THE SYSTEM OF BEE-FARMING. j 



Cannot this state of things be remedied ? We now 

 import an astonishing quantity of both honey and wax 

 from America, not reckoned by hundredweights but by 

 tons, which ought to be produced at home to the benefit 

 of our own land. Let us try to do it; but first the chief 

 bee-keepers, who are cottagers, must be shown a better 

 plan ; then, finding it successful and worth their time and 

 labour in a monetary point of view, they will not be slow 

 learners. A further good will be gained ; it will tend to 

 keep the husband at home in the evenings, making and 

 mending hives, or overhauling his stocks, instead of 

 visiting the ale-house. The bee-bench has often had far 

 greater attractions than the beer-bench. 



THE SYSTEM OF BEE-FARMING. 



Some fifteen years since, soon after the American Civil 

 ^Var, there came a rumour across the Atlantic from whence 

 we import many hundreds of tons of honey that the 

 system adopted by all the large bee-farmers in the 

 Southern states was far different from the old-fashioned 

 plan (still in use in this country), viz.; destroying the in- 

 dustrious workers when their season of toil is over in the 

 autumn with the reeking fumes of the brimstone pit. 

 The rumour, however, led to no results. Afterwards, 

 v/e heard through a continental traveller, who had been 

 making extensive inquiries in Italy, principally about the 

 Ligurian or Alp bee, that the Italian method of bee-culture 

 was one worthy of adoption, in fact the only way of making 

 money out of bees. This differed very little from the 

 American system. 



We state these facts at the outset, because we lay 

 no claim to originality, seeing ours is not a new or 

 untried system of Bee-farming. Our hope and object is 



