our mode
of hive, and the process for obtaining the surplus honey. We say
surplus, for destroying the bees to obtain their honey, is a mode not at
all according to our notions of economy, or mercy; and we prefer to take
that honey only which the swarm may make, after supplying their own
wants, and the stores for their increasing family. This process is given
in the report of a committee of gentlemen appointed by the New York
State Agricultural Society, on a hive which we exhibited on that
occasion, with the following note attached, at their show at Buffalo,
in 1848:

"I have seen, examined, and used several different plans of _patent_
hive, of which there are probably thirty invented, and used, more or
less. I have found all which I have ever seen, unsatisfactory, not
carrying out in full, the benefits claimed for them.

"The bee works, and lives, I believe, solely by instinct. I do not
consider it an inventive, or very ingenious insect. To succeed well, its
accommodations should be of the _simplest_ and _securest_ form.
Therefore, instead of adopting the complicated plans of many of the
patent hives, I have made, and used a simple box, like that now before
you, containing a cube of one foot square _inside_--made of one and a
quarter inch sound pine plank, well jointed and planed on all sides, and
put together perfectly tight at the joints, with white lead ground in
oil, and the inside of the hive at the bottom champered off to
three-eighths of an inch thick, with a door for the bees in front, of
four inches long by three-eighths of an inch high. I do this, that there
may be a thin surface to come in contact with the shelf on which they
rest, thus preventing a harbor for the bee-moth. (I have never used a
patent hive which would exclude the bee-moth, nor any one which would so
well do it as this, having never been troubled with that scourge since I
used this tight hive.) On the top of the hive, an inch or two from the
front, is made a passage for the bees, of an inch wide, and six to eight
inches long, to admit the bees into an upper hive for surplus honey,
(which passage is covered, when no vessel for that purpose is on the
top.) For obtaining the honey, I use a common ten or twelve-quart water
pail, inverted, with the bail turned over, in which the bees deposit
their surplus, like the sample before you. The pail will hold about
twenty pounds of honey. This is simple, cheap, and expeditious; the pail
costing not exce