THE BEE-BURNERS ail 
The bee-burning took place about sunset, or as 
soon as the last honey-seekers were home for the 
night. Small circular pits were dug in some quiet 
corner hard by. These were about six or eight 
inches deep, and a handful of old rags that had been 
dipped in melted brimstone having been put in, the 
bee-keeper went to fetch the first hive. The whole 
fell business went through in a strange solemnity 
and quietude. A knife was gently run round under 
the edge of the skep, to free it from its stool, and 
the hive carefully lifted and carried, mouth down- 
wards, towards the sulphur-pit, none of the doomed 
bees being any the wiser. Then the rag was ignited 
and the skep lowered over the pit. An angry 
buzzing broke out as the fumes reached the under- 
most bees in the cluster, but this quickly died down 
into silence. In a minute or two every bee had 
perished, and the pit was ready for the next hive. 
That this senseless and wickedly wasteful custom 
should have been almost universal among bee-men 
up to comparatively recent times is sufficiently a 
matter for wonder; but that the practice should 
still survive in certain country districts to-day well- 
nigh passes belief. If the art of bee-driving—a 
simple and easy method by which all the bees in a 
full hive may be transferred unhurt to an empty 
one, and that within a few minutes—were a new 
discovery, the thing might be condoned as all of 
a piece with the general benightedness of medizval 
folk. But bee-driving was known, and openly 
advocated, by several writers on apiculture at least 
a hundred years ago. By this method, just as easy 
as the old and cruel one, not only do the entire 
stores of each hive fall into the undisputed posses- 
