They have, with great practical sagacity, imitated as closely as possible, the conditions under which bees are found to flourish so admirably in a state of nature. We are informed by Mr. Dohiogost, a Polish writer, that his countrymen make their hives of the best plank, and never less than an inch and a half in thickness. The shape is that of an old-fashioned churn, and the hive is covered on the outside, halfway down, with twisted rope cordage, to give it greater protection against extremes of heat and cold. The hives are placed in a dry situation, directly upon the hard earth, which is first covered with an inch or two of clean, dry sand. Chips are then heaped up all around them, and covered with earth banked up in a sloping direction to carry off the rain. The entrance is at some distance above the bottom, and is a triangle, whose sides are only one inch long. In the winter season, this entrance is contracted so that only one bee can pass at a time. Such a hive, with us, as it does not furnish the honey in convenient, beautiful and salable forms, would not meet the demands of our cultivators. Still, there are some very important lessons to be learned from it, by all who keep bees in regions of cold winters, and hot summers. It shows the importance which some of the largest Apiarians in the world, attach to protection; practical, common sense men, whose heads have not been turned, as some would express it, by modern theories and fanciful inventions. They cultivate their bees almost in a state of nature, and their experience on what we would term a gigantic scale, ought to convince even the most incredulous, of the folly of pretending to keep bees, in the miserably thin and unprotected hives to which we have been accustomed. But how, it will be asked, can bees live in Winter, in a hive so closely shut up as the Polish hive? They do live in such hives, and prosper, just as they do in hollow trees, with only one small entrance. It is well known that bees have flourished when their hives were buried in Winter, and under circumstances in which but a very small amount of air could possibly gain admission to them. Bees, when kept in a _dry_ place, in properly protected hives and in a state of almost perfect repose, need only a small supply of air; and the objection that those cultivators among us, who shut up their colonies very closely in Winter, are almost sure to lose them, is of no weight; because the majority of our hives are so deficient in protection, that if they are too closely shut up, "the breath of the bees," condensing and freezing upon the inside, and afterwards thawing, causes the combs to mould, and the bees to become diseased; just as many substances mould and perish when kept in a close, damp cellar.