146 
THE HIVE AND HONEY-BEE. 
keeping, if they did not regard it as a source of pleasant 
recreation, rather than of pecuniary profit; while others 
do not hesitate to say that much more money has, ot late 
years, been spent upon patent hives, than those who have 
used them have realized from their bees. 
It is an easy matter to make calculations on paper* al¬ 
most as flattering as an imaginary tour to the gold mines 
of Australia or California. Only purchase a patent bee¬ 
hive, and if it fulfills the promises of its sanguine inventor, 
a fortune must be realized in a few years; but such are 
the disappointments resulting from bees refusing to swarm, 
that if the hive could remedy all other difficulties, it would 
still fail to answer the reasonable wishes of the experienced 
Apiarian. If every swarm of bees could be made to yield 
a profit of twenty dollars a year, the bee-keeper could not 
multiply his stocks, by natural swarming, so as to meet 
* The following calculation ot possible profits from bee-culture, taken from 
“Sydserff’s Treatios on Bees,” published in England, in 1792, is a perfect gem of 
its kind: 
“Suppose a swarm of bees at the first to cost 10s. 6d., and neither them nor the 
swarms to be taken, but to do well, and swarm once every year”—bees mu6t be 
naughty, Indeed, if they dare to do otherwise 1—“ what will bo the product for four¬ 
teen years, and what the profit, if each hive is sold at 10s. 6d. ? 
Years. 
Hives. 
1 
2 
3 
4 
• * 
1 
2 
4 
8 
* * 
14 
8192 
Profits. 
£ s. <L 
0 0 0 
1 1 0 
2 2 0 
4 4 0 
* * * 
4300 16 0 
“N. B.—Deduct 10s. 6d., what the first hive cost, and the remainder will be clear 
profit; supposing the second swarms to pay for hives, labor, &c.” The modesty 
with which this writer, who seems to have had ns much faith in his bees as in tho 
doctrine that “figures cannot lie,” closes his calculation at tho end of fourteen 
years, is truly refreshing. No bee-keeper, on such a royal road to wealth, could 
ever find it in his heart to stop under twenty-one years, by which time his stocks 
would have increased to more than a million, when, probably , he would be willing 
to close his bee-business, by selling them for over two and three-quarter millions 
of dollars! The attention of all venders of humbug bee-hives, is respectfully in* 
▼ited to this antique specimen of the art of puffing. 
