880 On the Management of Bees, 



out the mode of increasing the number of hives, and of preserv- 

 ing the insect. If the object of the Society is, to increase the 

 quantity of wax and honey necessary for consumption, nothing 

 is more fallacious than to .suppose that it is necessarily effected by 

 offering a premium for the greatest number of hives, without re- 

 ference to their weight ; though the assertion may seem a para- 

 dox, that an increase of hives does not necessarily produce an in- 

 crease of honey. It is easy to cover the apiary with hives : if 

 one is allotted to every swarm, cast, or colt, the numbers may 

 easily be multiplied; but the quantity of wax and honey is les- 

 sened, as I shall demonstrate to the Society in the course of these 

 observations. 



I am no stranger to that complaint so continually in the mouths 

 of those who are unacquainted with the subject, the cruelty of 

 taking the honey by destroying the bees. Their fate is patheti- 

 cally lamented, as if they alone of all the creation were to be ex- 

 empt from their contribution to the support of man: while such 

 persons walk through a market, and look into a slaughter-house 

 without emotion, they weep over the apiary in the month of 

 September. No one can better love the insect than I do, nor 

 more exert himself to shelter, to save, and protect it : address- 

 ing myself therefore with due deference to the opinions of the 

 Society, who have thought the preserving the lives of the insects 

 an object meriting a premium at their hands, I avow it to be my 

 opinion that I consider the speculation of saving the bees, and 

 at the same time taking the honey, as impracticable, as well as 

 unnecessary. It is unnecessary, for no insect generates faster 

 than the bee; as I have ascertained from actual experience, that 

 in three weeks after a swarm had been hived, not only were the 

 comljs formed, but full of the maggot, the infant state of the 

 bee, and the combs will be found so filled with progressive gene- 

 ration from the month of March until October. 



That it is impracticable, this observation will show : there is 

 a certain relation in nature between the animal to be fed and the 

 pabulum necessary for its support. The earth throws out but a 

 certain quantity of flowers, and all that it does, do not afford 

 honey for bees. — Their numbers therefore must be limited by 

 the food necessary for their support; and to suffer them to in- 

 crease ad itijinitu;n would be to defeat its own object, for famine 

 would soon destroy those whom a mistaken mercy had spared *. 

 The profusion and variety of flowers necessary for them is found 



* I am led to this observation, from what passed witliin my own know- 

 ledge a few years since. In the village where my house is situated, manjr 

 persons induced by my example procured bees ; they were too numerous 

 for what was to feed them ; more than one half of them died in the ensuing 

 winter; and nearly onothird of mine were saved only by being fed. 



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