J 
150, TREATISE ON THE 
micil, unhappily clustering and hanging at 
the entrance, or from and under the floor- 
board of their hive, in a ball frequently as 
large as a man’s head, and sometimes cover- 
ing all the front part of their hive, for twenty 
or thirty days together, and this, be it re- 
marked, at the season of the year which is the 
most profitable for their labors in the fields 
and among the flowers. During this dis- 
tress of the Bees in, or belonging to, such a 
hive, their labors are of necessity suspended, 
their gathering of honey ceases,—ceases, too, 
at the very time that that saccharine sub- 
stance is most plentifully secreted by the ve- 
getable world. And—why? All because of 
the want of ventilation in their domicil. My 
hive is thoroughly ventilated by means of a 
wire screen bottom and a hole at the top of 
the hive, so that there is a slow impercepti- 
ble current of air constantly passing in at 
the bottom and off at the top through the 
ventilator, to let the excess of animal heat 
escape in summer, and also to throw off the 
vapor caused by the breath and other exhala- 
