GREATLY ENLARGED, REVISED, AND REMODELLED. "Beaucoup de gens aiment les abeilles; je n'ai vu personne qui les aima médiocrement: on se passionne pour elles."--Gelieu. LONDON; KENT AND CO., PATERNOSTER ROW; GEO. NEIGHBOUR AND SONS, 149, REGENT STREET, and 127, HIGH HOLBORN, AND ALL BOOKSELLERS. 1878. Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Printers, London and Aylesbury. [Illustration] PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. THE present issue of our handbook may be fairly said' to be really a new work. Not that the greater portion of it has been consecutively rewritten, nor yet that the larger half of the former matter has wholly disappeared; but the additions of entirely new sections and half-sections, the transpositions with a view to facilitating reference, the erasures of what is either out of date or only repetition--in short, the thorough overhauling of the text from beginning to end--are such as to render the form in which it is now presented a new book rather than an ordinary fresh edition. First as to our own department, the practical appliances. The descriptions of several hives and apparatus that have gone out of use have been removed to make room for the much larger number of new and improved inventions. Of the eighteen hives now described, no less than a half are new introductions, and the same is the case in greater or less degree with the supers, the covers, and the bee contrivances of every kind. The chapter on "Manipulation" has been equally enlarged, having throughout been collated with the chapters on that branch in Mr. Langstroth's "Honey Bee." For very many valuable additions, both large and small, we are therefore indebted to that source, and we have also some obligations to acknowledge to Mr. Cheshire's "Practical Bee-keeping." It is in reference chiefly to this department that so many transpositions have been made from the arrangement of the matter in former editions. Finding that by giving extensive practical directions under nearly every individual hive we were losing much greatly needed space by repetition, and at the same time giving less complete instructions to each, we have endeavoured when possible to comprise all this in articles of a general character, and to retain under special hives or appliances such only as was strictly peculiar to themselves. The system of references now carried out, together with the numbering of sections and displaying the numbers in the head-lines of every page, will we trust remove even that small apparent inconvenience which is the accompaniment of a large and substantial gain.