20 MOVABLE COMB HIVE. 



The following are the statements to which Mr. Wagner 

 refers : 



" 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 

 account 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 com- 

 mand 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," 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. He estimates his entire 

 loss that year at over five hundred colonies. Nevertheless 

 he succeeded 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, there- 

 fore, have multiplied his stocks more than three-fold each 

 year. 



