950 ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. 
is dark, and as they cannot see where to fly, they will alight 
on the person of the bee-keeper, who is almost sure to be 
stung. It is seldom that night work is attempted upon 
bees, without making the operator repent his folly. 
487. We would strongly dissuade any but the most ex- 
perienced Apiarists, from attempting, at the furthest, to do 
more than double their colonies inone year. It would take 
another book to furnish directions for rapid multiplica- 
tion, sufficiently full and explicit for the inexperienced; 
and even then, most who should undertake it, would be 
sure, at first, to fail. With ten strong colonies of hees, in 
movable-comb hives, in one propitious season, we could so 
increase them, in a favorable location, as to have, on the 
approach of Winter, one hundred good colonies; but we 
should expect to purchase queens, foundation, and perhaps 
hundreds of pounds of honey, devoting much of our time 
to their management, and bringing to the work the experi- 
ence of many years, and the judgment acquired by numer- 
ous lamentable failures. 
In one season, being called from home after our colonies 
had been greatly multiplied, the honey harvest was sud- 
denly cut short by a drought, and we found, on our return, 
that most of our stocks were ruined by starvation. 
The time, care, skill, and food required in our uncertain 
climate for the rapid increase of colonies, are so great, that 
not one bee-keeper in a hundred* can make it profitable; 
while most who attempt it, will be almost sure, at the close 
of the season, to find themselves in possession of colonies 
which have been managed to death. 
A certain rather than a rapid multiplication of colonies, is 
most needed. A single colony, doubling every year, would. 
in ten years, increase to 1,024 colonies, and in twenty 
© Many 8 person who reads this will probably imagine that he ie the one in 8 
hundred. 
