HIVES WITH IMMOVABLE COMBS. 



133 



SYG. To get the honey from the gums, or boxes, the bee- 

 keepers used at first to drive the bees to another hive (574) 

 and take all the contents. But most of the thus impoverished 

 colonies perished. This led to the thought that killing bees 

 would be more facile, and the brimstone-pit was invented. 

 This killing of bees was so customary that in the XVIIIth 

 century, Joseph II, Emperor of Austria, decreed that every 

 bee-keeper who would cut the combs in Spring, instead of 

 brimstoning the bees, would receive one florin (about forty 

 cents) per colony. 



Fig. 52. 



BOX HIVE^ WITH CAP. 



(From Hamet.) 



277. About the year 1830, our senior, then a boy, saw 

 this harvesting of combs for the first time. Clothed with a 

 heavy linen frock, equipped with a mask of wire strong 

 enough to be sword-proof, and sweating under a scorching 

 sun in this heavy garment, he helped ( ?) the old priest of 

 his village to prune about twenty colonies, removing the back 

 combs with a curved knife, from the upturned hives. It was 

 in April; and, while the crop thus harvested was light, the 



