An old lady was in her garden, about four o’clock one afternoon, when her attention was arrested by the hum of a swarm of bees, leaving the top of an apple-tree that stood in the garden. The superstitious notion of stopping bees by the music of the cow-bell (peculiar to a certain class) was soon put in practice, but the bees moved on till _somebody_ flashed the sun’s rays among them, by the aid of a looking-glass. Then, almost instantly, from some cause or another, the bees scattered and some even fell to the ground; but in a few minutes more, all were snugly clustered on another apple-tree, in sight of the one on which a portion of them were first discovered. Did the queen stop to rest in this case? Perhaps Mr. Nesbit will think she was defective; or would his reply to this be as ambiguous as his language, when he says in one place that there is “no use of your trying to go away, for I will stop you with the looking-glass;” and in another breath, after he had tried and failed, says--“I was rather a sceptic before.” Mr. Editor, he makes me think of an old Dutch lady, with whom I used to be acquainted, that knew how to bake bread and fry meat. You might read her a recipe from some agricultural or other Journal, for making something new and rich, and she would at once go about trying it, “to see if it was good.” But, in place of following the directions to the letter, she would use the ingredients in quantities that seemed handiest; and the consequence was that she would make compounds to disagree with the gustatory organs of all hands. The fault was never with the old lady, and she could always tell that it was in the recipe; but in no instance could she be induced to try her hand a second time on the same thing. Perhaps, if Mr. Nesbit will take his looking-glass to the well and invert it, and instead of looking down the well, will look into the glass, he will see differently from the way he did on the other occasion. If he will take a glass large enough (a _piece_ will answer the purpose; but it will depend upon how bright the sun shines, and the distance of the bees from the ground, what must be the size of the glass required,) I think he can stop a swarm in every instance. Before quitting, I will also say that if Mr. Nesbit, or any one else will obtain the “_blackest_” and “_knottiest_” piece of wood, near the size of a quart pot, and secure it by means of a pole or otherwise, surrounded by foliage, in front of the apiary, before natural swarms issue, that by the time the fifth natural swarm is hived, the experiment will have very well paid him for his trouble with the knot. IGNORAMUS. _Sawyersville, N. C._, Aug. 12, 1870. * * * * * [For the American Bee Journal.] Bee Humbugs. Since the introduction of movable comb hives, numerous attempts have been made to palm off on bee-keepers worthless hives and sundry humbugs.