146 THE HIVE AND HONEY-BEE. 



keeping, if they did not regard it as a source of pleasant 

 recreation, rather than of pecuniary profit ; while others 

 do not hesitate to say that much more money has, of late 

 years, been spent upon patent hives, than those who have 

 used them have realized from their bees. 



It is an easy matter to make calculations on paper* al- 

 most as flattering as an imaginary tour to the gold mines 

 of Australia or California. Only purchase a patent bee- 

 hive, and if it fulfills the promises of its sanguine inventor, 

 a fortune must be realized in a few years ; but such are 

 the disappointments resulting from bees refusing to swarm, 

 that if the hive could remedy all other difficulties, it would 

 still fail to answer the reasonable wishes of the experienced 

 Apiarian. If every swarm of bees could be made to yield 

 a profit of twenty dollars a year, the bee-keeper could not 

 multiply his stocks, by natural swarming, so as to meet 



* The following calculation of possible profits from bee-culture, taken from 

 "Sydserff's Treaties on Bees," published in England, in 1792, is a perfect gem of 

 its kind: 



"Suppose a swarm of bees at the first to cost 10s. 6d., and neither them nor the 

 swarms to be taken, but to do well, and swarm once every year " bees must bo 

 naughty, indeed, if they daro to do otherwise I" what will be the product for four- 

 teen years, and what the profit, if each hive is sold at 10s. 6d. ? 



Years. Hives. Profits. 



s.d. 



1 



2 1 1 



4 ...., 2 2 



8 4 4 



** ** * * 



14 8192 480016 



" N. B. Deduct 10s. 6d., what the first hive cost, and the remainder will be clear 

 profit ; supposing the second swarms to pay for hives, labor, &c." The modesty 

 with which this writer, who seems to have had as much faith in his bees as in the 

 doctrine that "figures cannot lie," closes his calculation at the end of fourteen 

 years, is truly refreshing. No bee-keeper, on such a royal road to wealth, could 

 ever find it in his heart to stop under twenty-one years, by which time his stocks 

 would have increased to more than a million, when, probably, he would be willing 

 to close his bee-business, by selling them for over two and three-quarter millions 

 of dollars ! The attention of all venders of humbug bee-hives, is respectfully In- 

 vited to this antique specimen of the art of puffing. 



