74 HOW TO KEEP BEES 



We gave away what swarms we could and we sold 

 some; but selling bees is a business quite as much as 

 caring for them, so that was not practicable. Philo- 

 sophically, we argued that since we had enough bees 

 we would let the swarms that came off abscond and 

 bid them God-speed; but here we reckoned without 

 properly considering the amount of human nature 

 which had fallen to our share. Although we knew 

 that every swarm in our apiary above twenty would 

 be an embarrassment and a tribulation, we could 

 never rest content not to hive a swarm when it 

 issued; and the more unattainable the place where it 

 clustered and the less we wanted the bees, the more 

 determined we were to secure that special swarm. 



Such inconsistency brought its own punishment, 

 and our only resource was to sell out; and for many 

 years the spot in our garden which our apiary once 

 occupied was never viewed without a sense of loneli- 

 ness and longing for its busy little tenants. During 

 these years we thought it over and finally came 

 around to the right frame of mind, and firmly con- 

 cluded to keep bees for our own honey and our own 

 happiness. We limited our ambitions to ten 

 hives; and last summer when our best-tested Italian 

 queen took us unawares and departed with a large 

 and enthusiastic following, we did not mourn; all we 

 did was to venture to hope that the young queen left 

 in the hive had mated with one of our own handsome 

 drones, and not with a mad black prince from one 

 of Mr. Coggshall's take-care-of-itself apiaries in our 

 neighbourhood. As soon as our new brood made us 



