POSITION AND ASPECT. 159 
same time that the direct rays of the sun are screened 
off. ‘lo make this part of the subject plain, let it be 
understood that any kind of shelter will do, for the 
bees care not one straw what it is if they are but 
dry, and can breathe the free air of heaven. But 
a caution here. A low thatched roof standing just 
above the hives, will in summer time be always full of 
spiders, and to dislodge these vagabonds is simply 
impossible. Before we took up our residence in Stoke 
Newington we had a pretty low-roofed thatched 
cottage for our bees, and the spiders were a perpetual 
nuisance. In hot weather spiders may swarm about 
the house and do no harm, for the bees pass through 
their horrible meshes unhurt; but when the foggy 
mornings and chilly damps of autumn come, the poor 
dears are trapped wholesale, they stick fast in the wet 
webs, and the bees being then weak and the spiders 
strong, the first fulfil the undesirable purpose of 
making the second fat. To see a bee fight with a 
spider, and the spider invariably get the best of it, is a 
pretty study for the apiarian, but the less of it the 
better. Our bee-shed consists of a hipped roof of 
timber supported on stout uprights of larch with the 
bark on; over the timber is laid felt well pitched and 
dusted with sand. It is open on all sides, but in 
winter is roughly boarded in, for our Hermitage is in 
a miserably bleak spot—Stoke Newington is a fine 
imitation of the arctic regions, consider-ng we are only 
five miles north from the General Post Office. 
Measurements are useful. The width of our roof is 
twelve feet, and the height from the ground eight feet, 
affording ample shelter from driving rains and also 
