ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. 241 



stung, is really diminished by the use of my hives ; although 

 it will be hard to convince those who have not seen them in 

 use, that this can be so. 



There is still another class, who are anxiously inquiring 

 for some new hive or plan, by which, with little or no trouble, 

 they may reap copious harvests of the luscious nectar. This 

 is emphatically the class to seize hold of every new device, 

 and waste their time and money, to fill the coffers of the 

 ignorant or unprincipled. There never will be a " royal 

 road " to profitable bee-keeping. Like all other branches of 

 rural economy, it demands care and experience, for its pro- 

 fitable management ; and those who have a painful con- 

 sciousness that the disposition to put off and neglect, was, so 

 to speak, born with them, and has never been got out of 

 them, will do well to let bees alone, unless they hope, by 

 the study of their systematic industry, to reform evil habits 

 which are well nigh incurable. 



While I feel sanguine that my system of management 

 will ultimately be used very extensively, by skillful Apiari 

 ans,* I know too much of the world to expect that it will 

 with the masses, very speedily supersede other methods 

 even if it were so perfect, as to admit of no possible im 

 provement. There is an inherent difficulty in rapidly intro 

 ducing any system of management, however valuable, which 

 is much in advance of the knowledge possessed by the 

 great mass of those whose attention is called to it ; while 

 devices worse than useless, which pander to the ignorance, 



* The very day on which I contrived the plan, so perfectly simple, 

 and yet efficacious, of gaining control of the combs by these frames, I 

 not only foresaw tlie consequences which would follow their adoption, 

 but wrote as follows, in my Bee-Journal. " The use of these frames 

 will, I am persuaded, give a new impulse to the easy and profitable 

 management of bees ; and will render the making of artificial swarnjs 

 an easy operation." 



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