TOOLS AND TECHNIQUE 
43 
ruption a customary one, with no occasion for an im¬ 
mediate offensive, they frequently will make no 
threatening moves, but they will gather in great 
clumps on top of the frames, making it hard for a 
beekeeper to find a place for his fingers while draw¬ 
ing out frames, unless he controls the situation with 
his smoker. 
Smoke seems to frighten bees; an instinctive fear, 
reverting to centuries of experience in the woods 
when hunters smoked them out of hollow trees and 
took away their honey. Again instinct teaches them 
to hurriedly gorge themselves with honey before 
evacuating their burning home, that they may carry 
with them in their honey sacs something with which 
to start anew. 
A few light puffs of smoke from a smoker will 
drive away only those bees near at hand, while the 
others hardly pause in their customary occupations. 
A special “hive tool” is sold for apiary use, but any 
screw driver or chisel can do the same work. Yet, 
the regular tool is handier with its strong wedge for 
prying supers apart and separating frames. 
Other equipment stored in the Bee House in¬ 
cluded extra hives, sheets of wax foundation, queen 
excluders, bee-escapes, scissors for clipping queens’ 
wings, and so on. 
