20 THE BEE keeper's MANUAL. 



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 183-5 he commenced bee-keeping in the common way, 

 with 12 colonies — and after various mishaps, 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. Af this period he contrived his 

 improved hive in its ruder form, which gave him the com- 

 mand over all the combs, and he began to experiment on 

 the 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 70 colonies having been stolen 

 from him, sixty destroyed by fire, and 24 by a flood — yet 

 in 1846 his stock had increased to 360 colonies, 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 com- 

 mon methods, had fewer hives than they had when he com- 

 menced. 



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 subdued — only 

 about ten having escaped the malady, which attacked alike 

 the old stocks and his artificial swarms. He estimates his 

 entire loss that year at over 500 colonies. Nevertheless he 

 succeeded so well in multiplying by artificial swarms, the 

 few that remained healthy, that in the fall of 1851 his stock 

 consisted of nearly 400 colonies. He must, therefore, have 

 multiplied his stocks more than three fold each year. 



