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We should have been pleased to have seen as many entries 

 bf honey as there were of bread. We think were a proper in- 

 interest awakened on this subject, our country might exhibit a 

 large amount of honey ; we might keep bees enough to visit 

 every flower in the county, so that nothing which contains 

 honey should be allowed " to waste its sweetness on the desert 

 air." There are probably not so many bee-keepers in this coun- 

 ty as there were twenty-five years ago ; and we may here en- 

 quire what has produced this falling off. The principal reason 

 given by those who have abandoned the business is, the depre- 

 dation of the moth ; and this is true not only of this vicinity, 

 but of all the Northern States. Those who have kept bees 

 say to us, " Yes, we used to keep bees, but the moth destroy- 

 ed one swarm after another till they were all gone ; and as we 

 knew no remedy, we thought it was useless to try again.'* 

 And besides, our bees did not swarm as they did some years 

 ago, and this, so far as our experience goes, and from all we 

 can learn from others, is true. We know some who have kept 

 bees ten or twelve years, and have had no swarms. Whether 

 this is the result of taking honey from the hive in boxes we cannot 

 say ; but we can say that during 15 years' trial we have never 

 had a natural swarm from a hive from which we took honey in 

 boxes. We have sometimes inverted the boxes in the Spring, 

 with a determination to get a swarm instead of honey ; but the re- 

 sult is the same ; the bees, after filling the body of the hive, 

 have clustered on the outside, and neglected to swarm. And 

 here Ave would remark that although most writers on bees say 

 that clustering or hanging out is a symptom of swarming, our 

 experience is that it is directly the opposite ; for if a hive con- 

 tains bees enough to throw out a swarm, if they get the habit 

 of hanging out, it indicates that for some reason, unknown to 

 us, they choose to live out of doors in warm M^eather, and thus 

 I'educe the temperature of the hive so as to enable them to 

 stick to the old home. But this non-swarming propensit}' now 

 presents no objection to bee-keeping, or its increase, as we 

 shall hereafter show. Another objection is, something, we 



