bee-keefer's manual. 175 



family of bees. On this principle, a current of air 

 is constantly passing up through the brood-combs, 

 where the bees are doing all that lies in their power 

 to get up a high degree of heat, in order to de- 

 velop the larvae. If a man were to try his best to 

 invent something that would prove the most destructive to 

 bees, and he should produce a hive with a large tube, or 

 opening near the top of it, I should award him a pre- 

 mium for the best article offered, or that could be offered. 

 I could state many things pertaining to Townly's hive 

 that I disapprove of, but it would be a waste of space 

 and time. There is nothing but the novelty of it that 

 enables the patentee to sell them, and it only requires, to 

 have the merits of this invention fully understood, from 

 a few years actual use, to cause the proprietor to 

 vend them in parts unknown. 



weeks' VERMONT HIVES. 



Mr. Weeks, of Vermont, has invented several hives in' 

 his day, and he has also published a small work on the 

 honey-bee, and so, indeed, has Townly. Both of these 

 little works are of sterling merit, so far as they go ; but 

 they are but introductions to the subject, and I am as- 

 tonished, that gentlemen having the means of unfolding 

 the interesting habits, economy, and management of 

 bees, should have stopped on the very threshhold of their 

 subject ; but so it is, and they stand not alone. Others 

 have done the same, and perhaps I am following them ; 

 but I think the reader will, on wading through these 



