trnm SMMRicKrf smm j&umtimi*. 



405 



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jrUXE BAY. 



The sky is all dappled with azure and white, 



The woodlands are dotted with posies, 

 The blue-hooded larkspur looks smiling and bright, 



And the buttertly dirts with the roses. 

 Aud jack-in-the-putpit is nodding his head. 



While the honey-bees cheerily hum ; 

 The oriole swings in his snug hammock bed. 



And the robin sings June day has come ! 



The hawthorns are drooping their petals around, 



The bumble-bee sighs for the clover. 

 The shy little cowslip in byways is found, 



And the king-cups are sprinkled all over. 

 The dove softly coos in the shade of the wold. 



The woodcock Is beating his drum. 

 The moccasin-dower dons her slippers of gold. 



And the cuckoo says June day has come : 



The swallows have flown to the chimneys tall, 



The thrush lo his tryst is winging, 

 The Eglantine over the old stone wall 



Her censers of incense is swinging ; 

 And down in the meadow, amid the green grass. 



The crickets so lazily hum ; 

 The daisies nod this way and that, as you pass. 



And the south-wind says June day has come ' 



—Good Housekeeping. 



AUSTRALIA. 



Description of an Antipodean 

 Bee-Establisliment. 



The Queenslander, published at Bris- 

 bane, Australia, has an article describ- 

 iug the ^stival Apiary, property of 

 Mr. iEneas Walker, of Redland, which 

 may interest American bee-keepers, 

 and we make an extract below, repro- 

 ducing in smaller size the large dia- 

 gram accompanying it : 



In all there are 180 colonies, but a 

 considerable number of these are 

 nuclei — that is, small colonies of two 

 or three frames of youug bees and 

 larvse taken from a strong colony and 

 allotted a pure Italian queen ; the sale 

 of such nuclei and queens is a speci- 

 ality. Mr. Walker goes in for more 

 than the production of honey. 



Now the trouble of the queen-rearer 

 is, that, when there are many hives in 

 the apiary, the virgin queen, that, on 

 the third or fourth day of her e.xis- 

 tence flies abroad on her bridal tour, 

 maj- not sufliciently note which hive 

 she has left, and, upon return, ma}' 

 enter the wrong one, with the certain 

 consequence of being stung to death. 

 Ml'. Walker's obsen'ations showed him 

 that it is the angle that the face of the 

 hive presents, that is the chief point 

 impressed upon the bee when marking 

 which is its own home. " You may," 

 he told me, " move a colony a few feet 

 to either side, or backwards or for- 

 wards, and the outflying bees will not 

 be puzzled to recognize their home ; 

 but only turn the face of the hive a 

 quarter turn round, say from facing 

 north, to northeast, then the out-flying 

 bees will be for a time completely non- 

 plussed." He, therefore, designed his 



apiary on such a plan that not one hive 

 fronts exactly the same point of the 

 compass as another. 



It will be seen that a central start is 

 made with an octagon honey-house. 

 Then surrounding this are eight trape- 

 zoidal flower-beds, raised one foot 

 above the level of the walks that 

 divide them and that surrounding 

 them. These eight central divisions 

 Mr. Walker distinguishes by marking 

 the first eight letters of the Hebrew 

 alphabet on them, and each C(mtains 

 one strong colony and four queen- 

 rearing nuclei. A walk surrounds this 

 inner circle — this nurser}' of royaltj* — 

 and then there is a second circle of 

 eight larger subdivisions. In each of 

 these, ten hives are placed, and a 



FESTIVAL Apiary.— Honey-house to outer edge of 

 inner circle of liiveH. 10 feet ; thence to outer edge 

 of middle circle. 15 feet ; thence to outer edge of 

 the outside circle, 25 feet. 



Study of the plan will show that no 

 two of these face exactly the same 

 point of the compass. 



The entrance to the hive is in every 

 case inwards towards the flower-bed, 

 thus allowing all manipulations to be 

 carried on from behind the hive, and 

 yet the operator not to be standing in 

 front of an adjoining hive, for nothing 

 irritates bees more than a person mov- 

 ing about in front of their hives. This 

 second series of subdivisions is distin- 

 guished bj- letters of the Roman al]>ha- 

 bet, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and they 

 represent 80 colonies of bees. A walk 

 surrounds these. 



An outer circle of 16 subdivisions, 

 each containing 10 hives, is marked on 

 the plan, but Mr. Walker has not yet 

 occupied those allotments. The total 

 number of tenements that this bee- 

 village will contain is, therefore, 280 ; 

 and this is quite enough for any one 

 locality, for the range a bee can fly 

 over, seldom exceeds three miles, and 

 honey often gets very scarce on such a 



limited area. When bees are impelled 

 to fly further to search for honey, the 

 losses that occur on the journey are 

 very great. It is better, therefore, for 

 a bee-keeper to divide his apiaries, 

 than to have too many colonies at one 

 place. 



Each of Mr. Walker's hives is placed 

 on a neatly-cemented floor, raised 2 

 inches above the ground. This floor 

 is made to do duty as bottom-ljoard, 

 and the entrance V is shaped in it just 

 as in the bottom-board of the Lang- 

 stroth. There are advantages in this 

 cementing, for no weeds grow, it is 

 damp proof, clean, and does not rot, 

 neither can white ants eat it. 



The evening that I visited iEstival, 

 Mr. Walker had just mastered one of 

 those extraordinary circumstances 

 which now and again surprise the bee- 

 keeper. The day had been close and 

 hot, especially the early morning ; it 

 was the first day after the first rains. 

 Whether this close heat had anything 

 to do with what occurred, I do not 

 know, but I mention it as possible. 

 However, a swarming fever spread 

 through the apiary, and Mr. Walker, 

 as one hive after another poured out 

 its living stream, thought the whole 

 apiary was in the throes of revolution. 

 Finally they settled in one gigantic 

 mass. 



Aided only by Mrs. Walker, the 

 owner of /Estival subdivided this mass 

 until he had picked out no less than 24 

 queens ; then, choosing the five best, he 

 allotted the commoners among them. 



Mr. Walker is one of those bee-keep- 

 ers who disdain gloves and a veil, but 

 he did not go and have his portrait 

 taken that night. 



" Next morning," he writes me. "I 

 found one other queen at the same 

 place, with a cluster of about a dozen 

 bees around her ; therefore, there must 

 have been no less than 25 swarms that 

 issued the day you visited me. Of 

 course a great number of the bees 

 that came out went back to their old 

 hives when they missed their queens, 

 which I had captured. I expected a 

 frightful slaughter among the mixed 

 hives the next morning, but there was 

 very little indeed — chiefly caused, I 

 believe, by the great care I took that 

 none of the lots had two queens with 

 them to start the fighting. 



" I had a similar experience last 

 year with 7 swarms (my stock then 

 being between 50 and 60), and in put- 

 ting them up I happened to leave two 

 queens in one lot. The next morning 

 it was quite a case of the ' Kilkenny 

 cats,' as very little more than the two 

 tails were left, in the shape of one 

 queen with a very small company of 

 bees — more than four times the num- 

 ber of bees in the hive being piled up 

 dead in front ; they must have been 

 very busy all night." 



