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AUSTRALIA. 



The bee-keepers of Australia are in 

 need of a honey-exchange as much as 

 those of other countries. Mr. Col- 

 bourne says in February Review: 

 "With but one-fourth of a crop of 

 honey the Sidney commission houses 

 are glutted with honey, yet in many 

 of the country towns honey is scarce 

 and selling from three and one-half d 

 to five d per pound. The bee-keepers 

 of some towns are shipping their honey 

 to Sidney commission houses, yet there 

 is a good demand for honey in their 

 own towns at four d per pound. When 

 will this state of things cease to ex- 

 ist?" It is the opinion of the Gleaner 

 that the bee-keepers of the world ought 

 to do business on business principles. 



Mr. Colbourne also says in the same 

 number that he does not wish to "make 

 a lot of new bee-keepers, but to make 

 those better already embarked in the 

 business." 



queen lays the egg is, she crawls over 

 the comb with her head swaying from 

 one side to the other apparently look- 

 ing for empty cells and simply laying 

 the eggs on top of the comb as she 

 comes to the cells requiring eggs. She 

 just stops for a moment and you can 

 see an egg protrude, a worker taking 

 it with her front legs then diving down 

 into a cell in which it may be found 

 securely fastened." The Gleaner has 

 seen queens depositing eggs in combs 

 many times but his observations do 

 not coincide with the above. 



FRANCE. 



The minister of war has concluded to 

 open a course of lectures on apicultural 

 subjects for the benefit of the sol- 

 diers. 



A society is to be established among 

 the bee-keepers of France. Its object 

 is the mutual protection of its mem- 

 bers. 



Mr. Sidwell proclaims a new discov- 

 ery as regards the laying of eggs by 

 the aueen, he says in substance: In 

 observing a very large queen deposit- 

 ing eggs in worker-cells I concluded, 

 from the distance she backed down in 

 the cell that she never got the ex- 

 treme part of her body near the bottom 

 of the cell. To see what was going on 

 I blocked a cell with my pen-knife as 

 soon as the queen withdrew her body 

 from the cell to prevent the workers 

 from poking their noses in. The egg 

 was at the -bottom of the cell laying 

 on its side and not in the center. It 

 was not long before a worker entered 

 the cell and on looking afterward the 

 egg was on its end in the center of the 

 cell. As the queen crawled over the 

 comb there were always two or three 

 workers following her. As soon as 

 one poked into a cell another took up 

 the running. The general way the 



SWITZERLAND. 



Young bees do not begin active work 

 till four days old. They pay no at- 

 tention to a queen until then. Only 

 a portion of the young bees act as 

 nurses. A part of the field bees act as 

 nurses. These assertions are made by 

 Kramer in Schweiz. B. Z. 



It has been stated in Bienenvater, 

 that the honeys gathered from Aconi- 

 tum napellus, Acelia pontica, and Rho- 

 dodendrum ponticum have poisonous 

 properties and that at one instance two 

 shepherds in the Alps died from eating 

 such honey. 



It is not fully settled whether or not 

 the larval food given to workers dif- 

 fers from that given to drones and 

 queens, so it is said editorially by 

 Deutsche 111. B. Z. It is also said that 

 Schoenfeld's assertion that larval food 

 being a fully digested food and identi- 



