172 ON BEES AND HONEY. 



pollen and exuviae, until ruin to the stock is inevitable. As 

 says the Prophet Joel, " the land is as the garden of Eden be- 

 fore them, and behind them, a desolate wilderness." Look out 

 brethren bee-lovers, and have your hives of the best unshaky, 

 unknotty stock, with close-fitting joints, and well covered 

 with three or four coats of paint. He who shall be successful 

 in devising the means of ridding the bee-world of this des- 

 tructive and merciless pest, will richly deserve to be crowned 

 KING-BEE, in perpetuity, to be entitled to a never-fading 

 wreath of budding honey-flowers from sweetly-breathing fields, 

 all murmuring with bees, to be privileged to use, during his 

 natural life, " night tapers from their waxen thighs," best wax 

 candles, (two to the pound !) to have an annual offering from 

 every bee master, of ten pounds each, of very best virgin- 

 honey, and to a body-guard, for protection against all foes, o** 

 thrice ten thousand workers, all armed and equipped, as Na-^ 

 ture's law directs. Who shall have these high honors ? 



Your Committee have extended this Report to a length per- 

 haps too great. They allege their excuse, in a slight change of 

 Goldsmith's couplet in the " Deserted Village" — 



Brief should we be, " but if prolonged in ouj^ht, 

 The love we bear to Bees is all the iault." 



They have left a great deal unsaid, which they would be 

 glad to have said, and which the subject would, most copiously, 

 have furnished. 



In one of Charles Dickens's admirable stories, " Oliver 

 Twist", there is a pleasant little picture, under which is writtten 



" Oliver asking for more !" 



If the bee-keepers of Essex should copy his example, your 

 Committee will be most happy to do what they can to respond 

 to the call, and hope not to send them away as little satisfied, 

 as was poor little Oliver Twist ! 



The subject is full of beauty, full of interest, full of poetry, 

 full of healthful moral associations. We dearly love what the 

 old Greek Philospher called "the bee of the Godlike race." 

 Many a pleasant hour have we profitably passed in their 



