HONEY PRODUCTION. 429 



To the epitaph should be appended Thomson's verses : 



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

 Lies the still heaving hive! at evening snatched, 

 Beneath the cloud of gilt-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 ! ' ' 



717. The present methods are as far ahead of the old 

 ways, as the steel rail is ahead of the miry road; as the 

 palace car is ahead of the stage coach. 



It is to the production of surplus honey that all the efforts 

 of the bee-keeper tend, and the problem of apiculture is, 

 how to raise the most honey from what colonies we have, 

 with the greatest profit. 



718. In raising honey, whether comb or extracted, the 

 Apiarist should remember the following: 



1st. His colonies should be strongest in bees at the time 

 of the expected honey harvest (565). 



2d. Each honey harvest usually lasts but a few weeks. 



If a colony is weak in Spring, the harvest may come and 

 pass away, and the bees be able to obtain very little from it. 

 During this time of meagre accumulations, the orchards and 

 pastures may present 



"One boundless blush, one white empurpled shower 

 Of mingled blossoms;" 



and tens of thousands of bees from stronger colonies may 

 be engaged all day in sipping the. fragrant sweets, so that 

 every gale which "fans its odoriferous wings" about their 

 dwellings, dispenses 



