ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. 
211 
removal of combs; but, however valuable to those 
ignorant of the great law, that a gorged bee never vol- 
unteers an attack, to the better informed, narcotics of all 
kinds are, for general purposes, worse than useless. Liv- 
ing bees may be easily made to get out of the way ; but 
drunken ones, like drunken men, are constantly liable to 
be maimed or killed. , 
There is a large class of bee-keepers — not bee-masters 
— who desire a hive which will give them, however 
ignorant or careless, a large yield of honey from their 
bees. They are easily captivated by the shallowest de- 
vices, and spend their money and destroy their bees, to 
fill the purses of unprincipled men. There never will be 
a “ royal road ” to profitable bee-keeping. Like all other 
branches of rural economy, it demands care and experi- 
ence ; and those who are conscious of a strong disposition 
to procrastinate and neglect, will do well to let bees alone, 
unless they hope, by the study of their systematic industry, 
to reform evil habits which are well nigh incurable. 
While I feel increasingly sanguine that the movable- 
comb hive* will be extensively used by skillful bee-keepers, 
I well know the difficulty of rapidly introducing any sys- 
tem of management which is much in advance of current 
knowledge; even a perfect hive (p. 116 ) would require 
years to win its way into general use. It is only of late 
years, that the splendid discoveries of Huber — like the 
writings of Bruce on the Sources of the Nile — have 
emerged from the clouds of ridicule and aspersion in 
which they were so long enveloped ; and even now, to 
describe a tithe of the wonders of the bee-hive, however 
* The day on which I contrived the movable-frames, I wrote as follows, in my 
Bee-Journal: — “The use of these frames will, 1 am persuaded, give a new im- 
pulse to the easy and profitable management of bees ; and will render the making 
of artificial swarms an easy operation.” 
