APICULTURE. 809 



for his hive had more practical value than the whole of the others 

 together. In carrying out the common principle, Langstroth was 

 undoubtedly far ahead. 



The next stride in advance was the invention of the manufacture 

 of " comb-foundation," which was a great desideratum, as the honey- 

 season in the temj)erate zone is comparatively short, and a new colony 

 of bees supplied with the " comb-foundation " will do as much in two 

 or three days as one alongside of it without the foundation will do in 

 eight or ten days, as the writer has repeatedly proved. Foundation- 

 comb is made by pressing sheets of pure bees-wax between metal 

 rollers or plates so constructed as to give to the wax the exact impres- 

 sions of the cells in the basal wall of the natural comb. This saves the 

 worker-bees just that much labor and time, and they proceed at once 

 to rapidly draw out and develop the incipient cells. The merit of this 

 invention is also somewhat in dispute. Upward of twenty years ago 

 the late eminent apiarist, S. Wagner, patented comb-foundation in the 

 United States ; but it soon transpired that Herr Mehring, in Ger- 

 many, had previously made foundation, and that the Germans had 

 been using it for three or four years. As it is the accumulated wit 

 and experience of the age, rather than the man, that produces the in- 

 vention, it is quite likely that Mr. Wagner arrived at the idea without 

 the aid of the other German (for Mr. Wagner was himself a German). 

 Montaigne said he " had as clear a right to think Plato's thoughts as 

 Plato himself had " ; and the American German had not only as good 

 a right as the home Teuton to think out this invention, but he was just 

 as likely to do so, and more likely, for the inspiriting and inventive 

 Yankee atmosphere would quicken his blood and sharpen his wits. 



Recent bee-culture has been also greatly promoted and extended 

 by the specialty of queen-rearing, which has been brought to great 

 perfection on scientific princij)les. D. A. Jones, in Canada, and Henry 

 Alley, in the United States, have developed this department of api- 

 culture to an extent leaving, one would think, little to be further 

 achieved or desired. As, however, under the progressive laws of evo- 

 lution, we have ceased to set bounds to improvement in anything not 

 fixed mathematically, we will not say that any department of prac- 

 tical apiculture is yet fully wrought out to perfection. 



In order to secure absolute purity of fertilization in the different 

 varieties and sub-varieties in crossing, D. A. Jones, of Beeton, Ontario, 

 has established queen-nurseries on different islands in Georgian Bay, 

 so far from shore and from each other as to secure entire purity of 

 blood in copulation. Queens and drones bred and mated under such 

 circumstances, from pure imported stock, can not be otherwise than 

 pure. 



Henry Alley also, of Wenham, Massachusetts, has, through a long 

 series of experiments during many years, successfully applied science 

 to the modus operandi of queen-rearing, and has recently given the 



