KNEMIIiS 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 enliglit 
cned system can be made much more profitable. The use 
oi movable frames permitting, as they do, the weakest 
stocks to be strengthened or united to others, will, I trust, 
ill 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 OEF FROM USEFUL LABOR, 
A OOLO.N* OF 
1NDU8TKIOU8 BEE8, 
BASELY MURUERED 
BY ITS 
UNGRATEFUL AND IGNORANT 
OWNER. 
To the epitaph should be appended Thompson’s verses • 
“ Ah, see, where robbed and murdered in that pit, 
Lies the still heaving hive 1 at evening snatched. 
Beneath the doud of guilt-concealing night. 
And fixed o’er sulphur 1 while, not dreaming ilj. 
The happy people, in their waxen cells, 
ijat tending public cares. 
Sudden, the dark, oppressive steam ascends. 
And, used to milder scents, the tender race. 
By thousands, tumble from their honied dome 
Into a gulf of blue sulphureous dame 1” 
The following letter, on the first appearance of the 
bee-moth in this country, from Ur. Jared P. Kirtland, of 
paying a largo sum fur an iiifalHble lifo-presorvlng socretf lio had been torned olT 
with tho truism that, to live forever, one must keep welll 
* Killing bees for their honey was, unquestionably, an inventiun of the dark 
•gos, when the human family had lost— in Apiarian pui-suits, as well as In othoi 
tluiigs— tho skill of former ages. In tho limes of Aristotle, Varro, Columella, ond 
•’liny, siU'li a Darbarou.s practice did not o>iist. The old euUivatoi’s tm)k only what 
tiicU* could spare, killing no stocks, except such as were feeble or diseased. 
