urchase hives which are
in most glaring opposition not only to the true principles of Apiarian
knowledge, but often, to the plainest dictates of simple common sense.
Such have been the losses and disappointments of deluded purchasers,
that it is no wonder that they turn from everything offered in the shape
of a patent bee-hive, as a miserable humbug, if not a most bare-faced
cheat.

I do not hesitate to say that those old-fashioned bee-keepers, who have
most steadily refused to meddle with any novelties, and who have used
hives of the very simplest construction, or at least such as are only
one remove from the old straw hive, or wooden box, have, as a general
thing, realized by far the largest profits in the management of bees.
They have lost neither time, money nor bees, in the vain hope of
obtaining any unusual results from hives, which, in the very nature of
the case, can secure nothing really in advance of what can be
accomplished by a simple box-hive with an upper chamber.

_A hive of the simplest possible construction_, is only a close
imitation of the abode of bees in a state of nature; being a mere hollow
receptacle in which they are protected from the weather, and where they
can lay up their stores.

_An improved hive_ is one which contains, in addition, a separate
apartment in which the bees can be induced to lay up the surplus portion
of their stores, for the use of their owner. All the various hives in
common use, are only modifications of this latter hive, and, as a
general rule, they are bad, exactly in proportion as they depart from
it. Not one of them offers any remedy for the loss of the queen, or
indeed for most of the casualties to which bees are exposed: they form
no reliable basis for any new system of management; and hence the
cultivation of bees, is substantially where it was, fifty years ago, and
the Apiarian as entirely dependent as ever, upon all the whims and
caprices of an insect which may be made completely subject to his
control.

No hive which does not furnish a thorough control over every comb, can
be considered as any substantial advance on the simple improved or
chamber hive. Of all such hives, the one which with the least expense,
gives the greatest amount of protection, and the readiest access to the
spare honey boxes, is the best.

Having thus enumerated the tests to which all hives ought to be
subjected, and by which they should stand or fall, I submit them to the
candid exam