138 THE BEE-HIVES, 
283. ‘As the best test of the value of Mr. Dzierzon’s system 
is the results which have been made to flow from it, a brief ac- 
count of its rise and progress may be found interesting. In 1835, 
he commenced bee-keeping in the common way, with twelve 
colonies, and after various mishaps which taught him the defects 
of the common hives and the old mode of management, his stock 
was so reduced, that, in 1838, he had virtually to begin anew. At 
this period he contrived his improved hive, in its ruder form, 
which gave him the command over all the combs, and he began 
to experiment on the theory which observation and study had 
enabled him to devise. Thenceforward his progress was as 
rapid, as his success was complete and triumphant. Though he 
met with frequent reverses, about seventy colonies having been 
stolen from him, sixty destroyed by fire, and twenty-four by a 
flood, yet, in 1846, his stock had increased to three hundred and 
sixty colonies, and he realized from them that year six thousand 
pounds of honey, besides several hundred weight of wax. At the 
same time, most of the cultivators in his vicinity, who pursued 
the common methods, had fewer hives than they had when he 
commenced. 
“In the year 1848, a fatal pestilence, known by the name of 
‘foul brood’ (78%), prevailed among his bees, and destroyed 
nearly all his colonies before it could be subdued, only about ten 
having escaped the malady which attacked alike the old stocks 
and his artificial swarms. (469). He estimates his entire loss 
that year at over five hundred colonies. Nevertheless, he suc- 
ceeded so well in multiplying by artificial swarms, the few that 
remained healthy, that, in the Fall of 1851, his stock consisted 
of nearly four hundred colonies. He must therefore have multi- 
plied his stocks more than three-fold each year.” 
But in the Dzierzon hive, it is often necessary to cut and 
remove many combs to get access to a particular one; thus 
if the tenth from the end is to be removed, nine must be 
taken out. This hive cannot furnish the surplus honey in a 
form the most salable in our markets, or admitting of safe 
transportation in the comb. Notwithstanding these disad- 
vantages, it has achieved a great triumph in Germany, and 
given a new impulse to the cultivation of bees. 
Dzierzon builds hives in structures of two, four and even 
more colonies, piled upon one another. On the frontispiece 
