st, only on a small
scale; then, if it fulfills all its promises, or if _you_ can make it do
so, you may safely adopt it: at all events, you will not have to mourn
over large sums of money spent for nothing, and numerous powerful
colonies entirely destroyed. "Let well enough alone," should, to a great
extent, be the motto of every prudent bee-keeper. There is, however, a
golden mean between that obstinate and stupid conservatism which tries
nothing new, and, of course, learns nothing new, and that craving after
mere novelty, and that rash experimenting on an extravagant scale, which
is so characteristic of a large portion of our American people. It would
be difficult to find a better maxim than that which is ascribed to
David Crockett; "_Be sure you're right, then go ahead._"

What old bee-keeper has not had abundant proof that stocks eight or ten
years old, or even older, are often among the very best, in his whole
Apiary, always healthy and swarming with almost unfailing regularity! I
have seen such hives, which for more than fifteen years, have scarcely
failed, a single season, to throw a powerful swarm. I have one now ten
years old, in admirable condition, which a few years ago, swarmed three
times, and the first swarm sent off a colony the same season. All these
swarms were so early that they gathered ample supplies of honey, and
wintered without any assistance!

I have already spoken of old stocks flourishing for a long term of years
in hives of the roughest possible construction; and I shall now in
addition to my previous remarks assign a new reason for such unusual
prosperity. Without a single exception, I have found one or both of two
things to be true, of every such hive. Either it was a very large hive,
or else if not of unusual size, it contained a large quantity of
worker-comb. No hive which does not contain a good allowance of regular
comb of a size adapted to the rearing of workers, can ever in the nature
of things, prove a valuable stock hive. Many hives are so full of drone
combs that they breed a cloud of useless consumers, instead of the
thousands of industrious bees which ought to have occupied their places
in the combs. It frequently happens that when bees are put into a new
hive, the honey-harvest is at its height, and the bees finding it
difficult to build worker comb fast enough to hold their gatherings, are
tempted to construct long ranges of drone comb to receive their stores.
In this way, a h