which might have been spread out on my two hands,
busy at work in raising a new queen, from a small piece of brood comb.
For two long weeks, they adhered with unfailing perseverance and
industry, to their forlorn hope: until at last, one of the two queens
which they raised, came forth, and destroyed the other while still in
her cell. The bees had now dwindled away to less than half their
original number, and the new queen had wings so imperfect that she was
unable to fly. I watched their proceedings with great interest; they
actually paid very unusual attention to this crippled queen, and treated
her more as they are wont to treat a fertile one. In the course of a
week, there were not more than a dozen left in the hive, and in a few
days more, I missed the queen, and saw only a few disconsolate wretches
crawling over the deserted comb! Shame upon the faint-hearted and
cowardly of our own race, who, if overtaken by calamity, instead of
nobly breasting the dark waters of affliction, and manfully buffetting
with their tumultuous waves, meanly resign themselves to their ignoble
fate, and sink and perish where they might have lived and triumphed; and
double shame upon those who thus "faint in the day of adversity," when
living in a Christian land, they might, if they would only receive the
word of God, and open the eye of faith, behold a bow of promise spanning
the still stormy clouds, and hear a voice bidding them, like the great
apostle of the Gentiles, learn not merely to "rejoice in hope of the
glory of God," but to "glory in tribulations also."

I have been informed by Mr. Wagner, that Dzierzon has recently devised a
plan of _forming nuclei_, substantially the same with my own. His book,
however, contemplates having two Apiaries, three or four miles apart,
and his plans for multiplying colonies, as there described, were based
upon the supposition that the Apiarian will have two such
establishments. Such an arrangement would no doubt very greatly
facilitate many operations. Our forced swarms might all be removed from
the Apiary where they were formed, to the other, and our nuclei treated
in the same way, and there would be no necessity for confining the bees
after their removal. There are however, weighty objections to such an
arrangement, which will prevent it, at least for some time, from being
extensively adopted. The labor of removing the bees backwards and
forwards, is a serious objection to the whole plan; and in ad