bee-keeper's manual. 321 



jected to the ravages of the moth ; the operation to be 

 performed as directed before, for the union of stocks. 

 Do not, on any account, suffer any of your famiUes to 

 become fully destroyed, before you take measures to 

 remove the evil. Who among you, would suffer an 

 animal to sicken and die of a distemper that you 

 know to be liable to spread to the whole herd or flock, 

 and take no measures to eradicate the threatened evil ? 

 It would be deemed insanity on the part of him who 

 should let such a case pass unheeded ; yet the condition 

 of your apiary, when the moth gets the upper hand of a 

 family of bees, is a fair parallel. 



POPULOUS FAMILIES NOT LIABLE TO BE UNDERMINED. 



There is, however, this difference in the case, every 

 very strong and populous stock or swarm of bees is not 

 liable to be destroyed, being able, by mere force of num- 

 bers, to prevent a lodgment being made ; and here lies 

 the grand secret of success in the culture of bees ; to 

 ever keep our hives full and populous. This is the 

 Alpha and the Omega of bee-keeping — the sine qu& non, 

 without which, all other measures fail. It is the apia- 

 rian's chart — his polar star — the needle that never points 

 but to success — the cornerstone, upon which the whole 

 fabric rests. 



Reader, have you ever been importuned to pur- 

 chase hives that were represented to be "proof against 

 the moth ?" Well, sir, when a perpetual motion, the 

 philosopher's stone, and a north-west passage to the 

 Pacific are discovered, you may believe such a thing 

 14* 



