ON DRIVING BEES.

As my reverend correspondent has introduced the subject of driving Bees from their full hive into an empty one, in order that they may be deprived of their honey and wax, and has animadverted upon that practice with some severity, I will take the opportunity of here stating my objections to it.

Mr. Huish, in his treatise on Bees, has twice described the manner in which "driving a hive" may be performed; but nowhere, that I can find, has he once recommended it. In a note (in page 24) he says—-that "by driving a hive may be understood the act of obliging the Bees to leave their own domicil, and take refuge in another. This is performed by placing the full hive under an empty one, (or he might have said, by placing an empty hive upon the full one inverted) and by gently tapping the lower hive the Bees will ascend into the upper, and the lower one then remains vacant for experiments, or the purpose of deprivation." He afterwards (in page 252) gives a more detailed account of the manner of performing this operation; and having done so, he presently observes that "by the driving of the Bees a number is unavoidably killed." I do not find that Mr. Huish himself practises it further than for the purpose of making experiments; and that, having made those experiments, he returns the driven Bees to their hives and to their treasures in them. In short, he describes it to his readers because they may wish to be acquainted with it, and not because he approves of it. I mention this because I consider Mr. Huish to be respectable authority on such a subject.

Now, were there nothing in a hive but Bees and honey, driving them into an empty hive (were it as easy in practice as it seems to be upon paper, though I presume it is not) in order to rob them of their all, would be a most arbitrary and unjust method of treating them: but, besides Bees and honey, there are other substances in a prosperous hive which ought not to be disturbed. There are the future inhabitants of the colony in every stage of existence, from the egg to the perfect Bee, and these in a driven hive are all totally destroyed—eggs, larvÆ, nymphs, in one word, the brood, in whatever state, is all destroyed, when the Bees are driven from it and not suffered to return. And is it not an unnatural operation that thus destroys many thousands of lives in embryo, over and above the "number unavoidably killed" thereby? as painful must it be for the Queen—the mother of the colony, and to all the other Bees, to be forcibly expelled from a hive and home of plenty and prosperity, as it is for an industrious man and his thriving family to be rudely ejected from a comfortable house and home, without the least notice of, or preparation for, so calamitous an event, and forced by lawless marauders to take shelter in an empty house, and left there destitute, to subsist as best they can, or to starve, as probably they may, their spirits being cast down by the violent deprivations and desperate robbery they have experienced, and it may be, the winds, and the weather, and the elements of heaven, are warring, as it were, against them at the same time. And, comparatively speaking, is it not so with driven Bees? They are turned topsy-turvy, and in that strange, unnatural position their fears are operated upon, or excited, by unusual, and to them, no doubt, terrible sounds made by even "gently tapping" their inverted-hive—their house turned upside down. Though no advocate for suffocating Bees, but the contrary—a decided opponent to it, I agree in opinion with my correspondent that suffocation at once is preferable to the very reprehensible practice of "driving a hive," inasmuch as an instantaneous death is preferable to a lingering and unnatural one by starvation, which, whatever may befal the driven Bees, is the hard, untimely fate of the brood and young larvÆ of a hive when the Queen and commoners are driven from them into a new and empty domicil. They leave, because they are forced to leave behind them, and to perish, thousands of the young brood in a state of helplessness. Their mother and their nurses are driven into banishment and pauperism, while her offspring are doomed to perish for the want of their aid and support. If driving be practised early in the season, that is in June or July, all the brood then in the driven hive must inevitably perish; if later, it is hardly to be expected that the surviving Bees will or can prosper. Can the Bee-master for a moment think that when Bees are so driven from their old hive, they will work in their new one, as if they had swarmed voluntarily and then been put into it: it is some considerable time before Bees thus treated will work vigorously; and during that time of lingering and irresolution the honey-season fast declines,—the Bees' difficulties multiply,—and they become paupers at a time they should be rich. Nine times out of ten the hive so treated perishes by famine, and like the young brood, dies the worst of deaths,—the whole hive becomes a melancholy wreck, and is absolutely sacrificed to the mistaken notions of the speculating, or experiment-making proprietor. It is a practice of which I disapprove altogether: and I am surprised that any one could so far misunderstand the principles and nature of my practice as to recommend the driving of Bees out of a full hive into an empty one as an admirable addition to my Bee-hive—that is—to my Bee-boxes. I have the satisfaction, however, to state that in the management of Bees in my boxes no driving is necessary, nor even possible: by them driving and suffocation are both superseded, and rendered as useless to operators as they have long been destructive to Bees,—and, I cannot but say—disgraceful to apiarians. What I have already said (in page 48) I will here repeat with as much emphasis as I am able, because that passage comprehends the very essence of my directions relative to the management of Bees in the middle-box,—and because those directions are utterly incompatible with driving. "I say, then, disturb not this hive—this pavilion of nature: weaken not its population; rut support its influence, and extend to it those accommodations which no practice, except my own, has yet put into operation, or made any adequate provision for.

"This humane practice partakes not of the driving, nor of the fumigating, nor of the robbing system. It is a liberal principle of Bee-cultivation, founded on humanity. And it is by such practice that we must succeed, if we hope to be benefited in the culture of Honey-Bees."