MY BEES. 131 



chicken-raising or any other hobby of the city 

 man who has only a few hours in the country 

 which he does not devote to sleep. 



My first hive was bought when I was living 

 in the Orange Mountains of New Jersey, about 

 twenty miles from New York. It arrived by 

 express, the top of the hive covered with wire- 

 cloth, through which the bees peered rather 

 curiously but not at all viciously. The direc- 

 tions were to take off the wire-cloth as carefully 

 as possible, and put on a large wooden cover. 

 As the construction of a modern beehive is 

 radically different from that of the old-fashioned 

 straw one, I may as well say a few words about 

 it. The essential part of a modern hive con- 

 sists of a wooden box eighteen inches wide, 

 two feet long, and about fourteen inches deep. 

 This box contains from eight to ten " frames," 

 which are filled up with a sheet of comb of the 

 average thickness. These sheets of comb, some- 

 times partly filled with honey by the bees, hang 

 side by side in the hive, and usually occupy the 

 whole of the box. It is possible to lift out any 

 one of the frames and see exactly what is going 

 on upon the sheet of comb it contains. The 

 same sheet may be partly given up to honey, 



