140 THE FRAME HIVE. 



how it should be sheltered ; and, within the hive, how 

 the frames should be kept true in their proper posi- 

 tion, and how thick should be the flannel covering 

 over them ; but of all these things I shall leave a 

 guide-book, or some bee-keeping friend, to tell j'ou. 



With these few simple rules to be observed, I 

 think it very possible that at some future time, if you 

 have intelligence, and a ready hand to use a few 

 simple tools, you may wish to make a hive for your- 

 self Only if so, it will be best for you, in the first 

 instance, to purchase or to obtain the loan of one as 

 a model. You will hardly succeed without this, 

 although there will be no occasion for your hive 

 to have the polish and finish of first-rate workman- 

 ship. Your home-made hive, indeed, may be a very 

 rough one, but all the same very serviceable, if only 

 you copy your model and abide by the first principles 

 I have mentioned, and do not substitute fancies of 

 your own. In any case, however, you will do well 

 to buy the frames, which can only properly be cut by 

 machinery, and cost a mere trifle. 



If in the construction of your hive you can plan 

 and contrive with old material, and manage to use 

 odds and ends of wood, without the expense of 

 buying new from the carpenter, your interest in your 

 hive, w:hen completed, will, I think, be all the greater. 

 And it is always wonderful how the exercise of in- 

 genuity will get over many difficulties in such things, 

 and find some way of adapting to the end in view the 

 most trivial things possible. 



Here is an account how some of the greatest men, 

 distinguished in after life in science and art, began in 



