The reason I grumbled about this was that I believe that the most
common way to calm bees so that honey can be harvested even from
domesticated hives is to introduce smoke into the hive. This makes
most of the bees quiescent rather than killing them, but inevitably
kills some of them. Mostly those who were near the end of their
lifespan. But it's the only way to keep the entire hive from swarming
on and stinging the beekeeper until either all the bees die from
loosing their stings or the keeper dies from a toxic reaction,
neither of which would be a particularly desirable turn of events.