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GENERAL HONEY HARVEST.

rent, and ultimately more profitable to the owner, than the almost universally practised mode by suffocation, which is too well known to need description. The latter system may yield a greater return in proportion to the hives operated upon,—but in the former, there is a much greater number of hives available. For example: Suppose two apiaries, each containing five stock-hives at the end of July, exclusive of as many swarms recently thrown. The owner of the one, practising the depriving system, takes from each of his stocks ten ℔s. of honey, making an amount of fifty ℔s. as his honey-harvest. The owner of the other, an abettor of suffocation, proceeds in September to smoke his five old hives, and receives from each twenty-five ℔s. of honey, making an amount of 125 ℔s. as his honey-harvest, between two and three times the quantity of the other. In the following year, the Depriver has his five old stock-hives, and the five swarms now become stocks also; from the whole ten he now takes 100 ℔s. of honey, while at the same time his apiary is augmented by the addition of ten new swarms, making twenty for the following year; while his rival possesses only his former number of five yielding 125 ℔s. In the next year, that is, two years from the commencement of the comparative trial, the Depriver has twenty stock-hives yielding 200 ℔s.,—and so on by a geometrical ratio,—while the other remains at his original 125 ℔s. This calculation is made on the supposition that each owner takes but one swarm from each stock, and without making any allowance for losses and failures