BEE CULTURE PROFITS SUCCESSFUL YEAR. 313 



to the extent recommended by our sanguine apia- 

 rians, the honey-bee would, in no great length of time, 

 become as great and dangerous a nuisance as the wasp. 



To keep bees in the common mode of our own 

 country, and I suppose of all others, is an occupa- 

 tion of little trouble, but attended with considerable 

 gain. To manage the apiarian husbandry with effect, 

 is a work not of expensive outlay, nor which requires 

 much attention and vigilance, except at the season of 

 swarming. Our country labourers, who have wives 

 and children to assist in this business, are the part of 

 our population most probable to be benefited by it. 

 It should be encouraged among them by their em- 

 ployers, and a market always found in the parish for 

 their honey and wax. This, however, was, until of 

 late, in few parts defective. Dr. Mavor, in his ac- 

 count of Berkshire some years since, relates that a 

 poor cottager cleared, in one season, TWENTY-SEVEN 

 POUNDS by his bees : such a prize, I apprehend, has 

 been seldom drawn in that lottery ; but a poor family, 

 with care, might almost depend on saving the amount 

 of their rent, perhaps of their shoe-leather into the 

 bargain. Rare instances have happened, in our 

 western counties, of a hive producing forty pounds of 

 honey in the season : twenty, down to twelve or 

 fourteen pounds, are far more in course. But superior 

 culture and attention will produce greater quantity of 

 honey and wax. Of the latter, one pound and a half 

 per hive is the usual product. 



In the year 1822, remarkable for early honey ga- 

 thering, several Oxfordshire apiarians had stocks, 

 the gross weight of which was sixty to sixty-seven 



p 



