Octagonal-Cover for the Pavilion 16 Collateral-Boxes apart 17 Ditto closed. 29 Inverted-Hive 100 Observatory-Hive 109 Ditto with additions 118 Fumigator 123 Tower at Delabere to face 149 The Three Bees 157 Honey-Comb 213 MANAGEMENT OF BEES. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY MATTERS. The object of the generality of persons who keep Bees, is--profit: and that profit might be indefinitely augmented were Bees properly managed, and their lives preserved--were the still extensively-practised, cruel, and destructive system superseded by a conservative one. Some few there may be in the higher ranks of life, who cultivate bees from motives of curiosity--for the gratification of witnessing and examining the formation and progress of their ingenious and most beautiful works, and with a view to study the instinct, habits, propensities, peculiarities, or, in one word, the nature, of these wonderful, little insects, in order to improve their condition, and to gain additional knowledge respecting their natural history, hitherto, it must be confessed, enveloped in much uncertainty, and very imperfectly understood. To this class of Bee-masters and _Bee-friends_ the system of management to be explained in the following pages, will, it is hoped, unfold discoveries and impart facilities and improvements hitherto unknown in apiarian science. And they, whose sole object in keeping Bees is _profit_, may derive incalculable advantage from conforming to the mode of management, and strictly attending to the _practical directions_ hereinafter to be detailed: because as their profits are expected to arise principally from honey and wax, it evidently must be for their interest to know how to obtain those valuable Bee-productions in their purest state and in the greatest quantity. The quantity obtained in a good honey-year (viz. 1826) from a well-stocked and exceedingly prosperous colony--still in existence, and still flourishing, (i. e. in 1834) was so considerable, and so far beyond anything ever realized from a common straw-hive colony, that my statements respecting it have been doubted by some, and totally discredited by others, unacquainted with my (I trust I may say) _improved_ system of Bee-management. With respect to the purity of the honey taken according to my plan, and the general properties and medical virtues, and, of course, _value of honey when pure_, I have much pleasure in being enabled to submit to the reader the opinions of my scientific friends--Dr. Birkbeck, Mr. Abraham Booth, Lecturer on Chemistry, and Dr.