408 HONEY PRODUCTION. 
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 guilt-concealing night, 
And tixed o’er sulphur! while, not dreaming ill, 
‘Tbe 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: 
Ist. 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 
“Native perfumes, and whispers whence they stole 
Those balmy spoils.” * 
*The scent of the hives, duriny the height of the gathering season, usually 
indicates from what sources the bees have gathered their supplies. 
