MOVABLE-COMB mVE. 
10 
The following are the statements to which Mr. Wagner 
refers : 
“ As the best test of the value of Mr. Dzierzon’s system 
*s the results which have been made to flow from it, a 
brief account of its rise and progress may he found 
interesting. In 1835, he commenced hee-lceeping in the 
common way 'with twelve colonies, and after various mis- 
haps which taught him the defects of the common hives 
and the old mode of management, his stock was so reduced, 
that, in 1838, he had virtually to begin anew. At this 
period he contrived his improved hive, in its ruder form, 
which gave him the command over all the combs, and he 
began to experiment on the theory which observation and 
study had enabled him to devise. Thenceforward ftis 
progress was as rapid, as his success was complete and 
triumphant. Though he met with frequent reverses, 
about seventy colonies having been stolen from him, sixty 
destroyed by fire, and twenty-four by a flood, yet, in 1846, 
his stock had increased to three hundred and sixty colo- 
nies, and he realized from them that year six thousand 
pounds of honey, besides several hundred weight of wax. 
At the same time, most of the cultivators in his vicinity 
who pursued the common methods, had fewer hives than 
they had when he commenced. 
“In the year 1848, a fatal pestilence, known by the 
name of ‘ foul brood,’ prevailed among his bees, and 
destroyed nearly aH his colonies before it could be sub- 
dued, only about ten having escaped the malady which 
attacked alike the old stocks and his artificial swarms. 
He estimates his entire loss that year at over five hundred 
colonies. Nevertheless, he succeeded so well in multi- 
plying by artificial swarms, tire few that remained healthy, 
that, in the Fall of 1851, his stock consisted of nearly four 
