a very intimate acquaintance with one so extremely original
in the exhibition of his humanity!

Ever since the introduction of patent hives, the notion has almost
universally prevailed, that stocks must not, under _any_ circumstances,
be voluntarily broken up; and hence, instead of Apiaries, filled in the
Spring, with strong and healthy stocks of bees, easily able to protect
themselves against the bee-moth, and all other enemies, we have
multitudes of colonies which, if they had been kept on purpose to
furnish food for the worms, could scarcely have answered a more valuable
end in encouraging their increase. The simple truth is, that improved
hives, without an improved system of management, have done on the whole
more harm than good; in no country have they been so extensively used as
in our own, and no where has the moth so completely gained the
ascendency. Just so far as they have discouraged bee-keepers from the
old plan of killing off all their weak swarms in the Fall, just so far
have they extended "aid and comfort" to the moth, and made the condition
of the bee-keeper worse than it was before. That some of them might be
managed so as in all ordinary cases, to give the bees complete
protection against their scourge, I do not, for a moment, question; but
that they cannot, from the very nature of the case, answer fully in all
emergencies, the ends for which they were designed, I shall endeavor to
prove and not to assert.

The kind of hives of which I have been speaking, are such as have been
devised by intelligent and honest men, practically acquainted with the
management of bees: as for many of the hives which have been introduced,
they not only afford the Apiarian no assistance against the inroads of
the bee-moth, but they are so constructed as positively to aid it in its
nefarious designs. The more they are used, the worse the poor bees are
off: just as the more a man uses the lying nostrums of the brazen-faced
quack, the further he finds himself from health and vigor.

I once met with an intelligent man who told me that he had paid a
considerable sum, to a person who professed to be in possession of many
valuable _secrets_ in the management of bees, and who promised, among
other things, to impart to him an infallible remedy against the
bee-moth. On the receipt of the money, he very gravely told him that the
secret of keeping the moth out of the hive, was to keep the bees strong
and vigorous! A truer declaration