ry small; and
I have seldom heard of a bee-keeper, in our country, who has an Apiary
on a scale extensive enough to make bee-keeping anything more than a
subordinate pursuit. Multitudes have tried to make it a large and
remunerating business, but hitherto, I believe that they have nearly all
been disappointed in their expectations. In such countries as Poland and
Russia where labor is deplorably cheap, it may be done to great
advantage; but never to any considerable extent in our own.

4. A serious objection to natural swarming, is the discouraging fact
that the bees often refuse to swarm at all, and the Apiarian finds it
impossible to multiply his colonies with any certainty or rapidity, even
although he may find himself in all respects favorably situated for the
cultivation of bees, and may be exceedingly anxious to engage in the
business on a much more extensive scale.

I am acquainted with many careful bee-keepers who have managed their
bees according to the most reliable information they could obtain,
never destroying any of their colonies, and endeavoring to multiply them
to the best of their ability, who yet have not as many stocks as they
had ten years ago. Most of them would abandon the pursuit, if they
looked upon bee-keeping simply in the light of dollars and cents, rather
than as a source of pleasant recreation; and some do not hesitate to say
that much more money has been spent, by the mass of those who have used
patent hives, than they have ever realized from their bees.

It is a very simple matter to make calculations on paper, which shall
seem to point out a road to wealth, almost as flattering, as a tour to
the gold mines of Australia or California. Only purchase a patent
bee-hive, and if it fulfills all or even a part of the promises of its
sanguine inventor, a fortune must, in the course of a few years, be
certainly realized; but such are the disappointments resulting from the
bees refusing often to swarm at all, that if the hive could remedy all
the other difficulties in the way of bee-keeping, 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 20 dollars a year, and if the
Apiarian could be sure of selling his new swarms at the most extravagant
prices, he could not, like the growers of mulberry trees, or the
breeders of fancy fowls, multiply his stocks so as to meet the demand,
however extensive; but would be e