But, I am digressing. My design was to furnish you with an account of bee-culture as it exists _in an entire district of country_, in the hands of _the common peasantry_. This I thought would be more satisfactory, and convey a better idea of what may be done on a large scale, than any number of instances which might be selected of splendid success in isolated cases. Very truly yours, SAMUEL WAGNER. REV. L. L. LANGSTROTH. The question how far bees will fly in search of honey, has been very differently answered by different Apiarians. I am satisfied that they will fly over three miles in search of food, but I believe as a general rule, that if their food is not within a circle of about two miles in every direction from the Apiary, they will be able to store up but little surplus honey. The nearer, the better. In all my arrangements, (see p. 96.) I have made it a constant study to save _every step_ for the bees that I possibly can, economizing to the very utmost, their time, which will all be transmuted into honey; an inspection of the Frontispiece of this treatise will exhibit the general aspect of the alighting board of my hives, and will show the intelligent Apiarian, with what ease bees will enter such a hive, even in very windy weather. By such arrangements, they will be able to store up more honey, even if they have to go a considerable distance in search of it, than they would in many other hives, when the honey abounded in their more immediate vicinity. Such considerations are entirely overlooked, by most bee-keepers, and they seem to imagine that they are matters of no importance. By the utter neglect of any kind of precautions to facilitate the labors of their bees, you might suppose that they imagined these delicate insects to be possessed of nerves of steel and sinews of iron or adamant; or else that they took them for miniature locomotives, always fired up and capable of an indefinite amount of exertion. A bee _cannot_ put forth more than a certain amount of physical exertion, and if a large portion of this is spent in absolutely fighting against difficulties, from which it might easily be guarded, it must be very obvious to any one who thinks on the subject at all, that a great loss must be sustained by its owner. If some of these thoughtless owners returning home with a heavy burden, were compelled to fall down stairs half a dozen times before they could get into the house, they might perhaps think it best to guard their industrious workers against such discouraging accidents. If bees are tossed violently about by the winds, as they attempt to enter their hives, they are often fatally injured, and the whole colony so _discouraged_, to say nothing more, that they do not gather near so much as they otherwise would.