The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-08-03

They had swarmed, too, several times, filling the air with their thousands of migrants and such an exodus, while really an inoffensive act, looks quite formidable to the uninitiated, It had quite terrified the lawful tenants of the cottage. Paterfamilias thought to smoke the swarm out, which failing he tried to smother them with fumes of lusphur. But bees do not abandon their combs readily and they are gene rally too well protected to permit Of satisfactory Immigration. The only thing left to be done was to remove the nuisance bodily.
 Protected by veil and gloves and armed with a smoker, butcher knife, chisel and keyhole saw, I started in The swarm was located by humping on the inside wall Then the plaster was knocked off the lath. A nttle opening was made between the laths through which some smoke was putfed to quiet the bees, which by this time were humming angrily. This soon changed the note to one more compro- missing.
 Do you know the reason for the ef- feet of smoke on bees? It isn't given to suffocate them. It simply frightens them-fire being their worst natural en- emy; one against which stings are or no avail When once frightened by the thought of possible migration ana abandonment of their combs they at once fill their sacks with honey. When loaded with honey a bee, like man after dinner, Is in. his best humor. So the beekeeper controls his charges.
 Next the saw was put in service. Be- ginning at the basel board one lath was carefully cut and removed. The combs were exposed and the hive, if so we may call it, was seen to extend from one studding to another, or width Of some eighteen inches. About this time the members of the family who had been looking decided they had better go, and I was left alone to face some forty thousand bellgerents all armed with stilettos, and most devoted In what they held to be their own particu- lar castle-that most sacred possession under English law.
 Lath after lath was cut and removed. Three feet, four feet, six feet from the floor, and still the combs continued; seven feet-as far as could saw stand ing on the fioor-and yet the limit of the nest was not reached. Standing on a box the opening was heightened two feet more and the end came in view
 There was sight to make an old time bee hunters mouth water. A. snace eighteen inches wide by nine feet lo1ig by four inches thick, solid full of combs and bees. For about four feet from the floor the comb was largely brood comb, containing young bees, bee bread (pollen and honey mixed to- gether and used as food for young bees): above that the combs were al- most entirely filled with honey, of which I took out enough to fill a large washtub fully two- thirds full.
 In the old days the bee hunter would have been satisfied with this booty which he would not have taken until he had first killed by suffocation the right full owners thereof But my purpose was to capture and make prisoners the defending army as well as to levy a heavy indemnity against their treasure to compensate me for sundry wounds and vexations received.
 To do this the brood-combs were carefully cut from the walls and fitted into the frames of a modern hive, which was then set with it's entrance coinciding with the entrance to the old nest in the wall, from which all the combs had been removed. The hive now containing the only comb available and the queen having been caught and placed within it, became the nearest thing to q home left the despoiled colony, and they hastened to crawl into it. In order that they might quiet down and that scattered and flight bees might be captured also, the hive was allowed to stand where it was for an other day. But there proved to be too many bees to go into one hive, and it was only after another one had been fitted up for them that I succeeded in getting the entire swarm.
 They are now working nicely in their new location, having repaired the dam age of. my heroic treatment, and ex- pect they will give me more surplus during the fall honey flow. In fact, they have been "benevolently assimila d."-Washingto CD. O Pathfinder.