188 SUMMER. 



ALL BEE-KEEPERS SHOULD UNDERSTAND IT AS IT IS. 



As a guide in many cases, it is important that the 

 practical apiarian should understand this matter as it 

 is, and not as said to be by many authors. I shall be 

 under the necessity of differing from nearly all in 

 many points. 



MEANS OF UNDERSTANDING IT. 



This is another case of " when doctors disagree, 

 who shall decide ?" You, reader, are just the person. 

 There is no need of a doctor at all in this matter. T 

 . will endeavor to give a test for most of my assertions. 

 To make this subject as plain as possible in this place, 

 I may repeat some things said before. The facts re- 

 lated have come under my own observation. I have 

 probably taken more pains than most bee-keepers, to 

 understand this matter to the hottom from the beginning, 

 (I mean the bottom of the cells). But few apiarians 

 have made tbe number of examinatiors that I have 

 to get at the modus operandi of swarming. Perhaps I 

 ought not to expect full credit for veracity, when I 

 assure the reader that I have inverted more than one 

 hundred stocks to get a peep at the royal cells, some 

 of them near a dozen times in one summer. I have 

 inverted them frequently for the purpose of obtaining 

 cells. But generally to see when such cells are being 

 made, when they contain eggs, when these eggs are 

 sufficiently matured for swarming, or abandoned and 

 destroyed, &c. 



By these signs I predict with certainty (almost) 



