44 SUCCESSFUL BEE KEEPING. 
except by a person of experience, before the middle of 
May or after the first of September, since it will be ex- 
tremely difficult to save the bees at such times. During 
these months no trouble need be feared by any person. 
Simply remove the honey and comb, after subduing the 
bees a little with smoke of old rags or tobacco, and with 
a stick or nail fasten a small piece of the comb, contain- 
ing eggs and brood only, in a box, for a temporary hive. 
Now hive the bees precisely as you would a young swarm 
in swarming time. Remove them at night to your dom- 
icil, having previously placed the brood combs as evenly 
and carefully in a hive as it is possible for you to do, 
transferring thither the bees, and giving them but little 
or no honey. If movable frame hives are at hand, this is 
easily done. Should the queen have been destroyed, they 
will soon rear another, and collect far more honey, and 
prove a thousand times more satisfactory to you, than if 
you had waited till fall, and then cruelly destroyed them 
all, as is so often done for their stores alone. I have no 
patience with that class of bee-hunters, or bee-keepers 
who practice this latter barbarity. It is too much like 
the practice of the rude Indians of the forest, who annu- 
ally slay whole herds of deer for their skins alone. A 
more perfect parallel still would be found in the farmer 
who should make yearly slaughter of his beeves and oth- 
er stock for their hides, throwing their carcasses to the 
winds | 
After a bee tree is cut and the bees “ broken up,” rob- 
bers from neighboring trees or otherwise soon make their 
appearance, appropriating the spoils. If any wild swarms 
are in the vicinity, as is most always the case if the tree 
contains an old one, they are easily followed home and 
captured. I have often found three or four in a circuit of 
@ hundred rods. 
