Winter Work on the Bee-Farm. 



He opened the door of a small side-room. From ceiling' 

 to floor the walls were covered with deep racks loaded with 

 frames of empty comb, all ready for next season. Taking 

 down a couple of the frames, he brought them out into the 

 light. 



" These will explain to you what I mean," said he. 

 " This first one is a natural-built comb, made without the 

 milled foundation. The centre and upper part, you see, is 

 covered on both sides with the small cells of the worker- 

 brood. But all the rest of the frame is filled with larger 

 cells, and in these only drones are bred. Bees, if left to 

 themselves, will always rear a great many more drones 

 than are needed; and as the drones gather no stores but 

 only consume them in large quantities, a superabundance 

 of the male-bees in a hive must mean a diminished honey- 

 yield. But the use of foundation has changed all that. 

 Now look at this other frame. By filling all brood-frames 

 with worker-foundation, as has been done here, we compel 

 the bees to make only small cells, in which the rearing of 

 drones is almost impossible; and so we keep the whole 

 brood-space in the hive avaflable for the generation of the 

 working bee alone." 



"But," I asked him, " are not drones absolutely neces- 

 sary in a hive? The population cannot increase without 

 the male bees. ' ' 



" Good drones are just as important in a bee-garden as 

 high-mettled, prolific queens," he said ; " and drone-breed- 

 ing on a small scale must form part of the work on every 

 modern bee-farm of any size. But my own practice is to 

 confine the drones to two or three hives only. These are 

 stationed in different parts of the farm. They are always 

 selected stocks of the finest and most vigorous strain, and 

 in them I encourage drone-breeding in every possible way. 

 But the male bees in all honey-producing hives are limited 

 to a few hundreds at most. ' ' 



Coming out into the darkness from the brilliantly- 

 lighted building, we had gone some way on our home- 

 ward road through the crowded bee-farm before we marked 

 the change that had come over the sky. Heavy vaporous 

 clouds were slowly driving up from the west and blotting 

 the stars out one by one. All their frosty sparkle was 



63 



