Fig. 328.—Polish hive.
In the month of March a gathering of wax is made by cutting away the lower part of the hives, where the cakes have grown old. The principal honey harvest takes place towards the end of May, June, or July, according to the place the hives are in. A larger or smaller gathering takes place according to the quantity of honey ready, and the state of the season. As the bees will not see the violation of their domicile and theft of their winter provisions without anger, to get possession of the honeycomb with which the hive is filled, you must put these irritable insects into such a state that they are unable to injure you. They can be rendered peaceable by smoking them. The smoke is forced into the hive with the assistance of a pair of bellows, the arrangement of which is shown in [Fig. 331]. If the fumigation is prolonged, the bees are very soon heard to beat their wings in a peculiar manner; they are then in what is called in French l'état de bruissement, or the roaring state. When they stand up on their hind legs and agitate their wings, you can do with them almost anything you like—cut away the honeycomb, abstract the eggs, or take out the honey—without their troubling themselves about it. But this state of things must not last too long, or you may suffocate your bees. It is a sort of anæsthesis into which the bees have been thrown; and, as with men, this must not be prolonged.
Fig. 329.—Garden hive.
Some bee-keepers, in order to collect the honey harvest, suffocate their bees by burning sulphur matches. This is a bad practice. "Those authors who recommend us to suffocate the bees," says M. Hamet, "under the pretext that their colonies will become too numerous, and who add, 'You cannot eat beef without killing the ox,' are more stupid than the animal they have chosen for their comparison." A hive often produces from twelve to twenty pounds of honey each year, and a proportional quantity of wax. It may, then, furnish to the bee-keeper an important revenue, especially as the rearing of bees gives scarcely any trouble, and involves scarcely any labour, as it is only necessary to select a spot with a proper exposure and well supplied with flowers.
