INTRODUCTION. 
BEE-KEEPING: THE OLD AND THE NEW. 
Fifty years ago, Mr. Quinby, then a lad of nineteen, 
procured his first hive of bees, and began bee-keeping. 
He was wholly unacquainted with their management, save 
with the simplest directions for hiving swarms, and the 
use of brimstone for securing the honey, when desired. 
A practical, instructive treatise on bee-culture was not 
to be found, and a periodical devoted to the subject was 
as yet unthought of. The prevailing ignorance of the 
simplest facts in their natural history, with the conse- 
quent inability to rationally explain the causes of pros- 
perity or failure, was the foundation of a wide-spread be- 
hef that ‘‘ luck” was the presiding genius of the bee-hive. 
Signs and superstitions of all kinds were current in the 
lack of more intelligent teachings, and the good old man 
who warned Mr. Quinby against his habits of study and 
examination into everything in and about a bee-hive, but 
reflected popular opinion, when he said : ‘‘ Your bees will 
never do anything if you potter with them so much.” 
In those days, the only hives were sections of hollow 
logs, boxes of various dimensions, and curious cones built 
of straw, which certainly attested to the ingenuity, if not 
to the progress of theage. If honey was wanted, recourse 
was had to the brimstone pit, and the unhappy bees were 
doomed to yieid up not only their diligently gathered 
treasures, but their lives also; a sacrifice to ignorance, 
not without pareilel in the history of the human race. 
By and by, gleams of better methods began to dawn, 
and the most enterprising saw glimmers of a more ra- 
tional system oi treatment, which should secure the pro- 
ducts without the destruction of the producers. 
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