BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 
38 
destruction either of the bees or their works. So 
simple, apparently, are the means by which these 
objects are attained in the hive of to-day, that it is 
difficult now to realise the number of the steps by 
which the goal has been reached, and the amount of 
effort the solution of the problem has demanded. The 
progress of the ancients was painful and slow, but it 
undoubtedly paved the way for the rapid march of the 
last hundred years. The mournful — and, alas ! true — 
sentiment, that “the evil that men do lives after 
them, the good is oft interred with their bones,^^ 
happily does not contradict a fact, of which we may 
be too forgetful, that we inherit, and actually live in 
the presence of, the embodied thought and effort of 
the ages : a fact vividly brought before us by a study 
of apicultural history, bristling as it is with the names 
of worthies the mere mention of which would fill 
pages. But due regard to our space and object make 
it desirable to omit that which, though containing the 
germs of progress, is yet practically obsolete and 
valueless, and to commence our studies with the 
devices of Huber,* from whom the dawn of modern 
bee-keeping may be considered to date, referring 
those with historical tastes to “ Bevan on the Honey 
Bee,^’ which gives an excellent summary, and the titles 
of the works of not a few of the older writers. It is, 
however, necessary, in order that we may understand 
the nature of the difficulties to be surmounted, that we 
should examine the forms bees naturally give to their 
* We leave out of view the ancient Greek bar hives, which seem to have 
been disused and forgotten, and the plans of the Candiotes, from whom 
Huber is said to have borrowed some of his best ideas on hive-structure. 
