MOVABLE-COMB HIVE. 19 



The following are the statements to which Mr. "Wagner 

 refers : 



"As the best test of the value of Mr. Dzierzon's system 

 is the results which have been made to flow from it, a 

 brief account of its rise and progress may be found 

 interesting. In 1835, he commenced bee-keeping in the 

 common way with twelve colonies, and after various mis- 

 haps which taught him the defects of the common hives 

 and the old mode of management, his stock was so reduced, 

 that, in 1838, he had virtually to begin anew. At this 

 period he contrived his improved hive, in its ruder form, 

 which gave him the command over all the combs, and he 

 began to experiment on fhe theory which observation and 

 study had enabled him to devise. Thenceforward his 

 progress was as rapid, as his success was complete and 

 triumphant. Though he met with frequent reverses, 

 about seventy colonies having been stolen from him, sixty 

 destroyed by fire, and twenty-four by a flood, yet, in 1 846, 

 his stock had increased to three hundred and sixty colo- 

 nies, and he realized from them that year six thousand 

 pounds of honey, besides several hundred weight of wax. 

 At the same time, most of the cultivators in his vicinity 

 who pursued the common methods, had fewer hives than 

 they had when he commenced. 



"In the year 1848, a fatal pestilence, known by the 

 name of 'foul brood,' prevailed among his bees, and 

 destroyed nearly all his colonies before it could be sub- 

 dued, only about ten having escaped the malady whicli 

 attacked alike the old stocks and his artificial swarms. 

 He estimates his entire loss that year at over five hundred 

 colonies. Nevertheless, he succeeded so well in multi- 

 plying by artificial swarms, the few that remained healthy, 

 that, in the Fall of 1851, his stock consisted of nearly four 



