a _very free_ admission of air is necessary in such hives, to
prevent the otherwise ruinous effects of frozen moisture; and hence the
common remark that bees require as much or more air in Winter than in
Summer.

When bees, in unsuitable hives, are exposed to all the variations of the
external atmosphere, they are frequently tempted to fly abroad if the
weather becomes unseasonably warm, and multitudes are lost on the
_snow_, at a season when no young are bred to replenish their number,
and when the loss is most injurious to the colony.

From these remarks, it will be obvious to the intelligent cultivator,
that protection against extremes of heat and cold, is a point of the
VERY FIRST IMPORTANCE; and yet this is the very point, which, in
proportion to its importance, has been most overlooked. We have
discarded, and very wisely, the straw hives of our ancestors; but such
hives, with all their faults, were comparatively warm in Winter, and
cool in Summer. We have undertaken to keep bees, where the cold of
Winter, and the heat of Summer are alike intense; and where sudden and
severe changes are often fatal to the brood: and yet we blindly persist
in expecting success under circumstances in which any marked success is
well nigh impossible.

That our country is eminently favorable to the production of honey,
cannot be doubted. Many of our forests abound With colonies which are
not only able to protect themselves against all their enemies, the
dreaded bee-moth not excepted, but which often amass prodigious
quantities of honey. Nor are such colonies found merely in _new_
countries. They exist frequently in the very neighborhood of cultivators
whose hives are weak and impoverished, and who impute to a decay of the
honey resources of the country, the inevitable consequences of their own
irrational system of management. It will not be without profit, to
consider briefly under what circumstances these wild colonies flourish,
and how they are protected against sudden and extreme changes of
temperature.

Snugly housed in the hollow of a tree whose thickness and decayed
interior are such admirable materials for excluding atmospheric changes,
the bees in Winter are in a state of almost absolute repose. The
entrance to their abode is generally very small in proportion to the
space within; and let the weather out of doors vary as it may, the
inside temperature is very uniform. These natural hives are dry, because
the moisture finds