anywhere. The advantage, therefore, which one hive has over another is not so much in its material, straw or wood, as in the greater or less ease with which your honey may be taken from it. The old English way of "puting down" so many stocks with the primstone match at the end of the season has, indeed, the one recommendation of simplicity, just as the robber's pistol and dagger are simple ways of getting money; but a rent willingly paid by a prosperous tenantry is a better way, though it be more complicated. I can show that the "puting down" plan is both wasteful and needless: I hope it will never become common in these islands; for the roughest bee master cannot " put down" his hives in autumn, without feeling that he is doing a cruel deed, which he would gladly avoid if he knew how. Even the common straw hives may be so managed as to yield a large return without your having recourse to the sulphur match. But I am now to teach you how to make your hives, not how to take the honey from them. There is no prettier object in a cottage garden than a well made straw hive, daintily capped by its neatly plaited hackle: and it is so easy for a man who has the thorough use of his fingers to make these hives, and the materials are so ready for his use, that although the wooden boxes which I shall presently describe have many advantages, they will never drive the old straw hive out of the field. A man must be something of a carpenter to make a bee box; he need only be a handy fellow to make a straw hive. Carpenters' tools are wanted for the former, whilst the only things he needs for the latter are a leatherm pipe of three inches long and an inch and a quarter in diameter, for working the straw through, and a large curved awl of hard wood or bone, for piercing the bands of straw as they are sewn. As Cobbett well said in his Cottage Economy, "he must be a stupid countryman indeed who cannot make a beehive, and a lazy one indeed who will not if he can." No man perhaps ever learnt to make a straw hive by reading how it is made, but by seeing another man working at one; so I will not take up a page or more in a long description of the stitch, if I may so call it, but beg any one who keeps bees to learn as soon as possible, and not to rest content with his work till he can sew a hive so tight that he can stand on it without bending it in at all; so close, that not a ray of light can be seen through it; and so neatly, that not a stitch can be found out of its place. Your first attempt may be a rude one, but be not daunted; go on till you can turn out a masterpiece. When you have done this, you need not keep yourself to hives alone; there are many things you may make in this straw work: corn baskets for the thrashing floor; market baskets for your wife; a cradle for your child; and above all, a beehive armchair for your old father or mother to sit by your chimney corner. It is a nice thing to see a settler's home with plenty of good furniture in it; but I can fancy none so ornamental as the wife with her basket, the child in its cradle, and the old father in his chair, all your own handywork. I lately shewed the stitch, and the mode of using the leatherm pipe, to some moaries at Otaki, and I had not to spend long about it; in an hour I was fairly beaten by my pupils, and before evening several of them had finished their first hive. At Waikanae I did the same, and the old man who has the care of the bees in that place was so ready at the work, that his second trial produced as strong and handsome a beehive as I have ever seen in any country. I doubt not but that before long maori made hives will be sold at eighteen pence or two shillings each in every town in New Zealand; if at the beginning of the swarming season any storekeeper will be kind enough to take them in and let one hang at his door. The straw which is used should not be broken with a fail, but pulled and prepared as for hatching, though with still greater care. It must be damped to make it work freely, as must the split kareau (supplejack) with which you may sew it. In England I have seen withy, hop vines, or bramble, made use of for this purpose; we shall soon have plenty of the two first in this country, but the kareau makes a capital substitute. Till you have thoroughly mastered the stitch, you may use split flax to employ your "'prentice hand," but do not afterwards. It will dry up, and so make your work loose. You should have several pipes of different sizes by you, because baskets, small caps for putting on the tops of your hives, and other fine work, should be made with a pipe of smaller gauge than a full sized hive.