Occasionally bees will attack fowls, although it is more than likely in most such cases that the fowls are the aggressors and mistake the bees for flies, of which they are very fond. =Stingless Bees.=--There has been much talk of breeding stingless bees, but personally I do not think such bees are ever likely to oust our native breeds, for what chance could they have in fights with the armed variety? CHAPTER II =Hives= The question of the hive is, of course, the all-important one to the bee-keeper; upon it depends in very large measure the success or non-success of his enterprise. To the beginner, especially, it is a matter for serious consideration, one not to be dealt with in any haphazard fashion. There are so many forms and varieties of hive on the market to-day that the novice, who perhaps started out with the idea that a hive was merely "a hive--any one would do--and the bees would accomplish the rest," is puzzled as to how to make a selection. As a general recommendation in this direction I would say, _select the one that is least complicated and easiest to clean_. Simplicity in working, combined with efficiency in its purpose, is a sure and safe standard to apply when selecting a hive. It is as well for the beginner to try one or two varieties, so that he may find out by experience which is better suited to his particular district, and the most convenient to manipulate. That settled, he can then adopt for general use the one best suited to his purpose. =The Skep Hive.=--The skep hive, made of straw, is the survival of those pre-scientific days when bee-keeping was conducted without method, other than providing a house for the bees. Except that it is still used by some who will not take the trouble to adapt themselves to the modern methods, the skep hive would find no mention in a book on bee-keeping for profit. Primarily the skep was made by our forefathers merely as a means of securing the bees for the honey season, by providing them with a ready-made home in which they could prepare their combs and store their honey. Originally it was a rough structure of straw, bound together probably with bramble-runners, peeled and split, and it has developed into the form in which we know it to-day. Its picturesqueness in the cottage flower garden cannot be denied, neither can its utility up to a certain point, and that point was when the time of the ingathering of the honey harvest arrived, for to secure the honey the bees were destroyed. As a rule, it is the hive that contains the best queen which has the most honey, and as the skep that was heaviest was always selected for clearing, it necessarily followed that in destroying the bees the best queens were sacrificed.