In the earliest attention to bees, they were supposed to originate in the concentrated aroma of the sweetest and most beautiful flowers. Virgil, and others of his time, supposed them to come from the carcasses of dead animals. But the remarkable experiments of Huber, sixty years ago, developed many facts respecting their origin and economy. Subsequent observers have added still more to the stock of our knowledge respecting these wonderful creatures. The different stages of growth, from the minute egg of the queen to a full grown bee, and the precise time occupied by each, are well established. The three classes of bees, in every perfect colony, and the offices of each; their mechanical skill in constructing the different sized and shaped cells, for honey, for raising drones, workers, and queens, all differing according to the purposes for which they are intended; the wars of the queens, and their sovereignty over their respective colonies; the methods by which working-bees will raise a young queen, when the old one is destroyed, out of the larvae of common bees; the peculiar construction and situation of the queen cells; and, above all, the royal jelly (differing from everything else in the hive) which they manufacture for the food of young queens; the manner in which they ventilate their hives by a swift motion of their wings, causing the buzzing noise they make in a summer evening; their method of repairing broken comb, and building fortifications, before their entrances, at certain times, to keep out the sphinx--all these curious matters are treated fully in many of our works on bees. But we must forego the pleasure of presenting these at length, it being our sole object to enable all who follow our directions, so to manage bees as to render them profitable. In preparing the brief directions that follow, we have most carefully studied all the works, American and foreign, to which we could get access. Between this article and the best of those works there will be found a general agreement, except as it respects beehives. We present views of hives, that we are not aware have ever been written. The original idea, or new principle (which consists in constructing the hive with the entrance near the top), was suggested to us by Samuel Pierce, Esq., of Troy, N. Y., who is the great American inventor of cooking-ranges and stoves. We have carefully considered the principle in its various relations to the habits of the bee, and believe it correct. To most of our late works on honey-bees we have one serious objection: it is, that they bear on their face the evidence of having been written to make money, by promoting the sale of some patent hive. These works all have a little in common that is interesting; the remainder seems designed to oppose some former patent and commend a new one. They thus swell their volumes to a troublesome and expensive size, with that which is of no use to practical men.