AKTIFIOIAL SWAEMINQ. 211 



removal of combs ; liut, however \alual)le to those 

 ignorant of the greaj law, that a gorged bee never vol- 

 unteers an attack, to the better intbnned, narcotics of all 

 kinds are, for general purposes, worse than useless.- Liv- 

 ing bees may be easily made to get out of the way ; but 

 drunken ones, like drunken men, are constantly Hable to 

 be maimed or killed. 



There is a large class of bee-keepers — ^not hee-vnasters 

 — who desire a hive which wUl give them, however 

 ignorant or careless, a large yield of honey from their 

 bees. They are easily captivated by the shallowest de- 

 vices, and spend their money and destroy their bees, to 

 fill the purses of unprincipled men. There never will be 

 a " royal road " to profitable bee-keeping. Like all other 

 branches of rural economy, it demands care and experi- 

 ence ; and those who are conscious of a strong disposition 

 to procrastinate and neglect, wiU do well to let bees alone, 

 unless they hope, by the study of their systematic industry, 

 to reform evil habits which are TreU nigh incurable. 



While I feel increasingly sanguine that the movable- 

 comb hive* win be extensively used by skillful bee-keepers, 

 I well know the difficulty of rapidly introducing any sys- 

 tem of management which is much in advance of current 

 knowledge; even a perfect hive (p. 116) would require 

 years to win its way into general use. It is only of late 

 years, that the splendid discoveries of Huber — ^Hke the 

 writings of Bruce on the Sources of the Nile — ^have 

 emerged from the clouds of ridicule and aspersion in 

 which they were so long enveloped; and even now, to 

 describe a tithe of the wonders of the bee-hive, however 



* The day on wWcli I contrived the movable-frames, I wrote as foUo-ws, in my 

 Bee-Jonmal : — " The use of these frames vri]], I am persuaded, give a new im- 

 pulse to the easy and profitable management of bees ; and will render the making 

 of artificial swarms an easy operation." 



