354 



THE INSECT WORLD. 



smoking them. ^The smoke is forced into the hive with the assis- 

 tance of a pair of bellows, the arrangement of which is shown in 

 Fig. 331. If the fumigation is prolonged, the bees are very soon 

 heard to beat their wings in a peculiar manner ; they are then in 

 what is called in French Vetatdebruissement, or the roaring state. When 

 they stand up on their hind legs and agitate their wings, you can do 



with them almost anything you like cut away the honeycomb, abstract 

 the eggs, or take out the honey without their troubling themselves 

 about it. But this state of things must not last too long, or you may 

 suffocate your bees. It is a sort of anaesthesis into which the bees 

 have been thrown ; and, as with men, this must not be prolonged. 



Some bee-keepers, in order to collect the honey harvest, suffocate 

 their bees by burning sulphur matches. This is a bad practice. 

 " Those authors who recommend us to suffocate the bees," says M. 

 Hamet, "under the pretext that their colonies will become too 



