x INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 
exception of a few authors, who have given us the results of their 
experience in Bee-keeping, we occupy the background. With a soil 
equally fertile, or with facilities equally ample for a successful prosecu- 
tion of this enterprise, we have suffered Bee-culture to remain com- 
paratively a neglected topic. . The following Treatise, among others of 
American authorship, is evidence that proper Bee-management is 
beginning to assume, in the minds of experienced apiarians at least, 
something like its proper place. When patient and thorough investi- 
gations shall be made and often repeated, by which facts and principles 
shall be established upon a reliable basis, and the periodical press shall 
be employed to disseminate the principles which are thus settled, we 
may be in a condition to rival others who at present are confessedly 
our superiors. Let it be shown upon a basis of facts that Bee-culture 
amply remunerates those who give their attention to it, actually afford- 
ing a larger percentage of profit upon the capital invested and the 
time employed than any other branch of rural econom:, and that there 
is very little danger of overstocking the country, (as facts will show,) 
and the day is not far distant when the popular mind will be fully 
awake to the enterprise. Hspecially, let the Bees be effectually pro- 
tected from the encroachments of the Bee-moth, as is done by the 
author of this treatise —in other words, let a proper and systematic 
method of Bee-management be adopted, such as will be found detailed 
in this volume, and the apiarian will have no occasion to complain that 
he is engaged in an enterprise which does not pay. I have long been 
convinced, from experiments and observations of my own, that Bee- 
culture as a source of luxury and wealth is at present very imperfectly 
understood; and it is with the hope that a new impetus may be given 
to it, and currency given also to better views relative to it, that I cheer- 
fully yield to the suggestion of the author to associate, in this brief in- 
troductory notice, my name with his in the good which this volume has. 
to accomplish. | , 
J. V. C. SMITH. 
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