them. The hives were boxes about a foot square and three feet high, standing on end, made of rough lumber, and showing a great many cracks and rotted holes, which the industrious insects had plastered up with wax and propolis. From a hole at the bottom the bees came and went, and they were flying now in scores, coming in heavy with honey or with their legs yellow with pollen.

“I expect they’re working on the titi,” Bob remarked, stooping to watch them. “Or maybe there’s some blackberry coming out in bloom.”

“Goodness!” exclaimed Joe. “I didn’t suppose you’d know what titi was. Surely you don’t have it up North.”

“I wouldn’t know a titi-tree if I saw one,” Bob confessed. “But before we came down here I read up about the Alabama honey-plants, and just when they all bloomed, and I know the titi ought to be on just about now. I wish you’d show me some.”

“I reckon you’re a real beeman, all right!” said the woods-rider, laughing. “I never knew there were any books about such things as honey-plants. Down here we just let the bees alone, except when they swarm, and when we rob them. They make honey all right, though. Why, one year I remember we robbed these six gums of pretty near a wash-tubful of honey.”

“About sixty pounds, I expect,” Bob calculated. “Alice, what did our best hive make last year?”

“Three hundred and eighty pounds,” said Alice promptly. “We weighed it separately, just to see how much there was. Our total crop last year was twenty-one thousand pounds. We sold most of it at eleven cents.”

Joe opened his eyes wide and glanced at all three of his cousins to make sure that they were not making fun of him.

“What, more than two thousand dollars, just out of bees?” he gasped. “I never heard of such a thing before. Down here we think bees are just a kind of foolishness. I don’t wonder that you are in the business.”

“Next year I’ll bet we make four thousand dollars, if we can only get the bees,” said Bob. “You see, we were fools. We sold out most of our outfit just when we should have held on. We were offered a big price and we took the bait. So we came down here after more, but I don’t know where we are going to get them. All I can hear of is just a few gums like these, scattered here and there; and we want to get a couple of hundred anyway.”

“A couple of hundred gums of bees!” 

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