees by putting under the hive another 

 with a flat board on the top and a square hole in the middle for the bees to de- 

 scend through; there must be a sliding shutter to the hole to shut it, when the 

 bees have descended into the lower one. They will sometimes fill this also, 

 and require a second to be put under. The time for taking, the end of June 

 or beginning of July. 



Honey collected from the flowers growing in meadows, pasture lands, trees, 

 and cultivated crops, is almost as limpid as the purest oil, and the wax nearly 

 as white as snow. Collected from buckwheat is harsh. It is collected from, 

 what is improperly called honey dew, as well as from flowers. Taken only 

 once in two years, it is richer and more solid, and will keep better than what 

 is taken every year. Bees, when their stores are exhausted, should be fed with 

 honey hard pressed from the comb, which contains bee-bread as well as honey. 

 They cannot be kept alive with pure honey alone. To feed them, cover a 

 plate with thin cut comb, and fill the cells either with honey or coarse sugar, 

 mixed with middle beer it must not be too thick. 



In some years a stock will increase itself sixfold. The bees of one society 

 will attack those of another society, plunder them of their honey, and destroy 

 most of them, perhaps all of them, in battle. The best method of putting a stop 

 to these battles, is to remove the attacked hive to a distant part of the garden. 



Since the importance of the bee culture has been made apparent, a variety 

 of plans have been adopted by our ingenious countrymen to raise them suc- 

 cessfully, and to take their surplus store of honey without resorting to the cruel 

 practice of depriving them of life. A Mr. LCDA, of Connecticut, has invented 

 a contrivance, by means of which bees are made to build their cells and deposit 

 their honey in the chamber of a dwelling house appropriated to the purpose, 

 in neat little drawers, from which it may be taken fresh by the owner, without 

 killing them. A Connecticut paper describes it as follows: "The hive has 

 the appearance of, and is in part, a mahogany bureau or sideboard, with 

 drawers above and a closet below, with glass doors. This case or bureau is 

 designed to be placed in a chamber of the house, or any other suitable build- 

 ing, and connected with the open air or outside of the house bv a tube passing 

 through the wall. The bees work and deposit their honey in drawer* When 

 these or any of them are full, or if it is desired to obtain honey, one or more of 

 them may be taken out, the bees allowed to escape into the other part of the 

 hive, and the honey taken away." The glass doors allow tin- working <>! the 

 bees to be observed and it is added that the spaciousness, cleanliness, anffffe 

 even temperature of the habitations provided for them in this manner, render 

 them the more industrious. 



A K''tifiir/,-i/ hi-r-kouse is thus described by Mr. F. C. FISHER.* It is recom- 

 mended by competent judges, we are informed, as being highly commendable 

 for its convenience and cheapness. The building is twelve feet long, eight 

 wide, and seven feet high from the floor to the plate or ceiling, (the floor being 

 eighteen inches from the ground,) and consists of four posts, eleven feet six 

 inches long, let in the ground three feet, which is weather-boarded round, and 

 covered in so as to prevent the bees from getting in the house, they being con- 

 fined in six boxes, three on either side of the house, placed fifteen inches one 

 above another. This drawing (fig. 1) represents 

 one side of the house, viewed from the outside. 



Fig. 1, fo. 1 1, are copper troughs running 

 round the past, half way between the floor and 

 ground, which are kept filled with water to pre- 

 vent ants and other insects from getting in the 

 house. No. 2, 3, and 4 are tubes eight inches 



wide, one-eighth of an inch deep, to convey the ^ ^ 



bees through the wall into the long boxes, and en- li 4 

 tering them at the bottom, there being three to each Fig. 1. 



* Farmer's Cabinet, June 15, 1839. 



