Bees not Lazy. 203 



and stricken, only too like many other topers who are 

 apt to sing, "We won't go home till morning," and, 

 alas ! only too often don't go home even then. 



With regard to the laziness of the bee, it has to be 

 said that in certain circumstances it may chance that 

 the bees are in too favourable a position, have too 

 much of what they want quite close at hand, to keep 

 them up to the mark for activity and industry, and, 

 like human beings, get corrupt and lazy. But facts 

 attest that the bee will work very hard. It is on 

 record that a famous bee-master kept a line of hives 

 on the roof of his place in the Strand ; that the bees, 

 not content with what they could procure in the Temple 

 gardens and other gardens near at hand, travelled at 

 certain seasons miles daily to get at the heath-bells, 

 for the flavour of heath was found in the honey 

 gathered from the hives on the top of the house in 

 the Strand ; and, besides, the bees were watched, and 

 there could be no doubt about it. Were the bees so 

 lazy as has been asserted, it is hardly possible that the 

 keeping of bees would be so profitable as it is. 



The old straw or thatch hives, such as we have put 

 for initial, were very picturesque and all that, but 

 now-a-days no bee-master would be content with them. 

 He must have a hive the top of which is removable. 

 It is not necessary that great expense should be gone 

 into to procure this improved form of hive, which 

 enables the bee-master to remove honey from the 

 " skep " at certain times, since Mr. Hunter, the well- 

 known writer on bees, has given directions of such 

 simple character that any one can follow how to frame 

 very cheaply, out of stray boards and odds and ends 

 of wood, a hive of the most improved pattern ; and his 

 pamphlet can be had, I think, for a penny. 



