&& NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HONEY BEE, 



the bees ; they adhere so closely to the sides of the cells, 

 that the knowing bee understands that the labor of removal 

 would cost far more than it would be worth. In course of 

 time, the breeding cells become too small for the proper 

 development of the young. In some cases, the bees must 

 take down and reconstruct the old combs, for if they did 

 not, the young issuing from them would always be dwarfs ; 

 whereas I once compared with other bees,'those of a colony 

 more than fifteen years old, and found no difference in their 

 size. That they do not usually renew the old combs, must 

 be admitted, as the young from very old hives are frequently 

 under the average size. On this account, it is very desirable 

 to be able, occasionally, to remove the old combs, that their 

 place may be supplied with new ones. 



It is a great mistake, however, to imagine that the brood 

 combs ought to be changed every year. In my hives, if it 

 were desirable, they might be easily changed several limes 

 in a year ; but once in five or six years is often enough : 

 oftener than this requires a needless consumption of honey 

 to replace them, besides being for other reasons undesirable, 

 as the bees are always in Winter, much colder in new 

 eomb than in old. Inventors of hives have been loo often, 

 most emphatically, " men of one idea : " and that one, 

 instead of being a well established and important fact in the 

 physiology of the bee, has frequently, (like the necessity for 

 a yearly change of the brood combs,) been merely a conceit 

 of some visionary projector. This might be harmless enough, 

 were no effort made to impose such miserable crudities upon 

 Stn ignorant public, either in the shape of a patented hive, or 

 worse still, of an unpatented hive, the pretended right to use 

 which, is fraudulently sold to the cheated purchaser ! * 



* Hives which have never been patented, are extensively sold as 

 patent articles, by men, who for years, have been liable to prosecution. 



