Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3INTRODUCTORY. textit{Apis Mdlifica, or Honey Bee. Some acquaintance with the natural history and economy of the domestic honey bee, is indispensably necessary to those who are desirous of pursuing a systematic method of treatment of these valuable insects. The study is delightful to the mind that contemplates the mysterious operations of nature, and traces its wonderful phenomena up to nature's God. This subject has, from remote antiquity, arrested the attention of Philosophers, divines, moralists, and the inquisitive mind of all denominations of men. The industrious bee has ever been viewed by intelligent naturalists as an interesting species of insects, and the fruits of its industry as among the choicest productions of nature. There is no branch of husbandry, the cultivation of which furnishes for our table a more innocent and grateful luxury, than that of the bee, nor any part of natural history better calculated to raise our contemplation to that divine wisdom which creates and sustains the infinite variety in the animal world. In treating of bees, it is proper to describe each species in its individual capacity, and their combination into communities with their form of government and instinctive powers. If we are struck with the wonderful powers of instinct in bees, it may be observed that humble bees, ants, wasps, and all insects which live in congregated society, and some quadrupeds also, are known to display instinctive faculties no less extraordinary. This seems to belong to that order of nature which has been wisely ordained by the great author of all things. The same power who called the human race into being, has with infinite wisdom, endowed the insect tribe with all that sagacity, and with those qualities which are best adapted for their peculiar circumstances in the sphere of existe...