190 EEV. II. K. PEEL — BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 



on the combs, and their rehitive approaches to maturity, -will he 

 in itself the best guide as to the right time for conducting his 

 operations. If the artificial swaruiing took place a short time 

 before the natural swarming would have taken place, one of these 

 queens will soon be hatched out. The other cells can then be 

 preserved for the use of other hives which it may be desirable to 

 swarm a little before the natural time. 



But now another consideration presents itself. The honey season 

 in England and countries in the same latitude is very short (barely 

 four months of the year, unless the bees can feed upon heather), 

 and every day saved from inactivity and inaction is of great im- 

 portance to the bee-keeper. After a young queen is hatchefl, some 

 seven or eight days usually elapse before she goes forth on her 

 wedding tour, and after that she is from a w^eek to a fortnight 

 before she begins laying the eggs, which, to produce worker-bees, 

 take 21 days to hatch out. The number of bees will have decreased 

 very much before any of the brood of the young queen makes its 

 appearance. The skilful bee-master will therefore raise queens for 

 himself, by a practical application of his knowledge that bees, 

 under certain circumstances, will convert common eggs into queens, 

 and will always have a queen ready, yes, and even a fertilised 

 queen, to place in the old hive from which the artificial swarm 

 has been taken, so that the work of egg-laying may begin at once 

 and no time be unnecessarily wasted. The new queen must of 

 course be imprisoned upon the combs in a queen-cage for 48^ hours, 

 or the bees may not accept her. 



You will now understand how a knowdedge of the nature and 

 habits of bees influences their treatment and management. In a 

 most admirable speech delivered by Prince Leopold at the Eirkbeck 

 Institute on Tuesday, February 25th, he endeavoured to impress 

 upon his hearers that unskilled toil has no chance against know- 

 ledge. What chance, as regards bee-keeping, I might ask, has the 

 English cottager with his straw skeps, his ignorance and prejudice, 

 against the German peasant, who has been taught these principles 

 of bee science from his youth up, in his national school, which no 

 master is allowed to conduct without a certificate of proficiency in 

 this respect? The bee to the German is what the pig is to the 

 Irishman, he is the " gintleman as pays the rint," and so might 

 the bee be to the English cottager, if its culture were only founded 

 on a scientific basis. 



There are two more points to which I have to call your attention, 

 if I am not exhausting your patience. The first is the formation 

 of the comb, in the cells of which the brood is hatched and the 

 honey and pollen is stored up ; and the second, the efi^ect which 

 the gathering of the pollen by the bee has upon the fertilisation of 

 plants and flowers. 



I spoke of the humble-bee as approaching very nearly to the 

 ways of the honey-bee, but differing entirely in the formation of 

 its nest, which is made in the ground and composed of a number 

 of little cells heaped together in groups, without any attempt at 



