ther methods, even if it were so absolutely
perfect, as to admit of no possible improvement. I hope, however, that I
may, without being charged with presumption, be permitted to put on
record the prediction, that _movable frames_ will in due season, be
almost universally employed; and this, whether bees are allowed to swarm
naturally, or are increased by artificial means, or are kept in hives in
which they are not expected to swarm at all.

NOTE.--The very day on which I first contrived the plan, so
perfectly simple, and yet so efficacious, of gaining the control of
the combs by these frames, I not only foresaw all the consequences
which would follow their adoption, but wrote as follows, in my
Bee-Journal. "The use of these frames will, I am persuaded, give a
new impulse to the easy and profitable management of bees; and will
render the making of artificial swarms an easy operation."

FOOTNOTES:

[17] I have often spent more than ten minutes in opening and shutting a
single frame in the Huber hive, and even then, have sometimes crushed
some of the bees.

[18] The scent of the hives, during the height of the gathering season,
will usually inform us from what sources the bees have gathered their
supplies.

[19] If they cannot obtain it, the Apiarian must himself furnish it.

[20] The queens taken from such hives may be advantageously used in
forming artificial colonies.

CHAPTER XI.

THE BEE-MOTH, AND OTHER ENEMIES OF BEES. DISEASES OF BEES.

Of all the numerous enemies of the honey-bee, the Bee-Moth (Tinea
mellonella,) in climates of hot Summers, is by far, the most to be
dreaded. So wide spread and fatal have been its ravages in this country,
that thousands have abandoned the cultivation of bees in despair, and in
districts which once produced abundant supplies of the purest honey,
bee-keeping has gradually dwindled down into a very insignificant
pursuit. Contrivances almost without number, have been devised, to
defend the bees against this invidious foe, but still it continues its
desolating inroads, almost unchecked, laughing as it were to scorn, at
all the so-called "moth-proof" hives, and turning many of the ingenious
fixtures designed to entrap or exclude it, into actual aids and comforts
in its nefarious designs.

I should feel but little confidence in being able to reinstate
bee-keeping in our country, into a certain and profitable pursuit, if I
could not show the