r own hives, and they can be made
to furnish any desirable amount of protection.

Enclosed Apiaries are at best but nuisances: they soon become
lurking-places for spiders and moths; and after all the expense wasted
on their construction, afford, but little protection against extreme
cold.

I have been thus particular on the subject of protection, in order to
convince every bee keeper who exercises common sense, that thin hives
ought to be given up, if either pleasure or profit is sought from his
bees. Such hives an enlightened Apiarian could not be persuaded to
purchase, and he would consider them too expensive in their waste of
honey and bees, to be worth accepting, even as a gift. Many strong
colonies which are lodged in badly protected hives, often consume in
extra food, in a single hard winter, more than enough to pay the
difference between the first cost of a good hive over a bad one. In the
severe winter of 1851-2, many cultivators lost nearly all their stocks,
and a large part of those which survived, were too much weakened to be
able to swarm. And yet these same miserable hives, after accomplishing
the work of destruction on one generation of bees, are reserved to
perform the same office for another. And this some call economy!

I am well aware of the question which many of my readers have for some
time been ready to ask of me. Can you make one of your well protected
hives as cheaply as we construct our common hives? I would remind such
questioners, that it is hardly possible to build a well protected house
as cheaply as a barn.

And yet by building my hives in solid structures, three together, I am
able to make them for a very moderate price, and still to give them even
better protection than when they are constructed singly. If they are not
built of doubled materials they can be made for as little money as any
other patent hive, and yet afford much greater protection; as the combs
touch neither the top, bottom nor sides of the hive. I recommend however
a construction, which although somewhat more costly at first, is yet
much cheaper in the end.

Such is the passion of the American people for cheapness in the first
cost of an article, even at the evident expense of dearness in the end,
that many, I doubt not, will continue to lodge their bees in thin hives,
in spite of their conviction of the folly of so doing; just as many of
our shrewdest Yankees build thin wooden houses, in the cold climate of
New Engl