Country wanderings towards the end of summer, even now when the twentieth century is two decades old, still bring to light many ancient and curious things.  Within an hour of London, and side by side with the latest agricultural improvements, you can still see corn coming down to the old reaping-hook, still watch the plough-team of bullocks over the hillside, still get that unholy whiff of sulphur in the bee-gardens where the old-fashioned skeppists are “taking up” their bees.  
Burning-time came round usually towards the end of August, sooner or later according to the turn of the season.  The bee-keeper went the round of his hives, choosing out the heaviest and the lightest stocks.  The heaviest hives were taken because they contained most honey; the lightest because, being short of stores, they were unlikely to survive the winter, and had best be put to profit at once for what they were worth.  Thus a complete reversal of the of the survival of the fittest was artificially brought about by the old bee-masters.  The most vigorous strains of bees were carefully weeded out year by year, and the of the race left to those stocks which had proved themselves malingerers and half-hearts.
 
There was also another way in which this system worked wholly for the bad.  If a hive of bees reached burning-time with a charged storehouse, it was probably due to the fact that the stock had cast no that year, and had, therefore, preserved its whole force of workers for honey-getting.  Under the light of modern knowledge, any stall of bees that showed a tendency towards would be carefully set aside, and used as the mother-hive for future generations; for this habit of swarming, necessary under the old dispensation, is nothing else than a fatal drawback under the new.  The scientific bee-master of to-day, with his expanding brood-chambers and his system of supplying his hives artificially with young and queens every third year, has no manner of use for the old swarming-habit.  It serves but to break up and hopelessly to weaken his stocks just when he has got them to prime working fettle.  Although the honey-bee still clings to this ancient impulse, there is no doubt that selective will ultimately evolve a race of bees in which the swarming-fever shall have been much , if not wholly extinguished; and then the problem of cheap English honey will have been solved.  But in ancient times the bee-gardens were only from those hives wherein the swarming-fever was most .  The old bee-keepers, in all their heavy stocks to the sulphur-pit, unconsciously did their best to all non-swarming strains.
 
The bee-burning took place about sunset, or as soon as the last honey-seekers were home for the night.  Small circular pits were dug in some quiet corner hard by.  These were about six or eight inches deep, and a handful of old rags that had been dipped in melted brimstone having been put in, the bee-keeper went to fetch the first hive.  The whole fell business went through in a strange solemnity and quietude.  A knife was gently run round under the edge of the skep, to free it from its stool, and the hive carefully lifted and carried, mouth , towards the sulphur-pit, none of the bees being any the wiser.  Then the rag was ignited and the skep lowered over the pit.  An angry buzzing broke out as the reached the undermost bees in the cluster, but this quickly died down into silence.  In a minute or two every bee had perished, and the pit was ready for the next hive.
 
That this senseless and wickedly custom should have been almost universal among bee-men up to comparatively recent times is a matter for wonder; but that t............