210 
TIIE HIVE AND HONEY-BEE. 
all the ingenuity and expense lavished upon which, arc 
known, by the better informed, to be as unnecessary as a 
costly machine for lilting up bread and butter, and gently 
pushing it into the mouth and down the throat of an 
active and healthy child. 
The Rev. John Thorley, in his '■'■Female. Monarchy 
published at London, in 1744, appears to have first intro- 
duced the practice of stupefying bees by the narcotic 
fumes of the “ puff ball ” ( Fungus pulverulentus ), dried 
till it will hold fire like tinder. The same efi’ect has 
been produced by pushing a rag, saturated with chloro- 
form or ether, into the entrance of the hive, and closing 
all tight, to prevent the escape of the fumes. The bees 
soon drop motionless from their combs, and recover again 
after a short exposure to the air. 
Some of my readers may suppose that such an easy 
mode of stupefying bees would very greatly facilitate the 
of tills invention is to elevate frames, one at a time, into a case with glass sides , 
so that they may be examined without risk of annoyance from the bees. Great 
ingenuity is exhibited by the inventor of this very costly and very complicated 
hive, who seems to imagine that smoko “must be injurious both to the bees and 
their brood.” Even if a little smoke is so injurious, the Apiarian, by sweetened 
water, or by drumming upon a hive, after closing its entrance, can cause the bees 
to till themselves with honey (p. 27), when all their combs may be safely lifted out. 
A Iluber-hive, or one with movable bars, may bo much more safely managed 
than any one which proposes to elevate the frames, with .at permitting them to bo 
pushed apart (p. 150). A single hive, the nrrangcine> s of which are such as to 
maim and irritate bees, is more to be dreaded in at Apiary than a thousand of 
proper construction ; as it educates bees to regard > teir keeper in the light of an 
enemy. 
On p. 15, I have spoken of the bar-liivo, as at 'east one hundred years old. 
From “A Journey into Greece, by George WbfMor, Esq.,” made in 1675-6, it 
appears that it was, at that time, in common use *Serc, and, probably, even then an 
old invention ; he describes how it was used for forming artificial swarms, and re- 
moving spare honey. As the new swarms w»*vo made by dividing the combs be- 
tween two hives, and no mention is made giving the queenless one a royal cell 
—those old observers were probably ftcq<»<untcd with the fact that they could rear 
one from the worker-brood. Iluber *ays:— “ Montlcelll, a Neapolitan Professor, 
claims that the plan of artificial swa'-olngwas borrowed from Favignana, and that 
the practice is so ancient th.it evo the Latin names arc preserved by the inhabi* 
tants in their procedure.” 
