424 MISCELLANEOUS. 



There should be no such words as either luck or 

 fail in the bee-keeper's vocabulary ; there is none 

 such practically. " Good luck " (so called) either 

 results from the possession and application of knowl- 

 edge of the business, or the inherent vigor of the 

 bees, favored by a genial season : while " bad luck" 

 is always traceable either to ignorance, sloth, an un- 

 genial season, or a combination of those causes. 



Superstitious notions concerning the honey bee ex- 

 ist in the minds of some people, which have served 

 to retard the business of bee-keeping. Namely : that 

 it is wrong to sell bees that luck will be lost there- 

 by ; that if a member of a family dies, the bees will 

 do no good, unless they are informed of the fact, the 

 hives turned upside down, or some other equally 

 absurd performance gone through with. 



There are many others, but the above are sufficient 

 to illustrate the idea. 



The light of science is rapidly removing the incu- 

 bus from everything pertaining to the welfare of man ; 

 leaving reason to rule in its stead, and pointing out 

 clearly the road to success ; so that it need no longer 

 happen that three persons out of five, nor one out of 

 ten, who commence an apiary, must fail. 



The business of bee-keeping, perhaps more than 

 any other branch of agriculture, requires a knowledge 

 of Nature and her laws, in order to make it success- 

 ful in a pecuniary point of view. The pursuit of 

 such knowledge always affords one of the most pleas- 

 ing studies, and serves to ennoble and better the con- 

 dition of mankind. 



