16 THE CULTIVATOR. Jan. 
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rake teeth, fence posts,* the tongues of wagons and 
carts, wheelbarrow handles, spade handles, &c. This 
form must however be modified to suit circumstances, 
as for instance, whippletrees must be large enough at 
the ends to secure the iron hooks, and wagon tongues 
for the ironing at the end. The axletrees of wagons 
and carts, must not only be made strong in the middle, 
but also at the entrance of the hub, the wheels, when 
thrown sideways, operating as levers to snap them off 
at the latter point. The annexed figure, (fig. 6,) shows 
b 
two forms of a cart axle, a, unnecessarily heavy, as too 
often made, and b, the improvement. Ladders are often 
required to be very light, but their weight, as usually 
made, may be considerably diminished by lessening the 
ends of the two poles, and also tapering the rounds to 
each extremity, by which smaller holes are needed for 
their reception, and the poles consequently may be 
smaller. Where various forces are to be resisted, at¬ 
tention must be given to all ; for example, in the spokes 
of wagon wheels, much strength is required at the hub 
for stiffening the wheel laterally ; they must be strong at 
the middle to resist the contracting pressure of the tire ; 
and of sufficient size at the circumference, where they 
are apt to be weakened by decay, from constant expo¬ 
sure to mud ai*d water. 
The best form is nearly a uniform taper towards the 
outside, with a sudden enlargement at the outer ex¬ 
tremity. 
A rule of very general application in constructing 
machines, &c., is, in all rectangular bars or beams, the 
strength increases as the breadth, and as the square of 
the depth. Thus, a timber 4 inches wide, and 6 inches 
deep or thick, is twice as strong as a timber 2 inches 
wide and 6 deep ; and one 2 inches wide and four deep, 
is four times stronger than one 2 wide and 2 deep j or if 
6 inches deep, it is 9 times stronger. The same rule 
will show that a board 12 inches wide and 1 inch thick, 
will support 12 times as great a weight when edge¬ 
wise as when lying flat. Hence the increase of strength 
given to whippletrees, fence-posts, joists, rafters, string- 
pieces of farm bridges, &c., by making them flat, or 
narrow and deep, may be precisely known. Again, 
the strength of a round stick or pole, (cylinder,) in¬ 
creases as the cube of the diameter increases ; hence a 
stick 3 inches in diameter is 27 times stronger than a 
stick of equal length one inch in diameter. Hence, 
when an increase of strength is needed in round bars of 
wood, as for the handles of tools, or spokes of a ladder, 
this rule may be easily and accurately applied. 
These remarks might be extended to almost any 
length, did our limits permit ; our object, however, is 
merely to direct attention to the importance of the study. 
All who construct implements should understand the 
subject thoroughly,- and farmers, who must know how 
to choose good from bad ones, should be able, as far as 
practicable, to select those which are well made, and 
equally strong in all their parts, and avoid those which 
are defective or unnecessarily cumbersome, without the 
long and costly process of purchase and trial. T. 
MANAGEMENT OF BEES. 
Editors of the Cultivator —The destruction 
which took place among bees, last spring, has caused 
much inquiry respecting the cause. Believing that I 
can throw some light on the subject, I proceed, with¬ 
out further comment, to make a few remarks. 
I commenced keeping bees in March, 1813, with only 
one swarm, and by the increase of this, in a few years, 
I was in possession of twenty hives—wintering nearly 
that number a great part of the time till the last 
season. Soon after I commenced, I occasionally lost 
hives of bees, and on examination, I found that the 
young had died in their cells, where they had turned 
black, and produced an offensive smell. Why the young 
should thus die in the cells, was a matter to which I 
directed much inquiry. I had read several authors on 
bees, some of whom described the dying of the young 
bees in cells as a disease , but pointed out no satisfac¬ 
tory course or remedy. In the month of June, about 
twenty years ago, I had five young swarms come out 
about ten o’clock in the forenoon. The weather being 
very hot, they all came out in the course of fifteen 
minutes, and were hived. In the after part of the day, 
there was a thunder-shower, which brought the wind 
north-west, and the weather turned cold, giving frost 
the next morning, on low land. The consequence was, 
the five old swarms from which the above young ones 
came, failed to increase. I attempted to winter them, 
but the following spring, they were all, except one, 
dead. I then broke out the combs, and found dead 
t Strictly speaking, the pressure being on all parts of a fence 
post alike, it should be in the form of a wedge, with straight sides. 
Hence, a fence post of equal width throughout, contains twice as 
much timber as is needed for strength merely. 
young in the cells. This led me to the cause of the 
death of the young bees. 
Two years after this, a similar case occurred. After 
the bees swarmed, it came off cold as before. At night, 
I covered the old hives that sent forth young, with bed- 
quilts and blankets, and on removing them the next 
morning, I discovered the bees were lively, humming at 
the lower entrance of the hive, and it was evident from 
the bursting of the caps of the cells at the entrance of the 
hive that the process of hatching had gone on as well as in 
a warm night. In eight days those old hives swarmed 
again, and some a third time, still leaving the old hives 
well stocked with bees. From that time till now, (fif¬ 
teen or twenty years,) I have not lost a single swarm 
of bees by the young dying in the cells. 
From this discovery and remedy, I have come to the 
conclusion that there is no disease in the young bees, 
while in the cell, that would cause their death or that 
of the parent stock. We all know among the feathered 
tribe, it is necessary to keep up a certain degree of 
heat by brooding, or otherwise, in order to produce 
young from the egg. Should a hen sit on her eggs one 
week, and then leave them until they were perfectly 
cold, no future sitting would hatch them. Now, if the 
case in regard to the eggs may be properly called a 
disease , then we may say that the young bees in the 
cells die from disease. But it is well known that bees 
will recede to the upper part of the hive, when the 
weather is cold, and whenever this takes place, while 
the brood comb is filled with young, they invariably 
die. 
This brings me now to speak of the past season, in 
which so many valuable swarms of bees have died. It 
