138 LIBERTY AND A LIVING. 



at present one dollar. At the end of my 

 first summer's experience in the bee busi- 

 ness, and after allowing my bees to take 

 care of themselves for the six weeks from the 

 middle of September to the end of October, 

 I found that I had twelve pounds of honey 

 stored up in boxes, and that the nine frames 

 of the lower part of the hive were completely 

 full of honey and weighed eight pounds apiece. 

 I took out three of the frames which were 

 filled and left in six for the winter, thus giving 

 the bees nearly fifty pounds of honey to live 

 upon. The preparation for winter in Jersey is 

 simply to take off the top and side boxes, fill- 

 ing up the void with sawdust ; I left the hive 

 out-of-doors, and I have followed the same 

 plan in Connecticut with success. In northern 

 New England and in the northwestern States, 

 where the thermometer often falls below zero, 

 it is customary to winter the hives in cellars. 



After a pretty severe winter I discovered in 

 the first sunshiny days of March that my bees 

 were coming out of the hive freely, and taking 

 a warm day for investigation, I lifted out a 

 frame to find it full of " brood," as the bees not 

 yet out of the cell are called. As the spring 



