MANAGING BEES. 
75 
the inhuman practice of taking the lives of the 
most industrious and comforting insects to the 
wants of the human family by fire and brim- 
stone. 
When bees have occupied one tenement for 
several years, the combs become thick and 
filthy, by being filled up with old bread and 
cocoons, made by young bees when trans- 
formed from a larva to the perfect fly. 
Bees always wind themselves in their cells, 
in a silken cocoon, or shroud, to pass their tor- 
pid and defenceless (shrysalis) state. These 
cocoons are very thin, and are never removed 
by the bees. They arc always cleaned im- 
mediately after the escape of ihc young bees, 
and others are raised in the same cells. Thus 
a number of bees are raised, which leaves an 
additional cocoon as often as the transforma- 
tion of one succeeds that of another, which of- 
ten occurs in the course of the season. Now 
in the course of a few years the cells become 
so contracted, in consequence of being thus 
filled up, tluit the bees come forth but mcra 
dwarfs, and cease to swarm. Combs arc ren- 
dered useless by being filled up tvithold bread. 
