OBSERVING HIVES. 185 



of her devoted children. They have also witnessed, with as- 

 tonishment and delight, all the mysterious steps in the proc- 

 ess of raising queens from eggs, which with the ordinary de- 

 velopment would have produced only the common bees. Often 

 for more than three months, there has not been a day in 

 our apiary, in which some colonies were not engaged in 

 rearing new queens to supply the place of those taken from 

 them; and we have had the pleasure of exhibiting these facts 

 to bee-keepers, who never before felt willing to credit them. 

 SYS. An Apiarist may use the box Lives a whole life- 

 time, and, unless he gains his information from other sources, 

 may yet remain ignorant of some of the most important 

 principles m the physiology of the honey-bee; while any 

 intelligent cultivator may, with an observing-hive and the 

 use of movable-frames, in a single season, verify for him- 

 self the discoveries which have been made only by the 

 accumulated toil of many observers, for more than two thou- 

 sand years. 



' ' An opportunity of beholding the proceedings of the queen, 

 in hives of the old form, is so very rarely aflEorded, that many 

 Apiarists have passed their lives without enjoying it; and 

 Eeaumur himself, even with the assistance of a glass-hive, ac- 

 knowledges that it was many years before he had that pleas- 

 ure." — (Bevan.) 



Swammerdam, who ^vrote his wonderful treatise on bees^ 

 before the invention of observing-hives, was obliged to tear 

 hives to pieces in making his investigations ! When we see 

 what important results these great geniuses obtained, with 

 means so imperfect, if compared with the facilities which 

 the veriest tyro now possesses, it ought to teach us a be- 

 coming lesson of humility. 



The sentiments of the following extract from Swammer- 

 dam, ought to be engraven upon the hearts of all engaged 

 in investigating the works of .God: 



"I would not have any one think that I say this from a love 

 of fault-finding" — he had been criticising some incorrect draw- 



