"A young girl of my acquaintance," he says, "was greatly afraid of bees, but was completely cured of her fear by the following incident. A swarm having come off, I observed the queen alight by herself at a little distance from the Apiary. I immediately called my little friend that I might show her the queen; she wished to see her more nearly, so after having caused her to put on her gloves, I gave the queen into her hand. We were in an instant surrounded by the whole bees of the swarm. In this emergency I encouraged the girl to be steady, bidding her be silent and fear nothing, and remaining myself close by her; I then made her stretch out her right hand, which held the queen, and covered her head and shoulders with a very thin handkerchief. The swarm soon fixed on her hand and hung from it, as from the branch of a tree. The little girl was delighted above measure at the novel sight, and so entirely freed from all fear, that she bade me uncover her face. The spectators were charmed with the interesting spectacle. At length I brought a hive, and shaking the swarm from the child's hand, it was lodged in safety, and without inflicting a single wound." The indisposition of bees to sting, when swarming, is a fact familiar to every practical bee-keeper: but I have not in all my reading or acquaintance with Apiarians, ever met with a single observation which has convinced me that the philosophy of this strange fact was thoroughly understood. As far as I know, I am the only person who has ever ascertained that when bees are filled with honey, they lose all disposition to volunteer an assault, and who has made this curious law the foundation of an extensive and valuable system of practical management. It was only after I had thoroughly tested its universality and importance, that I began to feel the desirableness of obtaining a perfect control over each comb in the hive; for it was only then that I saw that such control might be made available, in the hands of any one who could manage bees in the ordinary way. The result of my whole system, is to make the bees unusually gentle, so that they are not only peaceable when any necessary operation is being performed, but at all other times. Even if I could open hives and safely manage at pleasure, still if the result of such proceedings was to leave the bees in an excited state, so as to make them unusually irritable, it would all avail but very little.