Again, there is no business, and I speak from experience, that serves so well as an avocation. It offers additional funds to the poorly paid, out-door air to the clerk and office-hand, healthful exercise to the person of sedentary habits, and superb recreation to the student or professional man, and especially to him whose life-work is of that dull, hum-drum, routine order that seems to rob life of all zest. The labor, too, required in keeping bees, can, with a little thought and management, be so planned, if but few colonies are kept, as not to infringe upon the time demanded by the regular occupation. Indeed, I have never been more heartily thanked, than by such parsons as named above, and that, too, because I called them to consider--which usually means to adopt--the pleasing duties of the apiary. ADAPTATION TO WOMEN. Apiculture may also bring succor to those whom society has not been over-ready to favor--our women. Widowed mothers, dependent girls, the weak and the feeble, all may find a blessing in the easy, pleasant, and profitable labors of the apiary. Of course, women who lack vigor and health, can care for but very few colonies, and must have sufficient strength to bend over and lift the small-sized frames of comb when loaded with honey, and to carry empty hives. With the proper thought and management, full colonies need never be lifted, nor work done in the hot sunshine. Yet right here let me add, and emphasize the truth, _that only those who will let energetic thought and skillful plan, and above all promptitude and persistence, make up for physical weakness, should enlist as apiarists._ Usually a stronger body, and improved health, the results of pure air, sunshine, and exercise, will make each successive day's labor more easy, and will permit a corresponding growth in the size of the apiary for each successive season. One of the most noted apiarists, not only in America but in the world, sought in bee-keeping her lost health, and found not only health, but reputation and influence. Some of the most successful apiarists in our country are women. Of these, many were led to adopt the pursuit because of waning health, grasping at this as the last and successful weapon with which to vanquish the grim monster. Said "Cyula Linswik"--whose excellent and beautifully written articles have so often charmed the readers of the bee publications, and who has had five years of successful experience as an apiarist--in a paper read before our Michigan Convention of March, 1877: "I would gladly purchase exemption from in-door work, on washing-day, by two days' labor among the bees, and I find two hours' labor at the ironing-table more fatiguing than two hours of the severest toil the apiary can exact. * * * I repeat, that apiculture offers to many women not only pleasure but profit. * * * Though the care of a few colonies means only recreation, the woman who experiments in bee-keeping somewhat extensively, will find that it means, at some