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74 We gave away what swarms we could and we sold some; but selling bees is a business quite as much as caring for them, so that was not practicable. Philosophically, we argued that since we had enough bees we would let the swarms that came off abscond and bid them God-speed; but here we reckoned without properly considering the amount of human nature which had fallen to our share. Although we knew that every swarm in our apiary above twenty would be an embarrassment and a tribulation, we could never rest content not to hive a swarm when it issued; and the more unattainable the place where it clustered and the less we wanted the bees, the more determined we were to secure that special swarm.

Such inconsistency brought its own punishment, and our only resource was to sell out; and for many years the spot in our garden which our apiary once occupied was never viewed without a sense of loneliness and longing for its busy little tenants. During these years we thought it over and finally came around to the right frame of mind, and firmly concluded to keep bees for our own honey and our own happiness. We limited our ambitions to ten hives; and last summer when our best-tested Italian queen took us unawares and departed with a large and enthusiastic following, we did not mourn; all we did was to venture to hope that the young queen left in the hive had mated with one of our own handsome drones, and not with a mad black prince from one of Mr. Coggshall's take-care-of-itself apiaries in our neighbourhood. As soon as our new brood made us