REQUISITES OF AN IMPROVED HIVE. Ill 



There are a few desirables to which my hive makes not 

 the slightest pretensions ! It promises no splendid results to 

 those who purchase it, and yet are too ignorant, or too care- 

 less to be entrusted with the management of bees. In bee- 

 keeping, as in other things, a man must first understand his 

 business, and then proceed on the good old maxim, that 

 " the hand of the diligent maketh rich." 



It possesses no talismanic influence by which it can con- 

 vert a bad situation for honey, into a good one ; or give the 

 Apiarian an abundant harvest whether the season is prodijc- 

 tive or otherwise. 



It cannot enable the cultivator rapidly to multiply his 

 stocks, and yet to secure, the same season, surplus honey 

 from his bees. As well might the breeder of poultry pre- 

 tend that he can, in the same year, both raise the greatest 

 number of chickens, and sell the largest number of eggs. 



Worse than all, it cannot furnish the many advantages enu- 

 merated, and yet be made in as little time, or quite as cheap 

 as a hive which proves, in the end, to be a very dear bargain. 



I have not constructed my hive in accordance with crpde 

 theories, or mere conjectures, and then insisted that the bees 

 must flourish in such a fanciful contrivance ; but I have 

 studied, for many years, most carefully, the nature of the 

 honey-bee : and have diligently compared my observations 

 with those of writers and practical cultivators, who have 

 spent their lives in extending the sphere of Apiarian knowl- 

 edge ; and as the result, have endeavored to adapt my. hive 

 to the actual wants and habits of the bee ; and to remedy 

 the many difficulties with which I have found its successful 

 culture to be beset. And more than this, I have actually test- 

 ed by experiments long continued and on a large scale, the 

 merits of this hive, that I might not deceive both myself and 

 others, and add another to the many useless contrivances 



