CHAPTER VI. 



HEREDITY IN THE BEE-GARDEN. 



We were in the great high-road of the modern bee-farm, 

 and had stopped midway down in the heart of the waxen 

 city. On every hand the hives stretched away in long trim 

 rows, and the hot June sunshine was ahve with darting 

 bees and fragrant with the smell of new-made honey. 



*' Swarming?" said the bee-master, in answer to a ques- 

 tion I had put to him. ** We never allow swarming here. 

 My bees have to work for me, and not for themselves; so 

 we have discarded that old-fashioned notion long ago." 



He brought his honey-barrow to a halt, and sat down 

 ruminatively on the handle. 



" Swarming," he went on to explain, " is the great 

 trouble in modern bee-keeping. It is a bad legacy left us 

 by the old-time skeppists. With the ancient straw hives 

 and the old benighted methods of working, it was all very 

 w^ell. When bee-burning was the custom, and all the heaviest 

 hives were foredoomed to the sulphur-pit, the best bees 

 were those that gave the earliest and the largest swarms. 

 The more stocks there wxre in the garden the more honey 

 there would be for market. Swarming was encouraged in 

 every possible way. And so, at last, the steady, stay-at- 

 home variety of honey-bee became exterminated, and only 

 the inveterate swarmers were kept to carry on the strain. 



I quoted the time-honoured maxim about a swarm in 

 May being worth a load of hay. The bee-master laughed 

 derisively. 



"To the modern bee-keeper," he said *'a swarm in May 

 is little short of a disgrace. There is no clearer sign of bad 

 beemanship nowadays than when a strong colony is allowed 

 to weaken itself by swarming on the eve of the great honey- 

 flow, just when strength and numbers are most needed. Of 

 course, in the old days, the maxim held true enough. The 

 straw skeps had room only for a certain number of bees, 

 and when they became too crowded there was nothing for 



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