The middle of September is about the time for the honey-harvest, or in-gathering of the stores of the hive. Those hives which are designed for winter stock must be set apart and weighed. A common straw hive when empty weighs from five to six pounds, an ordinary swarm about four pounds, the wax of a full hive two or three pounds, the farina in the cells one pound, making in all fifteen pounds. A stock, therefore, to be secure, must weigh double that amount, that is, it should not contain less than fifteen pounds of honey. The bees, it is true, may exist through the winter on a smaller quantity than this, but this would depend very much on the nature of the season; whereas with fifteen pounds they are considered safe, so far as food is concerned, whatever the temperature may be. These stock-hives being selected, the cultivator now proceeds to take the honey from the rest of the hives. There are three ways of taking honey, known as “partial deprivation,” “suffocation,” and “driving.” For the first of these, hives of two stories are mostly employed. Immediately after the swarming season another story, or box, is added, either above or below, and one of those filled with honey is taken away. If this be done early enough in the season, there will be time for the bees to fill the empty story before winter; but if it be delayed, as is sometimes the case, until the beginning or middle of September, then the bees, having no opportunity of replacing what has been taken away, will be starved before the winter is over. This method of taking honey is by no means general, apparently because, from an error as to the _time_ of performing the operation, it has frequently failed. The second, or suffocating process, is effected by taking strips of linen rag, dipping them in melted brimstone, and placing them on a few sticks in a hollow place in the ground: then light is set to the rags, and the hive quickly set over them. Every hole being stopped up to prevent the escape of the sulphur fumes, the bees are soon suffocated, and the combs discoloured. This cruel and objectionable practice is, perhaps, the most common of any, being the least troublesome, though not the most economical mode of getting at the honey.