ertain motion
of the wings of the bees, designed to expel vitiated air, and admit the
pure, by keeping up a current. In the daytime, when the weather is hot,
you will see a few bees near the entrance on the outside, and hear
others within, performing this service, and, when fatigued, others take
their place. This is one of the most wonderful things in all the habits
and instincts of bees. They thus keep a pure atmosphere in a crowded
hive in hot weather. Now, it would require much less fanning to expel
bad air from a hive open at the top, than from one where all that air
had to be forced down, through an opening at the bottom. This theory is
sustained by the natural habits of bees in their wild state. Wild bees,
that select their own abodes, are found in trees and crevices of rocks.
They usually build their combs _downward_ from their entrance, and their
abode is air-tight at the bottom; they have no air only what is admitted
at their entrance, near the top of their dwelling, and with no current
of air only what they choose to produce by fanning. The purest
atmosphere in any room is where it enters and passes out at the top; in
such a room only does the external atmosphere circulate naturally. It is
on the same principle that bees keep better buried than in any other
way, provided only they are kept dry. Yet they are in a place air-tight,
except the small conductor to the atmosphere above them. The old
"pyramidal beehive" of Ducouedic, with three sections, one above the
other, allowing the removal of the lower one each spring, and the
placing of a new one on the top--thus changing the comb, so that none
shall ever be more than two years old, with the opening always within
three or four inches of the top, is the best of the patent hives. We
prefer plain, simple hives. The general adoption of this principle,
whatever hives are used, would be a new era in the science of
bee-culture. No beehive should ever be exposed to the direct rays of the
sun in a beehouse. A hive standing alone, with a free circulation of air
on every side, will not be seriously injured by the sun. But when the
rays are intercepted by walls or boards, in the rear and on the sides,
they are very disastrous. Other hints, such as clearing off
occasionally, in all seasons except in the cold of winter, the bottom
board, &c., are matters upon which we need not dwell. No cultivator
would think of neglecting them. Let no one be alarmed at finding dead
bees on t