John Johnson, age 11, of Revelstoke, British Columbia, Canada, for his question:

How can honey be taken from a hive?

The bees gather stores of honey to supply the members of their hive. They do not intend to have it stolen and the fuzzy little insects fight hard to defend it. A person who boldly grabs without sensible protection will get stung again and again, maybe fatally. But people are smarter than bees and experts have ways of removing the honeycombs in perfect, or almost perfect, safety. The important rule of the game is to keep the bees calm. When aroused, they mount mass attacks against the enemy with all their fiery fury and even very good protection may be penetrated.

An expert beekeeper approaches the hive slowly and every move he makes is smooth and gentle. Bees are disturbed by fast, noisy activity. The expert wears a head and face screen of wire or cloth netting and ties his clothing tightly around the wrists and ankles. Often he wears gloves, but they may tend to make his hands clumsy    and any clumsy motion is risky. A real expert can remove the honey combs he needs with his bare hands and the bees do not notice him. Other people are less skillful. They may lull the bees with smoke or a wisp of some drowsy gas. Real experts rate this trick as cheating. They also rate as robbers those who leave no honey combs for the bees themselves.