36 



STATE QUEEN REARING APIARY. 



During the first three years of my 

 tour among our beekeepers in nearly all 

 the principal beekeeping centres of the 

 Dominion, examining thousands of col- 

 onies of bees in many hundreds of apiar- 

 ies, and giving attention to the method 

 of management among the majority, I 

 could oome to no other conclusion than 

 that our bees were deteriorating. Ex- 

 cepting in very few cases no system of 

 (Select queen rearing was carried out; the 

 bees were allowed to breed their own in- 

 discriminately, good, bad and indifferent, 

 on the swarming system. Even where 

 some attempt had been made to improve 

 the bees by importing and introducing 

 queens from America and elsewhere as 

 breeding stock, it seemed to me the good 

 results that might have followed this 

 system, if thoughtfully carried out, were 

 nullified in most instances by the absence 

 of a little reflection. The majority of 

 importers were obsessed with the idea 

 that by introducing "fresh blood," that 

 is, imported queens from different breed- 

 ers, every second season or so ( some went 

 so far as to import them every season 

 for a while ) , their bees would rapidly im- 

 prove. When the suggestion was made 

 that they would do better by introducing 

 two or three queens from a reliable 

 breeder, as breeding stock, then after re- 

 queening their apiaries from this stock, 

 to select the best colonies to breed from 

 each season, instead of introducing fresh 

 and unknown blood into their apiaries 

 so often, it was in most cases scouted. 

 But the matter is now better understood, 

 and I am quite satisfied that in conse- 

 quence our bees, taken generally, have 

 much improved during the last few years. 



My suggestion to the Department in 

 1908 to establish a queen-rearing apiary 

 at the Waerenga Experimental Farm, 

 for the purpose of working up a superior 

 strain of queens for distribution, was ap- 

 proved, and in September, 1908, it was 

 started with 32 colonies. I chose Waer- 

 enga because it was in a manner isolated, 

 few bees vvere kept in the district, and 

 the situation was a long distance from 

 the bush and wild bees. After the first 

 season we had entirely cleared the dis- 

 trict of disease (foul brood), and no sign 

 of it had been seen up to the time the 

 apiary was dismantled — five years after. 



DISMANTLING THE WAERENGA 

 APIARY. 



It was not long after the apiary had 

 been established before ample proof was 

 forthcoming of the value of select queen 

 breeding in the production of an im- 

 proved strain of bees. Letters testifying 

 to the good qualities of the queens ob- 

 tained from the apiary were voluntarily 

 sent to the Department; unfortunately, 

 however, some misunderstanding got 

 about concerning the working of the 

 apiary (which I need not now go into) 

 that militated against its usefulness, and 

 at the end of the fifth year the Depart- 

 ment decided to close it down. 



What followed, however, was gratify- 

 ing to botJr the Department and myself, 

 for just as the above decision had been 

 arrived at, it was discovered by the bee- 

 keepers themselves that there had never 

 been the slightest foundation for the mis- 

 understanding, and the Department was 

 asked to retain the apiary. The Depart- 

 ment would have done so, but unfortun- 

 ately the request came too late, as the 

 bees and plant were sold. Two deputa- 

 tions have since waited on the Minister 

 of Agriculture asking for a State queen- 

 rearing apiary to be re-established, and 

 I am practically certain that the request 

 would have been complied with had it 

 not been that every penny the Govern- 

 ment could spare was required for war 

 purposes. I urgently suggest that as 

 soon as an opportunity occurs our Na- 

 tional Beekeepers' Association should 

 press upon the Department the import- 

 ance of re-establishing the queen-rearing 

 apiary. 



THE NATIONAL BEEKEEPERS' ASSO- 

 CIATION OF NEW ZEALAND. 

 The establishment of the above insti- 

 tution in September, 1910, was a great 

 step forward in the onward progress of 

 commercial beekeeping in this country, 

 and laid the foundation for the big 

 strides that have been made since. The 

 credit for its initiation, under a slightly 

 different name, is due to the Canterbury 

 Beekeepere' Association, which brought 

 about a conference of beekeepers at Wel- 

 lington in the above month. Co-opera- 

 tion between all our beekeepers in mat- 

 tei's that concerned the general welfare 

 of our industry was the dominant note 

 struck at the first conference, and much 

 headway has been, made in this direction 

 during the intervening years. 



