32

30 CHAPMAN'S HANDY-BOOK.

them to lay down, it would also be the mark of a mind
very contracted and deficient in resources, were he slavishly
to follow these rules without deviating from them, when
circumstances would point out that a different course must
be adopted. Great caution must be observed in acting on
new principles. Many treat their bees as if they were
utterly insensible beings, who cared not the least how they
were lodged or fed, and who fancy they can manoeuvre a
hive of bees as easily as they can a flock of sheep. Bees
MUST be treated according to their instincts, and if con-
stantly thwarted by the ignorance of their master, will
never thrive properly. Indeed, a man who hopes to get a
decent harvest from his hives, and at the same time to
manage them on a wrong principle, will effect about as
much success as a gardener might, who strove to improve
the quality of a peach by grafting it upon a strawberry.
The principle of grafting here is right enough, but the
application is wrong. So if a man learns any number of
correct ideas from books, yet if at the same time he does
not learn the application, he will do but little good.
So with regard to the much vexed question of theory
and practice: a mere theorist will never succeed in
securing any particular harvest, while the narrow-minded
man who rests his whole hopes on acting in precisely
the same manner in which his fathers acted, will never
advance the culture of bees one item. To make a perfect
bee-master, then, pracitce and theory must be united - the
theory sound, the practice decided. And this is a point
that cannot be too closely attended to. When the apiarian
has made up his mind to adopt any particular course, he
must carry out that determination in a most decided
manner. And here I may remark, that to learn by heart
a number of instructions respecting any operations upon
bees - say hiving a swarm - and acting upon those in-
structions, are two very different things. When, after
carefully committing to memory certain rules, the young
apiarian goes out, hive in hand, to attack a swarm which
has just settled on a branch of a tree, he naturally finds a
slight misgiving steal over his mind as he approaches the
living mass, and gets within range of the stragglers that