OBSERVING HIVES. 185 



of her devoted children. They have also witnessed, with as- 

 tonishment and delight, all the mysterious steps in the proc- 

 ess of raising queens from eggs, which with the ordinary de- 

 velopment would have produced only the common bees. Often 

 for more than three months, there has not been a day in 

 our apiary, in which some colonies were not engaged in 

 rearing new queens to supply the place of those taken from 

 them; and we have had the pleasure of exhibiting these facts 

 to bee-keepers, who never before felt willing to credit them. 

 375. An Apiarist may use the box hives a whole life- 

 time, and, unless he gains his information from other sources, 

 may yet remain ignorant of some of the most important 

 principles in the physiology of the honey-bee; while any 

 intelligent cultivator may, with an observing-hive and the 

 use of movable-frames, in a single season, verify for him- 

 self the discoveries which have been made only by the 

 accumulated toil of many observers, for more than two thou- 

 sand years. 



"An opportunity of beholding the proceedings of the queen, 

 in hives of the old form, is so very rarely afforded, that many 

 Apiarists have passed their lives without enjoying it; and 

 Reaumur himself, even with the assistance of a glass-hive, ac- 

 knowledges that it was many years before he had that pleas- 

 ure." — (Bevan.) 



Swammerdam, who wrote his wonderful treatise on bees, 

 before the invention of observing-hives, was obliged to tear 

 hives to pieces in making his investigations! When we see 

 what important results these great geniuses obtained, with 

 means so imperfect, if compared with the facilities which 

 the veriest tyro now possesses, it ought to teach us a be- 

 coming lesson of humility. 



The sentiments of the following extract from Swammer- 

 dam, ought to be engraven upon the hearts of all engaged 

 in investigating the works of God: 



"I would not have any one think that I say this from a love 

 of fault-finding" — he had been criticising some incorrect draw- 



