82 THE WEAPON OF DEFENCE 



empty and can be removed without the slightest 

 fear of stings. 



The old-fashioned bee-keeper used to take his 

 hives at the end of the season and put them over 

 a hole in the ground in which was burning 

 sulphur. There they remained until all the bees 

 were dead, when he cut the combs out and 

 squeezed them to get the honey. This method 

 is quite out of date, for, by taking advan- 

 tage of the bees' habit of storing their honey 

 mainly above the brood nest and farthest away 

 from the entrance, we are able to compel them 

 to store in detachable upper storeys, and thus 

 get pure honeycomb uncontaminated by brood. 

 To make quite sure that the queen shall not lay 

 eggs in the upper storey, what is known as a 

 " queen excluder " is placed between the upper 

 and lower. This is a sheet of zinc perforated 

 with holes which are just large enough to allow 

 a worker bee to crawl through, but are too small 

 for queens and drones. We thus ensure not only 

 that the queen shall confine her operations to the 

 proper sphere, but we prevent the greedy drones 

 from eating the honey stored for our delectation. 



Notwithstanding all precautions, it will some- 

 times happen that a particularly vicious colony 

 will prove very troublesome. Horses, for in- 

 stance, are like the proverbial red rag to bees, 

 and they will sometimes come out in large 

 numbers and attack an animal grazing near — at 



