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TEE UAITAGEMENI Or BEES. 



As to whether straw hives or wooden boxes are best for beeS 

 I shall not pretend here to determine. Supposing one to be as 

 good as the other, I should decidedly vote for straw hives as more 

 picturesque and comfortable looking. " Now some of you," says 

 Dr. Cotton, in his " Bee Book," " do not fancy wooden boxes, 

 because you say the bees do not like them. Now I would ask 

 whether wild bees live in wooden trees or in trusses of straw." 

 Surely if this is an example of the arguments of the anti- 

 straw party it is no wonder, on principle of like to like, that 

 they show such affection for things wooden. On the same 

 principle it would be only fair to assume that, whereas the 

 harvest-mouse deUghts, when wild, in the freedom of the 

 broad corn-field, the way to make him happy in a domestic 

 state is to enclose him in a dumpling of wheaten dough. 



Supposing the form of hive adopted by the amateur bee- 

 keeper to be the common bell-shape, and made of straw (and 

 without doubt the beginner will run less risk of bungling and, 

 consequently, of disappointment with this than any other), it 

 will be as well to observe the following hints as to its construc- 

 tion and arrangement, as furnished by Dr. Bevan. "In 

 making these hives the lowest round of straw should be begun 

 upon a wooden hoop, the bottom being planed smooth that it 

 may sit closely upon the floor-boards, which, besides making 

 mortar or other cement needless, will allow a more easy move- 

 ment of the shde in the floor-board. Hives on stone or plain 

 board must of course have entrances cut in the wooden hoop 

 three inches long, and three-eighths of an inch high. The hoop 



