70 THE COTTAGE AND FARM B^E KEEPER. 



a house would be best made of brick, with stout posts of wood at the 

 angles, up to the first row of boxes, from that upwards of wood, lath- 

 ed and plastered both within and without. The other three sides of 

 the house would be taken up, the centre one with the door, the others 

 each with a window, in which, were it thought proper, an observatory 

 or leaf hive might be fixed. These windows and their shutters should 

 be so contrived, that the house may be darkened at pleasure, room 

 being made for the admission of light by one aperture in either of the 

 windows, through which the bees may escape, (as they naturally fly 

 towards the light,) whenever a colony is to be deprived of a glass or 

 box. The roof, also, of the building should project two feet or more 

 on all sides but the north, to keep off as much summer sun as possible 

 from striking on the bee house front or sides. 



Instead of the shelves or whole board upon which the boxes in such 

 houses usually rest, I prefer a kind of frame with cross bars, supported 

 by brackets, as seen in the accompanying diagram. The cross bars 



I ! I l I I i i i L _ i_j_ 



should be so arranged that the edges of each hive board shall rest up- 

 on a bar, to which it may be fastened by hooks and. eyes, or else by 

 the insertion of some long screws through the board into the bar, to 

 keep it always firmly in its place ; otherwise, there should be some 

 similar contrivance for attaching these boards so securely to the wall, 

 that the entrance holes in both board and wall shall always exactly co- 

 incide, without the possibility of the bees escaping between- them into 

 the bee house. Of course, these fastenings must be easily movable 

 at pleasure ; that is, whenever any operation is to be performed with 

 the boxes. The chief advantage of this open frame is the facility it 

 affords for ventilation; otherwise, a hole must be cut in the shelf, if 

 made of a whole board, to correspond with the hole for ventilation in 

 the board of the hive itself; or these boards must each be elevated on 

 bars of wood nailed down upon the shelf. 



A bee house of this description will have many advantages ; here 

 the boxes and the bees will be kept cool in summer, be the sun's rays 

 ever so burning, as well as snug and warm in winter; here there is 

 _ all safety against the attack of robbers, the intrusion of vermin, the 



