PRUNING. 85 
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C- i 
The accompanying cut represents the form best adapted to the pur- 
pose; each should be twelve or fourteen inches long, exclusive of the 
handle, and the blades sharp, so as to cut the combs without breaking 
or bruising them. A spatula, or a long thin carving-knife, also, will 
be found very useful and convenient in pruning or cutting out combs. 
PRUNING. 
Pruning, as it is termed, is practised by some bee-keepers who use 
the square or common hive; but it is attended with more or less 
difficulty, especially by timid persons, and it also disturbs the bees; 
and if the combs contain honey at the time of pruning, so as to drip, 
it not unfrequently attracts other bees, and induces them to rob the 
colony and often destroy them. Some, however, practise it, and are 
very much in favor of this mode of management, and consider it pre- 
ferable to any other, and recommend it as the very best method of 
managing bees in such hives as I have named. Others have tried it 
to some extent, and have abandoned it altogether for the reasons 
above stated. Hence we find, that in this branch of bee culture 
apiarians do not agree any better than on other points connected with 
it; and the reason is obvious: for while one bee-keeper can handle 
his bees as he chooses without the least fear of their stings, will turn 
his hives upside down and cut out the combs, and handle them as though 
they were so many flies, another person would not perform the oper- 
ation to save a colony from destruction; therefore a hive that one 
person may prefer, and that he can manage bees in to his own satis- 
faction, another person would not use even if he never kept any bees. 
Any person wishing to prune his hives containing old combs, may do 
it without much danger from the bees, and even without any danger, 
if he will only provide himself with a bee dress, such as I have de- 
scribed in another chapter. 
The bees should be first fumigated with the smoke of puff-ball, tobac- 
co, or cloth ; the puff-ball is the most effectual ; and in pruning, it should 
