92 BEES FOB PLEASUEB AND PEOI'IT. 



left thus for several days, although it is best to place the 

 young queen in her nucleus as soon after she is hatched as 

 possible. 



How to make and use a Natural Incubator. 



In very favourable climates, when artificial incubators are 

 not obtainable, a natural incubator, depending for its tem- 

 perature on the heat from a strong hive of bees, may often 

 be used successfully. This is simply made of a shallow 

 doubling box, 6 inches deep, with a sheet of fine wire gauze 

 or perforated zinc nailed over the bottom. This is placed 

 over the body box of a very strong hive, from which the 

 quilts, all except one very thin one of wool or calico, have 

 been removed. The sections of sealed brood and a thermo- 

 meter are then put in it, and covered up very warmly with 

 many thicknesses of flannel. If the doubling box has double 

 walls on all sides, with an intervening space of 1 g to 2 inches 

 between the inner and outer walls filled with cork dust or saw- 

 dust, the plan is all the more likely to succeed. 



Bee-keeping in Canada, Australasia, and South Africa. 



In Canada and Australasia bees are generally kept on 

 very up-to-date systems, but in almost every part of South 

 Africa the most primitive and destructive systems of bee- 

 keeping obtain. This is the more regrettable when it is 

 considered that of all our colonies South Africa is the richest 

 naturally from a honey-producing point of view, in this re- 

 spect, indeed, probably rivalling California. Apart altogether 

 from the wretched methods of keeping the bees, the way in 

 which the honey is marketed is wretched beyond words, it 

 being no uncommon thing to see honey that is staged for 

 competition at up-country agricultural shows merely dumped 

 into old disused parafiin tins, and in this state considered not 

 only by the producer good enough for exhibition, but by the 

 judges for prize-taking. 



In a country where the Government is ready to give such 

 generous assistance to co-operation in agriculture as it is in 

 Cape Colony, it seems every pity that the farmers in the 

 various districts do not unite for this purpose, and, by learning 

 and practising up-to-date methods of bee-keeping, not only 



