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robbing season this affords considerable protection to a stock 
that would be very liable to attack if its combs were fully 
exposed while the defenders were demoralized by smoke. 
In making use of the cloth it is necessary, as with the 
smoker, to intimidate the bees just inside the door of the 
hive. Placing the cloth in front of the entrance for half a 
minute or so will be sufficient. The yuilt next the bees is 
peeled off and replaced in the same action by the subduing 
cloth, and this may be accomplished so deftly that not a bee 
will fly up. The bees set up a great humiing, and retreat 
from the “poison gas.” In about a minute one edge of the 
cloth may be rolled back and the bees handled as usual. 
When not in use the cloth should be kept in a canister or in 
a sponge bag in order to keep it moist as long as possible. 
Effects Produced by Stings. 
A bee can kill another bee only by stinging it between the 
joints of its chitinous armour, and a sting so delivered is 
usually rapidly fatal. A bee that has received a mortal 
wound crawls out of the hive, using mainly its fore-legs, 
since the others are frequently paralysed at an early stage. 
The abdomen of such a bee has a typically twisted look, which 
persists after death, and enables the bee-keeper to tell by 
examination of the dead bees when fighting has been going 
on at a hive. 
Applied to the human skin a sting produces a sharp pain, 
followed later by characteristic swelling. We cannot promise 
that the bee-keeper will never be stung, but we can assure 
him that in most cases he will acquire “immunity” after 
receiving a certain number of stings. The pain of the sting 
at the inoment of infliction will still be felt, but this will not 
persist for nore than a second or two, and there will be no 
swelling or other after effect. This immunity is almost 
certainly due to the development in the blood of the bee- 
keeper of an antitoxin which neutralizes the sting-poison. 
As indicated in the Bulletin for Prospective Bee-keepers, 
there are a very few people to whom even a single sting 
coutinues to be a serious matter. In such cases, a sting 
