WINTERING BEKS. 245 



both domestic and climatic, that a swarm issued forth at that 

 usually unfavourable season. At other times I have known the 

 floral season so backward that swarming has been delayed till well 

 on to midsummer. In the Old Country I once knew a swarm of 

 bees found hanging on a gate-post when the ground was white with 

 snow ; they were starved out. 



New South Wales, with climatic districts verging from the 

 torrid zone on the one side, to the frigid, eternal snows on the 

 other — what different adaptations have to be sought and to be found 

 so as to overcome the various necessities and requirements of bees 

 under these circumstances. Cold and hard frosty nights compell- 

 ing the bees to seek the warmest parts of the hive, followed by a 

 day when the sun shines out with almost summer heat, thus tempt- 

 ing the bees out, not only to bask in the sunlight, which is always 

 a health-giving exercise, but if stores be short tempting them far 

 afield in search of food, when the sudden cold, as the sun drops 

 westward, causes the death of many of the valuable little toilers. 

 Taking this into account, it will be impossible for me to give such 

 an exhaustive article as I should like on this important phase in bee 

 management ; therefore each district must glean for itself that 

 which is most suited to its wants. Experience and common-sense 

 are the two most important factors to be used herewith. 



What are the essentials most to be observed in prolonging 

 health and life under adverse climatic changes ? It matters not 

 -whether it be in members of the vegetable or the animal kingdom. 

 Our endemic plants are not all equally proof against the changes 

 of climate any more than are the exotics. The care necessary in 

 our hot-houses and conservatories will best answer this. Nature 

 has given numberless animals, besides bees, the power to guard 

 against the privations of winter. I have no need to catalogue them. 

 How has she instructed others to so guard against the scarcity of 

 winter food, and to provide means whereby they can fight against 

 ■want, and defy the cold when it is standing below zero ? With the 

 herbiverous animals, by laying on an extra accumulation of fat; 

 with some species of squirrels, by storing a winter's supply of food ; 

 with some birds, by uniting to build a common home of extra 

 warmth for nocturnal shelter and protection against the pelting 

 rains, and thus they, huddling together, live through the winter; 

 with some, ophidians, by hibernation ; with others, by semi-hiber- 

 nation, awakening in the warmer hours of the day to feast on 

 autumnal gathered stores. Again, some lay-on fat, and construct 



