IT is now nearly ten years since I perfected the Controllable Bee Hive and New System of Bee Management. I commenced bee keeping with the common box hive, with no knowledge whatever, of the habits of bees. I was not long in learning that I could not make bee keeping a success with the box hive, and I also found that the _thousand and one_ patent hives were no better, and the great majority of such hives, _inferior_ to the simple box hive. I found there was no practical method of controlling the swarming propensities of bees. All such hives would swarm or not, as seemed to suit the caprice of the bees, which I found very perplexing. Stocks under the old plan of management, sometimes show every indication of swarming, such 'as clustering out, etc., yet they adhere pertinaciously to the old stock through the entire summer, a peck or more of them clustering idly on the outside of the hive, through the season; and if one put on boxes, it is all the same, they will do nothing. And such swarms often starve early the next winter, after passing the summer in idleness. Other stocks with apparently not so many bees will swarm several times; often swarm so much as to reduce the number of bees so low that the bee moth will effect its destruction during the summer; there not being bees enough to protect the combs from the attacks of this destructive little insect. This swarming problem I found very difficult to solve. There were so many conflicting theories, I found I could gain no positive, reliable information from any source, to aid me, and that I must solve the problem by practical experiment.