ORDER VI. VEIN-WINGED INSECTS. 281 



the suffocating system, ten hives will produce thirty pounds 

 of honey each, which amount to three hundred pounds ; and 

 the proprietor will have twelve young hives that is, ten 

 composed of the first swarms, and two of the second and 

 third ; or, in other words, the honey will amount to 22 10s., 

 and the hives to 12. In order to facilitate the calcula- 

 tion, I suppose that each hive gives but one swarm in the 

 year. Now, although these two species of profit, as well in 

 honey as in hives, appear to the two proprietors to amount 

 to nearly the same sum in money, a considerable difference 

 is still to be remarked ; for, in the first case, the public 

 profit only by one hundred and twenty pounds of honey for 

 their consumption, and the proprietor has realized only 9 

 in money ; whereas, in the second case, the public are put in 

 possession of three hundred pounds of honey, and the pro- 

 prietor has realized 22 10s. in money. 



" Moreover, it must not be supposed that in the following 

 years the benefit of the first proprietor will far exceed that 

 of the second, by the greater multiplication of his hives: 

 this would be tantamount to a voluntary concealment of 

 the frequent and almost general mortality occasioned by 

 the method of removing the bees from one hive to another, 

 and which will indubitably reduce every year the great 

 number of hives of the first proprietor to a number below 

 that remaining to the second, by which we may be assured 

 that the annual profits of the former, so far from being 

 more considerable than those of the latter, will always be 

 much smaller. This method, therefore, of removing the 

 bees into other hives, after the departure of the first swarm, 

 is neither advantageous to the proprietor nor to the pub- 

 lic." 



Now, on the other hand, although the ideas of M. La 

 Grenee may be founded in truth, and are the result of his 

 practical observations, still others have had different experi- 

 ences, and offer many arguments in favor of the mode he so 



