RAVAGES OF THE MOTH. 245 



diate injury is observable at the bottom, he is apt to con- 

 elude that no danger awaits his hive at the top ; and thus 

 he is lulled into a false security, when in a few weeks the 

 painful truth comes upon him, that his hive is gone, past all 

 redemption. It is with the conviction impressed upon our 

 minds, that no real improvement can take place in the man- 

 agement of bees so long as the cottage straw hive is in such 

 general use, that we wish to see it exploded altogether ; 

 although we are ready to confess that the whimsical and 

 fanciful inventions of many apiarians in the construction of 

 their hives, have tended rather to the increase, than the 

 diminution of the evil. The expense attending the construc- 

 tion of the majority of hives is so great, as to deter the 

 cottager from even thinking of the adoption of them ; and 

 they therefore have recourse to that shape, which is the 

 easiest to be procured, and which in their opinion exceeds 

 all others in its superior properties. We are far from re- 

 commending a glass or a wooden hive, on account of the 

 greater facility which they are supposed to bestow of watch- 

 ing the motions of the bees ; for we most firmly protest 

 against the power of witnessing their secret operations, as 

 some fanciful naturalists have asserted, from the very found- 

 ation of a cell to the copulation of a queen with a drone. It 

 does not admit of a doubt, that all the knowledge which is 

 obtained of the interior economy of a hive is extracted from 

 the inmates of it by direct compulsion, and the most per- 

 severing industry. A more convincing proof cannot be 

 given of the extreme aversion which the bees evince from 

 any public inspection of their labours, than were a swarm to 

 be put into a glass hive, without any immediate outward 

 covering, the bees would in a very short time give the whole 

 of the interior of the hive such a thick coating of rude wax, 

 that no light whatever could penetrate through it, and it is 

 for this reason, that we always call into question the truth 



