CONCLUSION. 141 
hives, you will need to exercise great care that they are 
not diseased. There is not one box or patent hive in 
fifty (as ordinarily managed) but that is diseased. They 
are either badly infested with the bee moth, have old, 
mouldy, black combs, an old and diseased queen, or are 
in some way diseased. No matter how low the price paid 
for such stock, they will be found expensive. Be sure 
to get none but the best to commence with ; they are the 
cheapest in the end. 
I might illustrate this with many cases that have come 
under my observation. One or two I will mention: A 
gentleman in Connecticut ordered of me a swarm of 
Italian bees in the Controllable Hive, in the spring of 
1880, for which he paid me twenty dollars. He wrote 
me in June that they were doing finely, and that he 
never saw bees work so well—they were at work in all 
the boxes, some of them being nearly filled with honey, 
and all the combs being filled with bees at work storing ; 
and from appearances he should get a large amount of 
surplus box honey from them. 
Another gentleman wrote me, about the same time, 
asking my price for a swarm of Italian bees, and when 
informed that it was twenty dollars, he wrote me that as 
he could get the Italian bees nearer his home for ten 
dollars, he would not order of me, but would invest his 
twenty dollars and get two swarms instead of one. He 
has since written me that one of the swarms for which he 
paid ten dollars he had lost outright, leaving him only a 
mass of moth worms in old and mouldy black combs. 
