ections which have been urged
against it. I have never read the beautiful verses of the poet
Thompson, without feeling all their force:

"Ah, see, where robbed and murdered in that pit
Lies the still heaving hive! at evening snatched,
Beneath the cloud of guilt-concealing night,
And fixed o'er sulphur! while, not dreaming ill,
The happy people, in their waxen cells,
Sat 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 flame."

The plain matter of fact however, is, that in our country, as many bees,
if not more, die of starvation in their hives, as ever were killed by
the fumes of sulphur. Commend me rather to the humanity of the
old-fashioned bee-keeper, who put to a speedy and therefore merciful
death, the poor bees which are now, by millions, tortured by slow
starvation among their empty combs! At the present time, (April 1853,) I
am almost daily hearing of swarms which have perished in this way,
during the last Winter; and I know of only one person who was merciful
enough to kill his weak stocks, rather than suffer them to die so cruel
a death.

If the use of the common patent hives could only keep the stocks strong
in numbers, and if the bee-keepers would always see that they were well
supplied with honey, then I admit that to kill the bees would be both
cruel and unnecessary. Such however, are the discouragements and losses
necessarily attending the use of any hive which does not give the
control of the combs, that there will be few who do not continually find
that some of their stocks are too feeble to be worth the labor and
expense of attempting to preserve them over Winter. How many colonies
are annually wintered, which are not only of no value to their owner,
but are positive nuisances in his Apiary; being so feeble in the Spring,
that they are speedily overcome by the moth, and answer only to breed a
horde of destroyers to ravage the rest of his Apiary. The time spent
upon them is often as absolutely wasted, as the time devoted to a sick
animal incurably diseased, and which can never be of any service, while
by nursing it along, its owner incurs the risk of infecting his whole
stock with its deadly taint. If, on the score of kindness, he should
shut it up, and let it starve to death, few of us, I imagine, would care
to cultivate