FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 301 



great convenience to have the different kinds of nails in their 

 proper places ready for immediate use. A set of nail-boxes, 

 part of which are seen in Fig. 110, serves the purpose excellent- 

 ly. The boxes are patterned somewhat after a tin nail-box I 

 saw at a tin-shop. When a box is taken from its nail on the 

 wall, laid flat and slightly shaken, the nails are easily picked 

 up from the shallow part of the box. 



Truth compels me to say that so many different persons find 

 it convenient to use these boxes and inconvenient to return 

 them, that of late the boxes are not always found in their 

 proper places, and when the picture weis taken they were 

 assembled for that special occasion. 



Most of the winter time, however, is occupied with reading 

 and writing. There are some thirty or forty bee-journals to 

 be read, and a large part of them are printed in the German 

 and French languages. I am a poor scholar in either German 

 or French, so it is not strange if I sometimes get behind in my 

 reading, to bring up in winter. I wish I could find the time 

 to read over again at my leisure in winter all the bee-journals 

 that I read more or less hurriedly in summer. But I never find 

 the time. I used to think that if 1 ever lived to be fifty years 

 old 1 would take things very leisurely. But I am now past fifty, 

 and I never was more crowded in my life before. 



WHITING FOR THE BEE- JOURNALS. 



Besides the reading, there is the writing. Some extra writing 

 usually to be done each winter, besides the regular work in that 

 line. I have written " Stray Straws " for Gleanings in Bee 

 Culture ever since December, 1890, and four years later I began 

 writing answers to questions in the American Bee Journal. The 

 thought of keeping up that work year in and year out, with 

 never a vacation, summer or winter, would be somewhat weari- 

 some if it were not that I delight in the work. If any one of 

 my readers should hesitate about sending to me any question 

 connected with beekeeping because of the thought that it will 

 be unpleasant to me, let him disabuse his mind of any such 

 thought. The receipt of such questions is a real pleasure. 



One thing, however, that gives pain instead of pleasure, is to 

 find a stamp enclosed upon opening a letter, for then I know 



