70 
BEE-CULTURE. 
selves, who in their fertile imaginations think they have dis- 
covered the ne ultra in bee-keeping, but when put in 
practice they find won’t do — there was something they had 
overlooked. No wonder that many have grown out of 
patience, both with their own and other people’s inventions. 
I must say a large amount of the abortive attempts at im- 
provement would have been avoided, had the peddlers and the 
bee-keepers generally possessed the reliable information that 
can be had from books now published on that subject. Some 
growing out of patience say : “ I do not want any of your 
contrivances — give us a natural bee hive.” But what is 
a natural bee hive ? “ One they will go to if left to 
themselves — as a hollow tree. ” In this region where 
timber is tall they choose the hollow tops of trees ; in the 
West, where the timber is scrubby, they enter the lower end - 
In countries where they have no timber they enter boxes, 
empty hives or kegs. They have been known to go into the 
cupola of a building, the walls of a frame house, or the dried 
carcass of a lion. Which of these is the natural bee-hive '! 
Suppose we give all of our domestic animals their natural shel- 
ter from storms, it will evidently possess one essential good 
quality — that of always having plenty of fresh air. But I do 
not wish to become too natural, lest I should turn my horse 
wild in the woods and do my farming by hand and my own 
traveling by foot So soon as we begin to manage bees at 
all we begin to be artificial. 
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE DEVICES FOR DIVES. 
In some countries they excavate a hole in the side of a tree. 
In Cuba they use inverted sugar-troughs. Hives have been 
made dear and cheap ; of straw, wood and earthenware. They 
have been made large and small, single and double, tall and 
low, oblong, square, triangular, hexagonal and round; in sec- 
tions on top of each other, or sitting side by side, that bees 
could pass from one to another, so that swarms could be made 
by lifting a top hive from a lower one, or a side hive from 
one joining it; some with inclined bottom boards to clean the 
hive; others suspended without bottoms at all; some with 
honey boxes of various structures and materials placed on the 
side of the hive, on the top or at the bottom, or the side of 
the hive removed to take the honey ; some are made with 
