254 ENEMIES OF BEES. 



of Apiaries, filled in the Spring, with strong and healthy 

 stocks of bees, easily able to protect themselves against the 

 bee-moth, and all other enemies, we have multitudes of 

 colonies, which, if they had been kept on purpose to furnish 

 food for the worms, could scarcely have answered a more 

 valuable end, in encouraging their increase. The simple 

 truth is, that improved hives, without an improved system of 

 management, have done on the whole more harm than good ; 

 in no country have they been so extensively used as in our 

 own, and no where has the moth so completely gained the 

 ascendency. Just so far as they have discouraged bee- 

 keepers from the old plan of killing oif all their weak swarms 

 in the Fall, just so far have they extended "aid and comfort" 

 to the moth, and made the condition of the bee-keeper worse 

 than it was before. That some of them might be so managed 

 as in all ordinary cases, to give the bees complete protection 

 against the moth, I do not, for a moment, question ; but that 

 they cannot, from the very nature of the case, answer fully 

 in all emergencies, the ends for which they were designed, 

 I shall endeavor to prove and not to assert. 



The kind of hives of which I have been speaking, are 

 such as have been devised by intelligent and honest men, 

 practically acquainted with the management of bees : as for 

 many of the " swindle-traps" which have been introduced, 

 they not only afford the Apiarian no assistance against the 

 inroads of the bee-moth, but are so constructed as positively 

 to assist its nefarious designs. The more they are used, the 

 worse off, are the poor bees : just as the more a man uses the 

 lying nostrums of the brazen-faced quack, the further he 

 finds himself from health and vigor. 



I once met with an intelligent man who told me that he 

 had paid a considerable sum, to a person who professed to 

 be in possession of many valuable secrets in the manage- 



