ur best and most
willing servants; have an alighting board project in front of the hive
at least one foot, or a board long enough to reach from the bottom of
the hive to the ground, that they may get on that, and crawl up to the
hive. Do you want the inducement? Examine minutely the earth about your
hives, towards sunset, some day in April, when the day has been fair,
with some wind, and chilly towards night, and you will be astonished at
the numbers that perish. Most of them will be loaded with pollen,
proving them martyrs to their own industry and your negligence. When I
see a bench three feet high and no wider than the bottom of the hive,
perhaps a little less, and no place for the bees to enter but at the
bottom, and as many hives crowded on as it will hold, I no longer
wonder that "bee-keeping is all in luck;" the wonder is how they keep
them at all. Yet it proves that, with proper management, it is not so
very precarious after all.

The necessary protection from the weather, for stocks, is a subject
that I have taken some pains to ascertain; the result has been, that
the cheapest covering is just as good as any; something to keep the
rain and rays of the sun from the top, is all sufficient. Covers for
each hive, like the bottom-board, should be separate, and some larger
than the top.

UTILITY OF BEE-HOUSES DOUBTED.

I have used bee-houses, but they will not pay, and are also discarded.
They are objectionable on account of preventing a free circulation of
air; also, it is difficult to construct them, so that the sun may
strike the hives both in the morning and afternoon; which in spring is
very essential. If they front the south, the middle of the day is the
only time when the sun can reach all the hives at once; this is just
when they need it least; and in hot weather, sometimes injurious by
melting the combs. But when the hives stand far enough apart, on my
plan, it is very easily arranged to have the sun strike the hive in the
morning and afternoon, and shaded from ten o'clock, till two or three,
in hot weather.

Notwithstanding our prodigality in building a splendid bee-house, we
think of economy when we come to put our hives in, and get them _too
close_. "Can't afford to build a house, and give them so much room, no
how."

CHAPTER VIII.

ROBBERIES.

Robbing is another source of occasional loss to the apiarian. It is
frequent in spring, and at any time in warm weather when honey is
scarce.