KNEMIKS OJ'' BEES. 239 



While freely admitting that the old plan of Idlluig the 

 bees has, in the hands of the ignorant, met with the best 

 success, I am persuaded that a more humane and enlight- 

 ened system can be made much more profitable. The use 

 of iJiovable frames permitting, as they do, the weakest 

 stocks to be strengthened or united to others, will, I trust, 

 in due time, introduce the happy era when the following 

 epitaph, taken from a 'German work, might properly be 

 placed over every pit of brimstoned bees :* 



HEBE KESTS, 



CDI OFF FKOM USEFUL LABOB, 



A COLONY OF 



INDUSTBIOtTB BEES, 



BASELY MUKDEBED 



BY ITS 



UHGBATEFUL AND IGNOBANT 



OWKEB. 



To the epitaph should be appended Thompson'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 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 !" 



The following letter, on the first appearance of the 

 bee-moth in this country, from Dr. Jared P. Kirtland, of 



paying a large sam for an infallible life-preserving secret, he had been tnrned oflf 

 witli the tmism that, to live forever, one mnst keep well 1 



* Killing bees for their honey was, unquestionably, an invention of the darfe 

 ages, when the human family had lost — ^in Apiarian pursuits, as well as in other 

 things — the sltill of former ages. In the times of Aristotle, Varro, Columella, and 

 Pliny, such a barbarous practice did not exist. - The old cultivators took only what 

 their bees could sparo, killing no stocks, except such as wereileeble or diseaselS. 



