The natural habits of bees have not been sufficiently understood, by the majority of bee keepers. This has rendered them an easy prey to the many speculators in bee hives of peculiar shape and construction, who are constantly urging their claims to possessing great knowledge of bees, when perhaps they never saw a bee; and care not one straw for the advancement of successful bee culture. I find, with the great majority of hives now in use, there are many obstacles to successful and profitable bee keeping. There is too little room for storing box honey in them. Boxes are often difficult of access to the bees, so that they manifest much reluctance about entering them, often clustering on the outside of the hive through the honey season, when they should be at work in the boxes. Then, too, the boxes are usually too large, which renders the honey unsalable. Honey in large boxes often contains cells of brood, and bee bread, or pollen, interspersed among the honey cells, which are a great damage to it, rendering it very unsalable. Glass boxes, each holding about four and one-half pounds, is the proper size. A swarm of bees in a hive with thirty of these boxes, judiciously arranged, will fill them nearly as quickly as they would half the number, as the bees have ample room to work without crowding. There are a vast number of bee keepers who now have bees which are of no profit to them, but instead are only a perplexity and trouble. If such would manage their bees on correct and scientific principles, in accordance with their natural habits and instincts, with judicious care and attention bestowed at the right time, and in the proper manner, using a hive constructed in accordance with those principles, they would be surprised at the results which would follow. To succeed with bees, we should recollect that personal experience is the best guide; and next to this is the instruction of those engaged in the business, who prove by the results which follow their management, that they make bee culture profitable. In commencing bee keeping, if you purchase bees, use great care in doing so. Buy none but strong, healthy stocks. If you purchase in box hives or patent hives, you will be very likely, if not acquainted with bees, or unless purchasing of some reliable person, to get diseased stocks; and again, a person who keeps bees by the ordinary methods, is very likely to have diseased stocks which he thinks are all right. So, great care is necessary in buying your outfit to commence bee keeping. Diseased stocks are dear at any price. You want the very best to start with, if you can possibly get them. Be sure to get such stocks as have young queens, for if the stock has a queen four years old or more, (and they are likely to be that old in box or patent hives, under ordinary management,) such a queen is liable to fail at any time, and loss of the stock follows.