**Practice,** which has resulted from more than ten years' experience in the management of an apiary, and from innumerable experiments, carried on, and a hundred times repeated, during that period, is what I ground the utility of my discoveries upon. To theory I lay no claim. Born and brought up in the fens of Lincolnshire, where I have spent the greater part of my life amidst difficulties, misfortunes, and hardships, of which I will not here complain, though I am still smarting under the effects of some of them, my pretensions to learning are but small: for, though sent to the respectable Grammar School at Horncastle in my boyhood, my education was not extended beyond writing, arithmetic, and merchants' accompts. As soon as it was thought that I had acquired a competent knowledge of these useful branches of education, it was my lot to be bound apprentice to learn the trades and mysteries of grocer, draper, and tallow chandler. Whilst endeavouring to gain an honest livelihood as a grocer and draper, at Moulton Chapel, in 1822, I was afflicted with a severe illness, which, after long-proracted suffering, left me as helpless as a child, the natural use andstrength of my limbs being gone; and, though supported by and tottering between my crutches, it was a long time before I was able to crawl into my garden. Fatigued and exhausted with the exercise of journeying the length of a garden-walk of no great extent, it was my custom to rest my wearied limbs upon a bench placed near my Bces. Seated on that bench I used to while away the lingering hours as best I could, ruminating now on this subject, now on that, just as my fancy chanced to fix. Among other things my Bees one day caught my attention: I watched their busy movements,--their activity pleased me,--their hunming noise long-listened to became music to my ears, and I often fancied that I heard it afterwards when I was away from them. In short, I became fond of them and of their company, and visited them as often as the weather and my feebleness would permit. When kept from them a day or two, I felt uneasy, and less comfortable than when I could get to them. The swarming season arrived; and with it ideas took possession of my mind which had not until then possessed it:--I conceived that swarming was an act more of necessity than of choice,that as such it was an evil ; but how to provide a remedy for it--how to prevent it--was a problem that then puzzled me. I studied it for a long time, and to very little purpose. The old-fashioned method of eking did not by any means satisfy my mind ; it might answer the purpose for one season, but how to proceed the next did not appear. Then the time for taking honey was approaching : to get at that treasure without destroying my little friends that had collected it, and that had, moreover, so often soothed me in my sorrow and my sufferings, was another problem that long engaged my mind. After some years' unrenmitted attention to my Bees, for I had formed a sort of attachment to them during the first stage of my convalescence, which never left me, an accident aided my studies by directing my attention to the effects of ventilation, as will be found related in the body of this work, and I began to make experiments, which being repeated, varied, improved, and then gone through again, have gradually led to the development of my improved mode of Bce-management, attempted to be explained in the following pages.