2l8 NEW ZEALAND GARDENING. 



them irritable and hard to be managed. With the strides 

 bee-culture is making there is a growing desire to house all 

 hives, as it lessens labour and preserves them longer than 

 when kept in the open air. People commencing with small 

 capital must adopt the outdoor system. They cannot indulge 

 in dear hives, much less costly houses, until such times as 

 the sales of honey and bees will furnish needful capital for 

 this necessary outlay. In erecting any form of bee-house we 

 should have good room at the back of all hives to feed, 

 examine and overhaul the apiary. It should be provided 

 with a hinged shutter to allow bees to escape by. The room 

 thus left will hold the necessary appliances when not in use. 



Moving Hives. No branch of bee culture is fraught 

 with so many mishaps as moving bees unwisely. Bees fly 

 for their stores a mile or two, and in times of scarcity three 

 miles may be reckoned as within the limits of their pasturage. 

 After a bee has fixed his locality, he starts out in the morning 

 and never stops to take the points. If you have moved his 

 hive about a yard or so it makes no difference, as he'll soon 

 find it out ; but if you have moved it a mile, half a mile, or 

 quarter-mile, all of a sudden, he will never find it out, as he 

 invariably returns for his old locality. On reaching there, 

 and finding his hive gone, he is lost and helpless, and will 

 never find it again. People imagine that they can move 

 their hives anywhere and everywhere, and new hands move 

 their hives together at the approach of Winter that they may 

 better protect them. All goes very well until we have a fine r 

 warm day. Then the bees start out for a fly, and return to 

 their home just as they had been doing all the Summer. 

 They fly about, get into the wrong hives, get stung, the 

 whole apiary becomes mixed up, a general melee ensues, 

 which ends in almost total destruction. Moving hives during 

 the working season will cause a loss of more or less bees as 

 well as honey. Natural swarms will remain where put up, 

 as they depend very much on the surrounding objects in 

 taking their points. Several hives can be moved successfully 

 if we maintain their position in the apiary, and carefully 

 preserve their respective positions with reference to each 

 other. Where the new position is outside the radius of flight 

 that is, about two miles, they can be moved at any time. 



