298 THE BEE keeper's MANUAL. 



find a belter maxim than that which is ascribed to David 

 Crockett ; " Be sure you're right, then go ahead." 



What old bee-keeper has not had abundant proof that 

 stocks eight or ten years old, or even older, are often 

 among the very best, in his whole Apiary, always healthy 

 and swarming with almost unfailing regularity ! I have 

 seen such hives, which for more than fifteen years, have 

 scarcely failed, a single season, to throw a powerful 

 swarm. I have one now ten years old, in admira- 

 ble condition, which a few years ago, swarmed three 

 times, and the first swarm sent off a colony the same 

 season. All these swarms were so early that they gath- 

 ered ample supplies of honey, and wintered without any 

 assistance ! 



I have already spoken of old stocks flourishing for a long 

 term of years in hives of the roughest possible construction ; 

 and I shall now in addition to my previous remarks assign a 

 new reason for such unusual prosperity. Without a single 

 exception, I have found one or both of two things to be true, 

 of every such hive. Either it was a very large hive, or 

 else if not of unusual size, it contained a large quantity of 

 worker-comb. No hive which does not contain a good 

 allowance of regular comb of a size adapted to the rearing 

 of workers, can ever in the nature of things, prove a valua- 

 ble stock hive. Many hives are so full of drone combs that 

 they breed a-cloud of useles consumers, instead of the thou- 

 sands of industrious bees which ought to have occupied 

 their places in the combs. It frequently happens that when 

 bees are put into a new hive, the honey-harvest is at its 

 height, and the bees finding it difficult to build worker comb 

 fast enough to hold their gatherings, are tempted to construct 

 long ranges of drone comb to receive their stores. In this 

 way, a hive often contains so small an allowance of worker- 



