It may not be implicitly followed, yet may serve as a guide 

 in different straits. So, while each aspiring- bee-master may 

 fully intend to follow in the footsteps of the enterprising- and 

 accurate experimentalists mentioned above, he ought to take 

 advantage of their experience, which will save him many an 

 hour which might have been spent in endeavouring to 

 elucidate a fact which has already been proved. The points 

 already ascertained are as so many steps gained in the 

 ascent to knowledge ; and it is our business not to endea- 

 vour to re-erect those steps, but, by taking our stand upon 

 them, to strive by their aid to establish new ones. 



We know not whether the inquiring spirit of Aristomachus 

 or PhiHscus exists among us at present, but certainly the 

 name of those who aspire to teach the economy of bee- 

 management is legion. In Cotton's "My Bee-Book," there 

 is a list of other people's bee-books, to the number of about 

 one hundred and twenty -five distinct pubHcations. One 

 conclusion may, no doubt, be safely drawn from this fact — 

 either to the mind or to the pocket, the subject is found 

 profitable. We trust to be able to show that it may be 

 both to the readers of "Books for the Country." And as 

 the knowledge of the natural habits of the bee is the only 

 trustworthy foundation of the artificial ones we must, to 

 some extent, impose upon them in servitude, let us begin 

 with the former. We shall say little of the more technical 

 points of the study of entomology ;* but merely state that 

 the honey-bee is one of the genus ApiSj and forms, with the 

 other kinds of bees, of which there are several hundred in 

 England alone, the order Hymenoptera.f We shall now 

 request our readers to imagine themselves doing what they 

 will find it very pleasant to do in reality, watching the chief 

 operations of a hive through glass walls, with the aid of the 

 most experienced eyes. 



A swarm, led off by an old queen, has been just housed, 

 in a warm and comfortable tenement, but it is empty — un- 



• Derived from two Greek words, signifying to cut into, in illusion 

 to the shape of insects, which are, as it were, cut into three distinct 

 portions, the head, the thorax, or chest, and the abdomen, or belly. 

 The word insect is derived from the Latin, and has the same mean- 

 ing. 



t Derived fron> two Greek words, signifying metnlranous winged. 



