84 PROFITS OF BKE KEEPING. 



As fast as the boxes were filled, they were re- 

 moved and empty ones substituted in their place. 

 I never saw bees w^ork with such deterrriined in- 

 dustry, early and late, and in all kinds of weather. 

 When honey failed at the end of the season, there 

 was a set of boxes on the hive partially filled. I 

 immediately gave the bees feed until these two were 

 finished. I found, on weighing the product of this 

 hive in the fall, that they had given me a fraction 

 over three hundred and eighty pounds of surplus 

 honey in boxes. This honey I sold at thirty-five 

 cents a pound, a little over one hundred and thirty- 

 three dollars, for surplus honey sdld from this one 

 stock. Reader, go thou and do likewise. 



I had one stock of bees which occupied the 

 same stand, winter and summer, for six years, and 

 during that time they swarmed but once, and from 

 it I sold every year over fifty dollars' worth of sur- 

 plus honey in glass boxes. A neighbor several 

 times offered me fifty dollars for this stock, early in 

 the spring before the bees commenced their labors. 



In 1874 I purchased a swArm of bees in an old 

 box hive. They had not paid their owner a dollar 

 in profit for years. Some seasons they would swarm 

 and fly away to the w^oods ; in other seasons they 

 would remain clustered on the front of the hive 

 through the entire season, refusing to swarm, or 

 enter the two small boxes covered with a cap on 

 top of the hive. I transferred the bees from this 

 hive to the Controllable Hive, and they gave me a 

 profit of over forty dollars the first year. 



I sold my honey in 1874 for from thirty-three to 



