Even with a Huber hive, the plan of multiplying colonies by dividing a full hive into two parts, and adding an empty half to each, will be attended with serious difficulties; although some of them may be remedied in consequence of the hive being constructed so as to divide into many parts; the very attempt to remedy them, however, will be found to require a degree of skill and knowledge far in advance of what can be expected of the great mass of bee-keepers. The common dividing hives, separating into two parts, can never, under any circumstances, be made of the least practical value; and the business of multiplying colonies by them, will be found far more laborious, uncertain and vexatious, than to rely on natural swarming. I do not know of a solitary practical Apiarian, who, on trial of this system, has not been compelled to abandon it, and allow the bees to swarm from his dividing hives in the old-fashioned way. Some Apiarians have attempted to multiply their colonies by putting a piece of brood comb containing the materials for raising a new queen, into an empty hive, set in the place of a strong stock which has been removed to a new stand when thousands of its inmates were abroad in the fields. This method is still worse than the one which has just been described. In the dividing hive, the bees already had a large amount of suitable comb for breeding, while in this having next to none, they build all their combs until the queen is hatched, of a size unsuitable for rearing workers. In the first case, the queenless part of the dividing hive may have had a young queen almost mature, so that the process of building large combs would be of short continuance; for as soon as the young queen begins to lay, the bees at once commence building combs adapted to the reception of worker eggs. In some of my attempts to rear artificial swarms by moving a full stock, as described above, I have had combs built of enormous size, nearly four inches through! and these monster combs have afterwards been pieced out on their lower edge, with worker cells for the accommodation of the young queen! So uniformly do the bees with an unhatched queen, build in the way described, that I can often tell at a single glance, by seeing what kind of comb they are building, that a hive is queenless, or that having been so, they have now a fertile young queen. When a new colony is formed, by dividing the old hive, the queenless part has thousands of cells filled with brood and eggs, and young bees will be hourly hatching, for at least three weeks: and by this time, the young queen will be laying eggs, so that there will be an interval of not more than three weeks, during which no accessions will be made to the numbers of the colony. But when a new swarm is formed by moving, not an egg will be deposited for nearly three weeks; and not a bee will be hatched for nearly six weeks; and during all this time, the colony will rapidly