ENEMIES OF BEES. 239 



While freely admitting that the old plan of killing the 

 bees has, in the hands of the ignorant, met with the best 

 success, I am persuaded that a more humane and enlight- 

 ened system can be made much more profitable. The use 

 of movable frames permitting, as they do, the weakest 

 stocks to be strengthened or united to others, will, I trust, 

 in due time, introduce the happy era when the following 

 epitaph, taken from a German work, might properly be 

 placed over every pit of brimstoned bees :* 



HERE RESTS, 



CUT OFF FROM USEFUL LABOR, 

 A COLONY OP 



INDUSTRIOUS BEES, 



BASELY MURDERED 



BY ITS 



UNGRATEFUL AND IGNORANT 

 OWNER. 



To the epitaph should be appended Thompson's verses : 



" Ah, see, where robbed and murdered in that pit, 

 Lies the still heaving hive ! at evening snatched, 

 Beneath the cloud of guilt-concealing night, 

 And fixed o'er sulphur ! while, not dreaming ill, 

 The happy people, in their waxen cells, 

 Sat tending public cares. 

 Sudden, the dark, oppressive steam ascends, 

 And, used to milder scents, the tender race, 

 By thousands, tumble from their honied dome 

 Into a gulf of blue sulphureous flame !" 



The following letter, on the first appearance of the 

 bee-moth hi this country, from Dr. Jared P. Kirtland, of 



paying a large sum for an infallible life-preserving secret, he had been tnrned off 

 with the truism that, to live forever, one must keep well ! 



* Killing bees for their honey was, unquestionably, an invention of the dark 

 ages, when the. human family had lost in Apiarian pursuits, as well as in other 

 things the skill of former ages. In the times of Aristotle, Varro, Columella, and 

 Pliny, such a barbarous practice did not exist. The oldxmltivators took only what 

 their bees could spare, killing no stocks, except such as were feeble or diseased. 



