ENEMIES OF BEES. 
239 
While freely admitting that the old plan of killing 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 movable 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 :* 
HERE RESTS, 
CUT OFF FROM USEFUL LABOR, 
A COLONY OP 
INDU8TKIOU8 BEES, 
BASELY MURDERED 
BY ITS 
UNGRATEFUL AND IGNORANT 
OWNER. 
To the epitaph should be appended Thompson’s verses : 
“ Ah, sec, where robbed nnd murdered in that pit, 
Lies tlic 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 waxeu cells, 
Sat tendiug public cares. 
Sudden, the dark, oppressive steam ascends, 
And, used to milder scents, the tender race, 
By thousands, tumble from their houied dome 
Into a gulf of blue sulphureous flame 1” 
The following letter, on the first appearance of the 
bee-moth in this country, from Dr. Jared 1’. Kirtland, of 
paying ft largo sum for an infallible llfc-prosorvlug secret, lie bad been turned off 
with tho truism that, to live forever, one must keep well 1 
• Killing bees for their honey was, unquestionably, an invention of the dark 
egos, when tho human family hnd lost— in Apiarian pursuits, as well as in other 
things— tho skill of former ages. In tho times of Aristotle, Varro, Columella, and 
Pliny, such a Barbarous practice did not oxlst. The old cultivators took only what 
their bees could spare, killing no stocks, except such as were feoblo or diseased. 
