vi PREFACE. 
To tur from the general to the particular, the 
vast and valuable additions to our scientific know- 
ledge that have resulted from half a century of 
German investigations have been extensively utilised 
in the revision of those sections which deal with 
the natural history of the bee. In nearly every page 
old errors have been rectified, or newly-ascertained 
facts given insertion; whilst the marvellous repro- 
ductive economy of the insect has now for the first 
time received notice in the work. The importation 
of the Italian variety has provided occasion for 
another additional section, and in fine this first 
portion of the volume has grown from the twenty 
small pages of the sixth edition to the forty-five 
enlarged ones which are presented to the reader 
now. 
The introduction of frame hives, with all their 
train of concomitant improvements, has compelled 
the sections devoted to hives and apparatus to 
undergo a renovation no whit less complete. The 
department of manipulation has been subjected to 
one but little less sweeping, and quite a number 
of totally fresh sections will be found to be now 
comprised therein. The disquieting subject of Foul 
Brood, to which Mr. Taylor did not so much as 
offer allusion, is now fully set forth, both in its 
past and present aspects, by means of information 
from Von Berlepsch and Schonfeld, which may per- 
haps prove of interest to other apiculturists besides 
