abor of cutting it out of the hive,
may be dispensed with.

I am now prepared to answer an objection which doubtless has been
present in the minds of many, all the time that they have been reading
the various processes on which I rely for the multiplication of
colonies. A very large number of persons who keep bees, or who wish to
keep them, are so much afraid of them that they object entirely even to
natural swarming, because they are in danger of being stung in the
process of hiving the bees. How are such persons to manage bees on my
plan, which seems like bearding a lion in its very den! The truth is
that some persons are so very timid, or suffer so dreadfully from the
sting of a bee, that they are every way disqualified from having
anything to do with them, and ought either to have no bees upon their
premises, or to entrust the care of them to some suitable person. By
managing bees according to the directions furnished in this treatise,
almost any one can learn, by using a bee-dress, to superintend them,
with very little risk; while those who are favorites with them, may
dispense entirely with any protection. I find in short, that the risk of
being stung is really diminished by the use of my hives; although it
will be hard to convince those who have not seen them in use, that this
can be so.

There is still another class who either keep bees or can be induced to
keep them, and who are anxiously inquiring for some new hive or new plan
by which, with little or no trouble, they may reap copious harvests of
the precious nectar. This is emphatically _the_ class to seize hold of
every new device, and waste their time and money to fill the coffers of
the ignorant or unprincipled. There never will be a "royal road" to
profitable bee-keeping. If there is any branch of rural economy which
more than all others demands care and experience, for its profitable
management, it is the keeping of bees; and those who have a painful
consciousness that the disposition to put off and neglect, was, so to
speak, born in them, and has never been got out of them, will do well to
let bees alone, unless they hope, by the study of their systematic
industry, to reform evil habits which are well nigh incurable.

While I feel very sanguine that my system of management will be used
extensively and very advantageously, by careful and skillful Apiarians,
I know too much of the world to expect that it will, with the masses,
very speedily supercede o