BEE-KEEPING. 453 



large scale. Let us see what is doing in other countries in this branch of 

 rural economy, especially in Germany, Poland, and Russia. 



1353. Poland has always been a great honey-producing country; the provinces 

 of Podolia, the Ukraine, and Volhynia, probably surpass all others in the 

 management and products of their apiaries. Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and 

 Germany at large, where the winters are much more severe than with us, 

 produce large stores of honey, and make it an article of considerable com- 

 merce ; but Poland is, par excellence, the country of hone3^ There cottages 

 are found with small portions of land attached, on which may be seen as 

 many as fifty hives, while there are farmers and landed proprietors who pos- 

 sess from 100 to 10,000 hives : in fact, it forms an important source of income, 

 collecting, as some of them do, 200 barrels of fine honey, of 500 lbs. weight 

 each, besides wax ! Why should the English husbandman be so far behind 

 the people of other countries in this, while he is so far in advance in other 

 productions of the soil ? 



1354. The forests of Poland abound in oak and pine, and bee-keepers employ 

 no other material in the consti-uction of their hives than the latter. They use 

 boards an inch and a half thick, thoroughly seasoned, and they join them 

 together with wooden nails. The hives are from three feet six inches to five 

 feet high ; the shape is that of a truncated cone, eight inches in diameter at 

 the top and twenty inches at the base, increasing at the bottom two inches 

 for every half-foot beyond the minimum three feet and a half The top of 

 the hive is a round lid let in about an inch deep, with a projecting 

 coping, and a handle to raise it when it is necessary to take it off. The upper 

 part of the hive is firmly and closely corded round with a rope the thickness 

 of the finger, which renders it impervious to rain or the weather. A trian- 

 gular opening, about six inches from the bottom, admits the bees, and a door 

 in the back of the hive, eighteen inches long, permits the keeper to inspect 

 the progress of the hive and the removal of honey. The roof of the hive is 

 covered with a clay pan of large size, but an inch smaller than the lid in 

 diameter, placed in such a manner that it can be raised when required. 



1355. Almost every farm throughout Poland has an orchard sheltered from 

 the north winds by the farm buildings ; a portion of this is always employed 

 as a bee-garden. In other places, where the landed proprietors possess bee- 

 gardens, they choose low dry positions in valleys, at the foot of hills, on 

 the borders of forests surrounding the apiary, with a wooden fence six feet 

 high, and a ditch behind it to carry off water. Within this inclosure, the 

 hives, as we have described them, are placed. 



1356. The turf is pared off for two feet round the hive, and the whole surface 

 strewn with clean sand. On this plan the hives are placed ; the first row 

 five feet apart ; the second row occupies the intermediate space in the rear 

 of the first ; the third row is in a line with the first ; and so on throughout the 

 garden, the whole space being thus filled up with hives five feet apart each way. 

 They are placed, if possible, on the south-east slopes, so that the first dawn 

 of the morning sun falls on the entrance to the hive, thus rousing the workers 



