70 BEES. 



perience of veteran bee-masters has enabled them to lay 

 down, it would also be the mark of a mind very contracted 

 and deficient in resources, were he slavish]}^ to follow these 

 rules without deviating from them, when circumstances 

 would point out that a different course must be adopted 

 Great caution must be observed in acting* on new principles. 

 Many treat their bees as if they were utterly insensible 

 beings who cared not the least how they were lodged or 

 fed, and who fancy that they can manoeuvre a hive of bees 

 as easil}^ as they can a flock of sheep. Bees must be treated 

 according to their instincts, and if constantly thwarted by 

 the ignorance of their master, will never thrive properly. 

 Indeed, a man who hopes to get a decent harvest from his 

 hives, and at the same time to manage them on a wrong 

 principle, will effect about as much success as a gardener 

 might who strove to improve the quality of a peach by 

 grafting it upon a strawberry. The principle of grafting 

 here is right enough, but the application is wrong. So if a 

 man learns any number of correct ideas from books, yet if at 

 the same time he does not learn the application, he will do 

 but little good. 



So with regard to the much vexed question of theory and 

 practice : a mere theorist will never succeed in securing any 

 jiarticular harvest, while the narrow-minded man who rests 

 his whole hopes upon acting in precisely the same manner 

 in which his fathers acted, will never advance the culture of 

 bees one item. To make a perfect bee-master, then, practice 

 and theory must be united — the theory sound, the practice 

 decided. And this is a point that cannot be too closely 

 attended to. "When the apiarian has made up his mind to 

 adopt any particular course, he must carry out that determi- 

 nation in a most decided manner. And here I may remark, 

 that to learn by heart a number of instructions respecting' 

 any operation upon bees — say hiving* a swarm — and acting 

 upon those instructions, are two very different things. When, 

 after carefully committing to memory certain rules, the 

 young apiarian goes out, hive in hand, to attack a swarm 

 which has just settled on a branch of a tree, he naturally 

 finds a slight misgiving steal over his mind as he ap- 

 proaches the living mass, and gets within range of the strag- 

 glers that are dashing about with a very ominously sharp 



