Our plan of giving additional store-room will, generally speaking, prevent swarming. This stay-at-home policy, we contend, is an advantage; for instead of the loss of time consequent upon a swarm hanging out preparatory to flight, all the bees are engaged in collecting honey, and that at a time when the weather is most favourable and the food most abundant. Upon the old system, the swarm leaves the hive simply because the dwelling has not been enlarged at the time when the bees are increasing. The emigrants are always led off by the old queen, leaving either young or embryo queens to lead off after-swarms, and to furnish a mistress for the old stock, and carry on the multiplication of the species. Upon the antiquated and inhuman plan, where so great a destruction takes place by the brimstone match, breeding must, of course, be allowed to go on to its full extent to make up for such sacrifices. Our chief object under the new system' is to obtain honey free from all extraneous matter. Pure honey cannot be gathered from combs where storing and breeding are performed in the same compartment. For fuller explanations on this point, we refer to the various descriptions of our improved hives in a subsequent section of this work. There can now be scarcely two opinions as to the uselessness of the rustic plan of immolating the poor bees after they have striven through the summer so to "improve each shining hour." The ancients in Greece and Italy took the surplus honey and spared the bees, and now for every intelligent bee-keeper there are ample appliances wherewith to attain the same results. Mr. Langstroth quotes from the German the following epitaph, which, he says, "might be properly placed over every pit of brimstoned bees":-- =Here rests,= CUT OFF FROM USEFUL LABOUR, A COLONY OF INDUSTRIOUS BEES, BASELY MURDERED BY ITS UNGRATEFUL AND IGNORANT OWNER. And Thomson, the poet of "The Seasons," has recorded an eloquent poetic protest against the barbarous practice, for which, however, in his day there was no, alternative:-- "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 fix'd 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!" It will be our pleasing task, in subsequent chapters, to show "a more excellent way." SWARMING.