BEE-KEEPING. 33 



BEE-KEEPING, 



" As each for the good of the whole is bent, 

 And stores up his treasures for all, 

 We hope for an evening, with hearts content, 

 For the winter of life without lament. 

 That summer is gone with its hours misspent. 

 And the harvest is past recall ! " — Dr. Aikin. 



A Traveller who has much acquaintance with Conti- 

 nental rural life, cannot fail to be impressed, when 

 journeying in England, with the small number of Bee- 

 hives he sees scattered about, amongst either the cottages 

 of tlie labouring classes, or the farms and courts of the 

 gentry, compared with what he sees abroad; and when, 

 perchance, his eye alights on a hive or two, he will nine 

 times out of ten find only the ancient straw skep in 

 use, and that probably badly made. The cottager, al- 

 though now used to the innovation of steam ploughs 

 and thrashing machines, has been quite content to jog 

 on with his Bees in the same manner that his Saxon 

 forefathers did a thousand years ago. But what a life, 

 and what a death for the poor Bees ! — the hives are pro- 

 bably reeking with moisture, dirty and decayed, and 

 when the industrious labourers have, in spite of all such 

 disadvantages and neglect, filled them with Nature's lus- 

 cious gifts, the fate in store for them is suffocation, with 

 the horrible fumes of brimstone; and this procedure is 

 not practised by the poor and ignorant only, but in many 

 cases adopted by the educated and opulent if, by chance, 

 they own a few Bees. 



"Ah! see where, robbed and murdered in that pit, 

 Lies the stiU-heaving hive, at evening snatched. 

 Beneath the cloud of guUt-concealing night. 

 And fixed o'er sulphur while not dreaming ill, 

 D 



