i64 MODERN BEEHIVES. [Ch. m. 



to place one of these unicomb hives at the window of 

 an anteroom adjoining his library at Stafford House, 

 St. James's, which we accordingly did, the bees haviiig 

 an open flight over his own garden and St. James's 

 Park, as the entrance faced that way. For a time this 

 was an unfailing source of interest and gratification to 

 His Grace and his visitors ; but unfortunately a reverse 

 came over the spirit of our dream. The hive was with- 

 out the Venetian blinds, thus depending on the window- 

 blind being carefully drawn down when the sun was 

 shining. An oversight prevented this being attended to 

 one day as usual : it was on the occasion of the visit 

 of the Shah of Persia to Stafford House, when the 

 servants were so much occupied that the secluded room 

 which the bees were in was wholly neglected. The, 

 consequence was that the rays of the burning June sun 

 so distressed the bees that they hung out in clusters, 

 the queen among them, at the outside entrance; the 

 combs were at the same time melted, and fell from their 

 foundations, and the brood was all ruined by heat '; in 

 fact, the whole hive became a wreck. We managed after 

 some trouble to save the bees, but His Grace was so 

 disheartened by the catastrophe that, for fear of its 

 repetition, though much to our disappointment, he 

 declined re-stocking the hive. 



At the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1855 we also 

 exhibited a hive of this description in full working order. 

 The bees left London on the sth of July of that year. 



