though to teach us that no condition in life can warrant our
abandoning our desire and search for the truth. I will not enumerate
all that apiarian science owes to Huber; to state what it does not
owe were the briefer task. His "New Observations on Bees," of which
the first volume was written in 1789, in the form of letters to
Charles Bonnet, the second not appearing till twenty years later,
have remained the unfailing, abundant treasure into which every
subsequent writer has dipped. And though a few mistakes may be found
therein, a few incomplete truths; though since his time considerable
additions have been made to the micrography and practical culture of
bees, the handling of queens, etc., there is not a single one of his
principal statements that has been disproved, or discovered in
error; and in our actual experience they stand untouched, and indeed
at its very foundation.

[3]

Some years of silence followed these revelations; but soon a German
clergyman, Dzierzon, discovered parthenogenesis, _i. e._ the
virginal parturition of queens, and contrived the first hive with
movable combs, thereby enabling the bee-keeper henceforth to take
his share of the harvest of honey, without being forced to destroy
his best colonies and in one instant annihilate the work of an
entire year. This hive, still very imperfect, received masterly
improvement at the hands of Langstroth, who invented the movable
frame properly so called, which has been adopted in America with
extraordinary success. Root, Quinby, Dadant, Cheshire, De Layens,
Cowan, Heddon, Howard, etc., added still further and precious
improvement. Then it occurred to Mehring that if bees were supplied
with combs that had an artificial waxen foundation, they would be