A correspondent of the _Journal of Horticulture_ thus narrates the following incidents: "Last August I purchased a swarm, for which I paid ten shillings. So far as I could judge from my limited experience with bees, for the first fortnight they appeared to be doing well, but one night, about eight o'clock, I found they had deserted the hive, and were on the ground in a cluster the size of a large plate. I gently lifted the hive and placed it over the cluster. About ten o'clock I found most of the bees had gone up into the hive, which I then returned to its stand. For a short time the bees appeared to work, but one day, thinking they appeared very quiet, I lifted the hive, and discovered that it was quite empty of bees. There were three nice pieces of empty comb. I think the bees were teased by wasps. Our parishioners tell me I did two things wrong, and that in consequence my bees could not thrive. One was to give money for them, which is always unlucky; the other was, that I did not have them at the right time of the year. I ought to have had them on Old Christmas Day. Is there anything in these ideas?" The correspondent signed herself "A Clergyman's Wife," and the explanation of her want of success was not far to seek. She had been taken in by the vendor of her bees. A poor swarm had been palmed off upon her, and one so manifestly weak, and having, so late in the comb-making and honey-gathering time as August, only three small combs, was doomed to perish with cold and starvation. The poor insects, as a forlorn hope, had deserted their hive for what they trusted might be better quarters. The fallacy of the coin having had anything to do with their destruction, takes rank with the disinclination of some people to accept from a friend the present of a pocket-knife, unless the donor will take a halfpenny in exchange; or with the old saying "Helping to salt is helping to sorrow." We can hardly suppose that the kindly sort of freemasonry, which now exists among bee-keepers, has ever proceeded so far as to make any one always willing to _give_ his swarms or stocks to another. If so, the benevolence once current has degenerated into a willingness, even among the devotees to the superstition of which we are speaking, to accept full value in the way of barter if not in cash. Whatever its origin, we feel satisfied the days of this prejudice are numbered. With the immense spread of apiculture now taking place experience and common sense will sweep away this psychological cobweb, as so many others have been made to disappear under the same powerful agencies.