6 BEE-FARMING. 



to persuade thousands of our own bee-keepers to begin 

 Bee-farming, and not to be content with merely keeping 

 a few stocks for their amusement. We are thoroughly 

 satisfied that under this humane method thousands of 

 stocks may be kept where we now find single ones in 

 cottage gardens. 



To come to the point. After keeping bees for nearly 

 twenty years, and trying every plan we could hear of,^ 

 we have learned one important fact, viz. bees will not 

 thrive or do well, to say nothing of profit, if the hives be 

 too large. It has become quite a rage with some apiarians, 

 principally those who can afford to pay for their hobby, 

 to have immense hives holding about loolbs. of honey. 

 We have giver, thi- _ ::Liticnt s^d thoughtful trial ; the 

 result has been " immense loss from using the immense 

 hives." 



' The only hive we have found successful is one not 

 more than 12 inches square internally. This is taught 

 us by the fact that our cottagers' wives who use the 

 old-fashioned skep of about 1 2 inches square can generally 

 succeed in having a fair honey harvest when their neigh- 

 bours who employ large hives such as the Woodbury 

 can seldom obtain much honey from them, except in 

 unusually good honey seasons, which come round about 

 once in five years. The cottager, however, destroys his 

 bees in the autumn ; this also is a ruinous system. 

 What we want besides the right size of a hive is some 

 v.'ay of taking the honey from the bees without destroy- 

 ing either the honey-gatherers or the comb in which it 

 is stored. As the Italian method will do this — it is just 

 the thing we are in need of. Now this system of Bee- 

 farming rests upon the principle of not killing the goose 

 which lays the golden eggs, or not destroying the comb 

 for the sake of getting some 3 or 4lbs. of honey out of 

 it. Each of our small cottage hives would yield about 



