treatment, will induce it
willingly to migrate from its nursery habitation to another by its side,
although provided with the choicest comforts to invite its entrance.
It will soon fly to the woods, enter a hollow and dilapidated tree, and
carve out for itself its future fortunes, amid a world of labor and
apparent discomfort. The bee, too, barring its industry, patience, and
sweetened labors, is an arrant thief--robbing its nearest neighbors,
with impunity, when the strongest, and mercilessly slaughtering its
weaker brethren, when standing in the way of its rapacity. It has been
extolled for its ingenuity, its patience, its industry, its
perseverance, and its virtue. Patience, industry, and perseverance it
has, beyond a doubt, and in a wonderful degree; but ingenuity, and
virtue, it has none, more than the spider, who spins his worthless web,
or the wasp, who stings you when disturbing his labors. Instinct, the
bee has, like all animals; but of kind feeling, and gratitude, it has
nothing; and with all our vivid nursery remembrance of good Doctor
Watts' charming little hymn--

"How doth the little busy bee," &c. &c.,

we have long ago set it down as incorrigible to kind treatment, or
charitable sympathy, and looked upon it simply as a thing to be treated
kindly for the sake of its labors, and as composing one of that
delightful family of domestic objects which make our homes attractive,
pleasant, and profitable.

The active labors of the bee, in a bright May or June morning, as they
fly, in their busy order, back and forth from their hives, or the
soothing hum of their playful hours, in a summer's afternoon, are among
the most delightful associations of rural life; and as a luxury to the
sight, and the ear, they should be associated with every farmer's home,
and with every laborer's cottage, when practicable. And as their due
accommodation is to be the object of our present writing, a plan is
presented for that object.

In many of the modern structures held out for imitation, the bee-house,
or apiary, is an expensive, pretentious affair, got up in an ambitious
way, with efforts at style, in the semblance of a temple, a pagoda, or
other absurdity, the very appearance of which frightens the simple bee
from its propriety, and in which we never yet knew a colony of them to
become, and remain successful. The insect is, as we have observed, wild
and untamable--a savage in its habits, and rude in its temper. It
rejects