THE COTTAGE AND FARM BEE KEEPER. 5 



kind ? The fanner who is content with an occasional stroll over his 

 fields, and a similar inspection over his yards and granaries, will in 

 vain expect to thrive. Can we wonder at the ill success of an igno- 

 rant or negligent bee keeper ? And yet how often is the expression 

 of surprise heard from the lips of some individual who has started an 

 apiary, that his bees have disappointed him ; when, if particular inquiries 

 were instituted into the cause of the disaster, ten to one it would be 

 found that the hives had been left unnoticed from October to May, and 

 from May to October I The management of bees, which always re- 

 quires some delicacy, and not a little dexterity of treatment, assuredly 

 demands no less attention and care than other matters of a similar nature. 

 A considerable apprenticeship is necessary in order to obtain the mastery 

 over it as a science. There is no " royal road" to successful bee-keep- 

 ing, as there is none in any thing else. In his preface to his very 

 useful book, Mr. Taylor has well styled the tyro apiarian's path, "usu- 

 ally a rough and uncertain one ;" so rough, indeed, and uncertain, 

 (chiefly owing to a lack of care and pains,) that three out of every five 

 persons, who take up this study even warmly, will be found to relin- 

 quish it with disgust at the end of a few years. Not to dwell here on 

 faults of management, there are other causes of failure, almost peculiar to 

 this country, a few of which I may briefly enumerate. While in America 

 or Australia,* it is almost incredible of how large an apiary one hive 

 may become the parent in a very few years ; in England, a similar hive 

 may stand year after year, without change, apparently strong, yet un- 

 productive in either swarms or honey, perhaps in both together. A stock, 

 at the time of purchase, may have had a three or four-year-old queen, 

 (an evil which is seldom acknowledged, and still more seldom guarded 

 against,) who dies some time in our long winter before there is a brood 

 wherewith to replace her ; the winter may be mild and the spring cold 

 and late, and no honey gathered till the end of May, whence proceeds 

 the death from starvation of many a colony of bees, (which might be 

 saved by a judicious and. timely supply of food,) or its productiveness 

 for, the current season destroyed. A rainy summer, too, may follow, 

 or a very dry one, neither of which yields much honey ; in short, a 



* In a late work on New Sonth Wales, I read the following astonishing acoount of the 

 produce of a single stock of bees : — " In the district niawarra, near Sydney, one hive has been 

 known to multiply itself to 300 ( ! ! ) in the course of three years !' 



