fit to the owner
can be derived from their death, which will outweigh the evils resulting
from such a sacrifice. Duty compels me to protest in the strongest terms
and feelings, against the inhuman practice of taking the lives of the most
industrious and comforting insects to the wants of the human family by
fire and brimstone.

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
the young bees when transformed from a larva to the perfect fly.

Bees always wind themselves in their cells, in a silken cocoon, or shroud,
to pass their torpid and defenceless (chrysalis) state.--These cocoons are
very thin, and are never removed by the bees. They are always cleaned
immediately after the escape of the 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 transformation of one succeeds that of
another, which often 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, that the bees come forth but mere dwarfs and sometimes
cease to swarm. Combs are rendered useless by being filled up with old
bread, which is never used except for feeding young bees. A greater
quantity of this bread is stored up yearly than is used by them, and in a
few years they have but little room to perform their ordinary
labors.--Hence the necessity of transferring them, or the inhuman sentence
of death must be passed upon them, not by being hung by the neck until
they are dead, but by being tortured to death by fire and brimstone.

It is obvious to every cultivator that old stocks should be transferred. I
have repeatedly transferred them in the most approved manner, by means of
an apparatus constructed for that purpose; but the operation always
resulted in the loss of the colony afterwards, or a swarm which would have
come from them. When it is necessary to transfer a swarm, insert drawer
No. 1 into their chamber in the spring, say the first of May. If they till
the drawer, let it remain there; if they need to be changed to a new hive,
they will recede from the lower apartment and make the drawer their winter
quarters, which should remain until warm weather has so far advanced as to
afford them bread. Then they may be removed to an empty hive, as directed
in the Rule. Now the drawer contains no br