A Year among the bees. 
15 
10 frames, and, on some accounts, 1 should like them to hold 
11. They have tight bottoms and no portico. 
At the risk of losing caste as a bee-keeper, I am obliged to 
confess that I never got up “ a hive of my own,” never even 
tried to plan one, but I have tried no little to get up a hive- 
cover to suit me. A hive is so seldom moved that I care less 
for its weight, but when I, or, more particularly, my female 
assistants, have to lift covers all day long, when hot and 
tired, a pound difference in weight is quite an item. The 
first covers I had for my present hives were 8 inches deep, 
and I have just weighed one which was a little wet, and it 
weighs over 18 pounds. I cut down the depth to 4 inches, but 
they were still heavy, and leaked, no matter how well painted, 
nor how well seasoned the stuff. I then got up a couple of 
hundred very shallow and light, covered with white oil-cloth, 
weighing 434 lbs. These, when new, are about perfection, 
but the second season the oil-cloth begins to give way and 
then they are something of a nuisance. I suppose it might 
pay to put on fresh oil-cloth every year or two, but I didn’t 
want to fuss so much, and the last I made were covered with 
tin, being lJ4-inekes deep, the top boards of %-inch stuff, 
covered witli tin, then painted witli two coats of white lead. 
A block 4x%x% nailed on one end serves for a handle. This 
makes a tolerably light cover, 534 pounds, is durable and 
perfectly water-tight. The greatest objection is the cost, 
from 20 to 25 cents each. 
In getting covers, hives and other articles made, I have 
suffered great annoyance from inaccuracy of work. A 
cabinet-maker was once quite indignant because I intimated 
that he could not make a satisfactory bee-hive. I gave him 
one of Vandervort’s make for a pattern, and when I came to 
see the first one he made, it was a model of workmanship, 
except that there was no place for a bee to enter and not a 
frame would go in ! (He was not to make any frames.) Of 
late years I get nearly everything in the flat from G. B. Lewis 
& Co., Watertown, Wis., and I count myself fortunate in 
being so near them that freights are not heavy. Their work 
