8 WHERE TO KEEP BEES. 



purpose indicated in the foregoing, he will find the produc- 

 tion of honey by the modern system of bee-keeping 

 sufficiently profitable to warrant his expending a small sum 

 on hives and other appliances necessary to produce honey 

 in the best and most saleable form, and giving a little time 

 in order to learn how to use them to the best advantage. 



Many persons suppose that to keep bees, and get a return 

 of honey, it is necessary to have a large garden in the coun- 

 try ; but this is a mistake. Bees will, of course, ,do better 

 in a district where they are in the midst of fruit blossoms in 

 May, and white clover in June and July, than in a city 

 where they have to fly a long distance to reach the open 

 fields, but bees can be kept with profit even under the un- 

 favourable circumstances just mentioned. At one of the 

 I.yondon bee shows some years ago, a first prize for honey 

 was awarded to a bee-keeper whose apiary was at the rear 

 of a house in the Strand, one of the busiest thoroughfares in 

 London ; and at the present time bees are successfully kept 

 on a house close to Charing Cross Railway Station, almost 

 in the centre of London. During the season of 1887, bees 

 have been kept within a stone's throw of the Four Courts, 

 in Dublin, and have given a very good retup, all things 

 considered. Bees do very well indeed in the suburbs of a 

 large city, the succession of flowers in the gardens of the 

 villas affording a constant supply of honey from early spring 

 until autumn. Bees can be kept as profitably by the owner 

 of ten yards of back garden as by him who owns one hun- 

 dred thousand acres, so that almost every person except 

 those who are injuriously affected by the sting, of a bee, can 

 keep bees with profit and pleasure to himself. 



Of late years a very large trade has sprung up in the 

 importation of bees from, amongst other places, Syria, Italy, 

 Cyprus, and Carniola, in Hungary, and these, by crossing 

 widi the native black, have improved their working qualities 

 very much, although it must be confessed that the hybrids 

 are much more irritable than the native. This is the more 

 curious as some of the foreign varieties, notably the Italians, 

 or LigUrians, and Carniolans, are very gentle in a state of; 

 purity, and can be handled with almost as much impunity 

 as flies. 



