d such as is suited only for storing honey, and
unfit for breeding, will show at once, the folly of attempting to
multiply colonies by the dividing-hives. Even if the Apiarian has been
perfectly successful in dividing a colony, and the part without a queen
takes the necessary steps to supply her loss, if the bees are
sufficiently numerous to build a large quantity of new comb, (and they
ought to be in order to make the artificial colony of any value,) they
will build this comb in such a manner that it will answer only for
storing honey, while they will use the half of the hive with the old
comb, for the purposes of breeding. The next year, if an attempt is made
to divide this hive, one half will contain nearly all the brood and
mature bees, while the other, having most of the honey, in combs unfit
for breeding, the new colony formed from it will be a complete failure.

Even with a Huber hive, the plan of multiplying colonies by dividing a
full hive into two parts, and adding an empty half to each, will be
attended with serious difficulties; although some of them may be
remedied in consequence of the hive being constructed so as to divide
into many parts; the very attempt to remedy them, however, will be found
to require a degree of skill and knowledge far in advance of what can be
expected of the great mass of bee-keepers.

The common dividing hives, separating into two parts, can never, under
any circumstances, be made of the least practical value; and the
business of multiplying colonies by them, will be found far more
laborious, uncertain and vexatious, than to rely on natural swarming. I
do not know of a solitary practical Apiarian, who, on trial of this
system, has not been compelled to abandon it, and allow the bees to
swarm from his dividing hives in the old-fashioned way.

Some Apiarians have attempted to multiply their colonies by putting a
piece of brood comb containing the materials for raising a new queen,
into an empty hive, set in the place of a strong stock which has been
removed to a new stand when thousands of its inmates were abroad in the
fields. This method is still worse than the one which has just been
described. In the dividing hive, the bees already had a large amount of
suitable comb for breeding, while in this having next to none, they
build all their combs until the queen is hatched, of a size unsuitable
for rearing workers. In the first case, the queenless part of the
dividing hive may have