the queens were not
properly developed, and died in their cells. Perhaps they did not
receive sufficient warmth, or were not treated in some other important
respects, as they would have been if left under the care of the bees.
In the multiplicity of my experiments, I did not repeat this one under a
sufficient variety of circumstances, to ascertain the precise cause of
failure; nor have I as yet, tried whether it will answer perfectly, by
admitting the bees to the queen cells.

Last Spring, I made one queen supply several hives with eggs, so as to
keep them strong in numbers while they were constantly engaged in
rearing a large number of spare queens. Two hives which I shall call A
and B, were deprived at intervals of a week, each of its queen,[20] in
order to induce them to raise a number of young sealed queens for the
use of the Apiary. As soon as the queens in A, were of an age suitable
to be removed, I took them away and gave the colony a fertile queen from
another hive, C; as soon as she had laid a large number of eggs in the
empty cells, I removed the queen cells now sealed over, from B, and gave
them the loan of this fertile mother, until she had performed the same
necessary office for them. By this time, the queen cells in C, were
sealed over; these were now removed, and the queen restored; she had
thus made one circuit, and laid a very large number of eggs in the two
hives which were first deprived of their queens. After allowing her to
replenish her own hive with eggs, I sent her out again on her
perambulating mission, and by this new device was able to get an
extraordinary number of young queens from the three hives, and at the
same time to preserve their numbers from seriously diminishing. Two
queens may in this way, be made in six hives to furnish all the
supernumerary queens which will be wanted in quite a large Apiary.

It will be perfectly obvious to every intelligent and ingenious
Apiarian, that the perfect control of the comb, is the _soul_ of an
entirely new system of practical management, and that it may be modified
to suit the wants of all who wish to cultivate bees. Even the advocate
of the old fashioned plan of killing the bees, can with one of my hives,
destroy his faithful laborers, by shaking them into a tub of water,
almost, if not quite as speedily as by setting them over a sulphur pit;
while after the work of death is accomplished, his honey will be free
from disgusting fumes, and all the l