414 
AMERICAN HOMES AND 
GARDENS 
November, 1911 
A fanciful group, whose figures form the beehives 
Bees are hived in the howdah on this elephant 
A Curious Bee-Garden 
Wherein the Owner Has Carried Out an Idea Unique in Bee-Culture 
By George A. Avery 
F ‘THOSE who have heard the saying “‘bees 
in his head’? could know the origin of the 
accompanying pictures, a new phrase, “‘bees 
in his heart,’ might be put in circulation. 
Kindness certainly directs the motif carried 
out by the tender hands of the bee-master, 
a simple German teacher who may be seen sitting at the 
side of a lion, and who in the task of domiciliation of his 
colonies, wrought what he thought, when they were made 
comfortable and safe, would be an ornament to the neigh- 
borhood. The forms and exterior features are wholly to 
his own taste, as the inner details are to the taste of the 
bees, so what does he care. 
The designer is seen to be 
decidedly prone to putting into shape something taken from 
widely divergent lands, and to a degree far in excess of 
even the Teutonic leaning toward the ornate. From the 
Indies he uses the caparisoned elephant mounted by a bee- 
hive of houdah pattern; from Nubia the desert lion; from 
sacred lands insects coming out of the bodies of human 
beings; from fairyland he shows the idea of a dwarf with 
bees issuing from the nostrils; while from the land of the 
familiar, the proclivity of the bear for honey. The last 
stands like a sentinel at one end of the garden, which boasts 
a collection of huts of Hottentot simplicity, facing a mina- 
retted and columned palace of the Orient. The dwarf 
stands in the entrance-way of his bastioned stronghold. The 
elaborate ornamental biblical scene, flanked by hangings 
* 
of modern burlap, depicts the dove of peace hovering; and 
under it a group of bible characters reclining at ease within 
the portal of an edifice, where the opening and the interior 
court are unstintingly overrun with floral decorations and 
pastoral scenes from the Holy Land. Holland contributes 
its windmill, and there are numerous maisonettes of a sort 
of Swiss chalet effect. Baywindows project, roofs slant, 
peaks are ornamented with finials, lace curtains hang at 
windows, a thicket separates the largest animals, and across 
the garden lie several cultivated plots of ground separated 
from one another and from the rows of bee-holders by 
broad and level paths, all just like a compact and miniature 
village. A quaint illustration is that of a frame holding a 
square of tapestry on which is pictured some dream from 
the fabled past, woven about a tablet and in which appear 
archaic German verses on the art of gathering honey. 
Before entering the enclosure one reads the sign “Bienen 
Garten” over a doorway whose Grecian pretension does 
not prevent the obtrusion of some crude lattice work. When 
one has passed the entrance he may look in vain for the 
oldest form of beehive, made familiar in primers and on 
the covers of savings-bank books, and those of normal 
modern types, for the constructor never swerved from his 
purpose of making his beehives completely original in every 
way. Yet even after these specimens of the bee-master’s 
ambitious work, it is not one’s fault that a general view of 
the garden looked at over the fence appears something like 
The dwarf is the hive, and the bees issue from his nostrils 
This fierce-visaged lion shelters a swarm of honey-makers 
