30 
CHAPMANS HAND-BOOK. 
them to lay down, it would also be the mark of a mind 
very contracted and deficient in resources were he slavishly 
to follow these rules without deviating from them, when 
circumstances would point out that a different course must 
be adopted. Great caution must be observed in acting on 
new principles. Many treat their bees as if they were 
utterly insensible beings, who cared not the least how they 
were lodged or fed, and who fancy they can manoeuvre a 
hive of bees as easily as they can a flock of sheep. Bees 
must be treated according to their instincts, and it con¬ 
stantly thwarted by the ignorance of their master, will 
never'thrive properly. Indeed, a man who hopes to get a 
decent harvest from his hives, and at the same time to 
manage them on a wrong principle, will eftect about as 
muchsuccess as a gardener might, who strove to improve 
the quality of a peach by grafting it upon a strawberry. 
The principle of grafting here is right enough, but the 
application is wrong. So if a man learns any number ox 
correct ideas from books, yet if at the same time he does 
not learn the application, he will do but little good. 
So with regard to the much vexed question of theory 
and practice: a mere theorist will never succeed m 
securing any particular harvest, while the narrow-minded 
man who rests his whole hopes upon acting in piecisely 
the same manner in which his fathers acted, will never 
advance the culture of bees one item. To make a perfect 
bee-master, then, practice and theory must be united—the 
theory sound, the practice decided. And this is a point 
that cannot be too closely attended to. When the apiarian 
has made up his mind to adopt any particular course, he 
must carry out that determination in a most decided 
manner. And here I may remark, that to learn by heart 
a number of instructions respecting any operations upon 
bees—say hiving a swarm—and acting upon those in¬ 
structions, are two very different things. When, after 
carefully committing to memory certain rules, the young 
apiarian goes out, hive m hand, to attack a swaim which 
has just settled on a branch of a tree, he naturally finds a 
slight misgiving steal over his mind as he approaches the 
living mass, and gets within range of the stragglers that 
