One manufacturer tells of "millions and millions of dollars' worth of honey taken from bees annually;" boasts of a plant with a working capital of $300,000, and pictures the honey product in the United States every year as "making a solid trainload" fifty miles long. Where, all this time, is the educational naturalist who loves the bee as well as its product? Resting quietly, and perfectly willing, apparently, to let commercialism dominate the entire subject.

He will spend his money on elaborate bamboo rods, nickel-plated heads of ingenious devices, with fine-mesh nets for the flying insects, approved drag-nets, and devices for water-insects, elaborate breeding-cages, collecting boxes; plaster of Paris, and glass and other mounts; costly storing-cases, and other elaborate paraphernalia. He will devise ingenious methods for observation of ants as has Comstock, Fielde, and others. But what will he do for the bee, the charm, the supreme interest of entomology? Nothing. No catalogue of entomological supplies with which I am familiar, though picturing a great variety of breeding-cages for other insects, has one word to say in favor of studying bees, or even a device to show for facilitating the investigation of their habits. That has been left to commercialism, and commercialism cares for nothing but the money end of the arrangement.

In a life devoted more or less to the study of bees as a Nature Study topic of supreme merit, I have more and more felt the need of an educational bee-hive.

This need has presented itself to me in the twofold relation of workmanship and convenience. To remedy this defect I have devoted all my spare time for several months past. Let us examine these needs.

1. Workmanship.-A leading book on Nature Study in the schoolroom and home, pictures a clap-trap drygoods-box affair that would not for a moment be tolerated as an apparatus for the study of physics in any laboratory in the land. Even those who cry the loudest for home-made apparatus in physics would not accept such a crude thing as that. A poor farmhouse would demand better workmanship in a box to put behind the stove for holding firewood-it surely would if the photographic illustration does the subject justice. A prominent magazine devoted to life in the country has two or three times pictured arrangements for holding a single frame of bees in a window. If we are to judge from the illustration it must have been the poorest piece of furniture in the house. The tone of the article and the appearance of the illustration convey the impression that the writer felt a pride in the fact that the whole thing was cheap and home-made. But why cheap and homemade? Is the subject unworthy our attention? or is it unworthy our best treatment?

Why does that periodical not publish articles on "How to Make a Dog-kennel out of a Drygoods Box;" "How to Make a Cage for Your Canary out of Old Umbrella Ribs;" "How to Tear up Old Rags into Ribbons for the Neck of your pet Cat"? or-but why argue further? The articles admit the interest in bees as a home ornament. Then why insult the bees with any thing short of the best?

In a leading university and in a prominent museum I have seen a crude "observation hive " visited by greater crowds of people than were the show-cases of specimens, and have heard them excite more exclamations of interest and wonder. Yet the glass in one of the doors cost more than the entire hive; indeed, the hives in both places were such ramshackle affairs that an up-to-date bee-keeper would hardly consider them worth a place in his back-yard apiary. The probabilities are that such an apiarist would chop them up for kindling-wood. Yet why this "economy" of the university or the museum? Are not live bees of more interest than pinned beetles or skeletons of muskrats? If they are, give them a "case" at least as good.

2. In utility and convenience. -The so-called "observation hive" has consisted of eight or ten frames with glass on both sides, with or without covering doors, exposing usually about two-thirds of one side of the outermost comb. The real work of the bees is on the inner combs; but, waiving that disadvantage, a hive that exposes to observation from one-twelfth to one-fifteenth of its comb surface (the glasses at the end are useless) is not an observation hive; it is an aggravation hive.

The Bigelow Educational Hive

The Bigelow Educational Hive

Another form of so-called "observation hive" has been a simple affair with glass sides for holding one frame of comb temporarily removed from a hive, with the bees upon it. For temporary exhibition of one comb this has its place; but as an observation hive it is a misnomer and a -failure. From their unnatural surroundings, and from the fact that they have no facilities for clustering between protecting combs for warmth, and especially since the bees soon die in it, my opinion is that the contrivance would better be named a tribulation or devastation hive. Another apparatus, originating in England, and intended to secure the desired result, has been made of two series of frames with four or five in each vertical row! Could anything be more absurd as a matter of ingenuity, or further removed from the natural condition in the natural hive? I can imagine nothing.

These facts, united with the belief that the honey-bees are unexcelled in interest from the nature-study standpoint, have impelled me for months to study the subject, and to plan what now seems to be an ideal educational bee-hive, and I have intrusted its manufacture to The A. I. Root Company, who have had extensive experience in building hives for the honey-gatherer; and who are in full sympathy with the nature-study conditions, and who, furthermore, have unexcelled facilities for fine workmanship. The hive is to be made in finely finished pine, ash, or oak, and glazed in first-quality glass.

The essential feature is an observation chamber backed by a force of bees in regular body hive with glass sides.

As the physicist has a battery or motor from which he takes out electricity for such experiments or observations as he may desire to make with special apparatus, so here the bee naturalist is provided with the ability to make observations and experiments.

The chamber is supplied with a padded division-board, which serves to divide it into two hives, and which is also useful as a background for photographing results obtained in either apartment. The bees may be readily isolated as a separate colony in either section for artificial feeding, for rustic comb-building, or for other purposes. The chamber is deeper than the body of the hive, so that the entire extent of the regular frame or other comb-support may be seen or photographed.

Under each half-chamber is an ingenious arrangement of slot and bee-escape. When the thin metal cover is drawn entirely out, bees go in or out freely; when half in, the bees go out only, and the chamber is soon cleared. Push the metal plate entirely in, and the bees go neither in nor out, but may be instantly removed to another hive for experimental purposes. Not a bee can then take flight to freedom, and there is not the slightest possibility of being stung. By using one or both of these sliding covers, the hive is readily made into two or three hives. Holes in the top are supplied with caps and with jar feeders.