MANUAL. 



CHAPTER I. 



OP THE CONSTEtrCTION OP A BEE-HITB. 



A BKE-HrvK should be made of sound boards, free from 

 shakes and cracks : it should also be planed smooth, inside 

 and out, made in a workmanlike manner, and painted white 

 on its outside. 



EEMAEKS. 



That a bee-hive should be made perfect, so as to exclude 

 light and air, is obvious from the fact that the bees will 

 finish what the workman has neglected, by plastering up all 

 such cracks and crevices, or bad joints, as are left open by 

 the joiner. The substance they use for this purpose is 

 neither honey nor wax, but a kind of glue, or cement, of 

 their own manufacturing, and is used by the bees to fill up 

 all imperfect joints, and exclude all light and air. This 

 cement or glue is 'made principally of gums taken from 

 forest trees and fruit trees that yield it, and, when worked 

 over and formed into cement by the bees, is very congenial 

 to the growth of the moth, in the first stages of. its exist- 

 ence. 



The moth-mUler enters the hive generally in the mght, 

 makes an incision into the glue, or cement, with her sting, 

 and leaves her eggs deposited in the glue, where they remain 



C9) 



