ENEMIES OF BEES. 251 



answer only to breed a horde of destroyers to ravage the 

 rest of his Apiary. The time spent upon them is often as 

 absolutely wasted, as the time devoted to a sick animal in- 

 curably diseased, and which can never be of any service, 

 while by nursing it along, its owner incurs the risk of in- 

 fecting his whole stock with its deadly taint. If, on the 

 score of kindness, he should sljut it up, and let it starve to 

 death, few of us, I imagine, would care to cultivate a very 

 intimate acquaintance with one so extremely original in the 

 exhibition of his humanity ! 



Ever since the introduction of patent hives, the notion 

 has almost universally prevailed, that stocks must not, under 

 any circumstances, be voluntarily broken up ; and hence, 

 instead of Apiaries, filled in the Spring, with strong and 

 healthy stocks of bees, easily able to protect themselves 

 against the bee- moth, and all other enemies, we have mul- 

 titudes of colonies which, if they had been kept-on purpose 

 to furnish food for the worms, could scarcely have answered 

 a more valuable end in encouraging their increase. The sim- 

 ple truth is, that improved hives, without an improved sys- 

 tem of management, have done on the whole more harm 

 than good ; in no country have they been so extensively 

 used as in our own, and no where has the moth so com- 

 pletely gained the ascendency. Just so far as they have 

 discouraged bee-keepers from the old plan of killing off all 

 their weak swarms in the Fall, just so far have they ex- 

 tended " aid and comfort" to the moth, and made the con- 

 dition of the bee-keeper worse than it was before. That 

 some of them might be managed so as in all ordinary 

 cases, to give the bees complete protection against their 

 scourge, I do not, for a moment, question ; but that they 

 cannot, from the very nature of the case, answer fully in 

 all emergencies, the ends for which they were designed, 

 I shall endeavor to prove and not to assert. 



