'1 AUSTRALIAN BEE LORE AND BEE CULTURE- 



ment: — "Hive of bees for sale by Mr. Parr. Bees imported by 

 Captain Wallace (or Willis)." In a number of the old Sydney 

 Gazette, dated Friday, 1st November, 1822, there appears this 

 paragraph: — "We congratulate our readers 1 upon the complete 

 establishment of that most valuable insect, the bee, in this country. 

 During the last three weeks three swarms of bees have been 

 produced from two hives, the property of D. Wentworth, Esq., 

 purchased by him from Captain Wallace, of the 'Isabella,' at his 

 estate, Homebush, near Parramatta." 



In the Sydney Morning Herald, of 10th August, 1863, it 

 stated that at a meeting of the Acclimatisation Society of New 

 South Wales, bees were first brought to this country by Captain 

 Braidwood Wilson, from Hobart Town, in 1831. This was contra- 

 dicted in a later issue of the same paper in these words: — "Bees 

 were brought from England to Sydney in the year 1824, in the 

 ship 'Phoenix,' which sailed from Portsmouth in March of that 

 year." This, too, is evidently a mistake, or perhaps another 

 importation, as is evident from the fact that bees were advertised 

 for sale in 1822, which has already been referred to. In 1840, 

 a settler at Jervis Bay purchased two colonies of bees, for which 

 he paid £4, and engaged two aboriginals to carry the hives on 

 their heads a distance of 40 miles. These were the black or 

 English bees, sometimes termed the German bee. For most 

 of these dates and extracts I am indebted to Mr. S. M. Mowle, 

 Usher of the Black Bod, of the Legislative Council, who married 

 the only daughter of the late Captain Braidwood Wilson, R.N. 



From the foregoing small beginnings the descendants of these 

 bees soon spread themselves fairly well over New South Wales. 

 Of course, these bees were kept in hives or boxes of any or every 

 shape or style. The bar-frame hive was then unknown. Under 

 the old system anyone could have bees who had the courage to rob 

 them. The stray or escaped swarms of bees took to the bush. The 

 aboriginals soon learned from their white brothers how to subdue 

 bees by means of smoke, and with tomahawk and firestick, aided 

 by strong vines, would ascend the loftiest and smoothest of trees 

 to obtain the "white-fellow's sugar bag." The aboriginals have 

 no word in their own language for the introduced bee. The 

 flavour of the honey from the little native bee was no stranger 

 to them, but they were not long in discovering that both in 

 quality and quantity "white- fellow's sugar-bag" was far superior. 

 In the early seventies, so plentiful had bees become in the 



