(U 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Mar. 



may surround Ihcm ? "Well do I remember the 

 time when I thoui^ht disreiiardiny the opinions 

 of the whole world, easier than to bear the 

 thoujiht of ha V in, •; those in that deai old home- 

 stead, hear that l was on the road to ruin. 



When I started out with the»e papers, it was 

 with an idea of trying to suggest some means 

 of lightening the labors pertaining to kitchen 

 and pantry, and perhaps you think I get along 

 rather slowly; but I really do think we had 

 l)etter get the feminine portion of the house- 

 iiold into as pleasant a mood as possible, lest 

 they resent any interference with their partic- 

 ular domain, and the very best way to ingrati- 

 ate our.>elves, I think will be to get out doors 

 and commence our work of reformation. Just 

 wait a mmule until I say, 



CHAPTER XIII. 



Our Homes externally. 



S^lHERE, now I am with you. Yoti see the 



* IS ' 

 i|j idea is that we arc going to have just the 



tallest kind of fun at this work, and the whole 



secret of it is to get to work before we have 



time to back'out and get discouraged. 



V^ery likely the first trouble we shall find will 

 be mud, or at least an absence of really good 

 sidewalks all round the house ; and as we are 

 to be saving of the coppers we shall have to 

 make use of some very humble materials be- 

 fore we get all around. And by the waj', we 

 are not trying to see who will have the nicest 

 home, but who will make the best vac of what 

 he has already about him, without getting into 

 debt. "We can make a walk that is better thau 

 none at all, by simply laying old boards along 

 in a string. But this is rather an awkward, 

 and in some respects an expensive waj'; for 

 very soon the sun and wet warp them into an 

 ungainly shape, and one that is quite prolific 

 of mischief; for the boards will roll up at each 

 end, and soon show an aptness in swinging 

 one's feet to one side with a suddenness that is 

 anything but productive of good nature, if yon 

 are in a hurry. Nailing a heavy block at the 

 place where the ends join is some better, es- 

 |)ecially if the block is well bedded in the 

 ground, and if we have plank and can "break 

 the joints' by making a double row, it may do 

 very well, but I rather prefer to get some 

 cheap scantling, cut the boards up short and 

 nail them crosswise. Our walk from the house 

 io the barn is niade in this way; the boards 

 used are pieces of American hives, and they 

 give much better satisfaction now than they 

 did as bee hives. The latter plan too, has its 

 objections, (or if a nail gets loose or broken, 

 you are liable to make a friend stumble in a 

 wa}^ that may be even more productive of "get- 

 ting mud" than the curled up boards. 



When I was in Mich. — don't you begin to 

 think 1 learned an "awful lot" in Mich.'"— I saw 

 some wooden walks that pleased me very 

 much; they were made by simply nailing- 

 strips of any cheap lumber together, iu such a 

 way that it made a continuous stick as long 

 as desired ; the boards being sawed into strips 

 say 4 inches wide, paying no attention to 

 length, were placed with their edges u])ward 

 and nailed so as to break joints until the walk 

 was of the desired width. For running them 

 round the house inside the vard, even one foot 



might do very well ; and this long plank is 

 sufficiently pliable to admit of being brought 

 round the house in very pretty curves. You 

 can buy lumber for this for 1 cent per foot; 

 and you ftiight even use almost any kind of old 

 rubbish, providing it had one straight edge to 

 be placed uppermost. You who have a wind- 

 mill buzz-saw can work such lumber into side- 

 walk stuft" quite independently. One other ad- 

 vantage of this kind of a walk is, that no water 

 ever stands on it in little puddles, as is the case 

 with most walks of stone or lumber. To be 

 sure the prettiest, as well as most durable 

 walk, is made of broad flagging stones; but 

 they are quite expensive unless you are so for- 

 tunate as to have the stone on your own prem- 

 ises. 



Now I wish you to do this work nicely ; for 

 when I take a notion to call on every family- 

 that takes Gleakings, I shall, the very first 

 thing when I come in sight of your homes, 

 look about for the evidences of its having been 

 read. 



Before we leave the subject of walks, wo 

 must not omit to speak of sawdust. If there 

 is a wet place anywhere about your house or 

 about your hives iu the apiary, a very little 

 sawdust will prevent soiling your feet ; and if 

 you spread a thin coat of it all over the apiary 

 where you are obliged to walk, it will add 

 much to your comfort, to the looks of things, 

 and aid in keeping the floor neat indoors. 

 When it gets tramped down into the ground, 

 which will not be the case for a long time, you 

 can spread on a little more ; and many times 

 you can cover up untidy places with sawdust, 

 while it would be difticult to fix them quickly 

 otherwise. Keep a large box full with a dust- 

 pan iu it, somewhere out of the rain where it 

 will be handy, and jou ha^e no idea how much 

 you can do with it. In the summer it is excel- 

 lent to keep down grass and weeds, when 

 placed around the entrances to the hives; if 

 you want it to look pretty, get fresh pine saw- 

 dust, and with a piece of very coarse wire 

 cloth, sift out the coanser particles. If the 

 sawdust is carefully saved from your hive- 

 nuiking, it does very nicely, and does not de- 

 cay for a long time. 



We not only want a dry place to walk on, 

 but want the ground all dry and productive 

 inside the charmed circle that encloses "Our 

 Home." And to do this we will get on some 

 of those clothes that "can't be spoiled" and "at 

 it we go" to thoroughly underdrain it all. 

 Haven't you any tile V Well, suppose you 

 have not; neither had I two years ago, and 

 yet our whole ''4 acre was well underdrained, 

 and so it is yet. One might not be'ieve it, but 

 our home was in such wet clay soil that tlie 

 bees came near being all drowned when the}' 

 first flew in the spring. I do not know that I 

 ever enjoyed any work more, even though a 

 great part of it was done during freezing 

 weather in JNIarch, and we worked covered 

 with mud. We jirocured some nice sharp 

 spades, and commencing at tlie lowest spot in 

 our lot, cut narrow trenches twice the depth of 

 the spade ; we then, with a spade made on pur- 

 pose for the work, cut a narrow trench in the 

 bottom, about 4 inches wide and <> inches deep. 

 This narrow trench was covered with pine 

 boards cut in pieces and laid crosswise, the 



