On Various Systems of Hives, 1 5 
purposes, and for storing honey. But from the 
moment they are placed under man’s manage- 
ment, he should provide habitations to shelter 
them from the inclemency of the weather and 
for facilitating all operations connected with 
them. In other words, man, as a rational being, 
should carry on bee-keeping in a rational way. 
In hot countries a simple wicker basket, a 
barrel staved in, or an old box has satisfied 
the wants of bee-keepers. But the difficulty of 
managing the bees, and the fear of being stung, 
have often induced them to have recourse to 
suffocation in order to obtain the honey. Now, 
however, the system of suffocation is only re- 
sorted to by those who do not make use of 
hives with moveable bars. 
In French Switzerland, the common hive 
has been in use from time immemorial, and 
supers were employed as long ago as the last 
century, though a good many old-fashioned 
people with whom we are acquainted, do not 
yet make use of them. They limit themselves 
to hiving their swarms when they do not 
escape, and to cutting honey out of their hives, 
or to destroying the bees in the heaviest hives 
in order to get possession of it. 
