Si. BEE-FJRMING. 



BEE-PASTURES. 



All districts are not equally profitable for bee-keeping ; 

 but, except in the neighbourhood of chemical works, we 

 have seldom known any open country downs or heaths 

 which were not good honey districts. Can a district be 

 ■overstocked with bees ? If we had thought this at all 

 possible we should not have written a work on Bee- 

 Farming, for it is easy to be a bee-keeper, — keeping a single 

 hive of bees in the cottage garden. But a Bee-Farmer is 

 •one who, thoroughly understanding his business, has, by 

 dint of careful attention, raised his thirty, forty, or fifty 

 stocks. 



This is the case in America. In some of the States, 

 in the yearly agricultural return to the Government, a 

 part of the form is specially assigned for a return of the 

 jiumber of hives, and probable yield per hive. Thus the 

 importance of bee-farming is becoming every year more 

 and more recognised. We trust the day is not far distant 

 when it will be so in the British Islands. 



Mr. Pettigrew says on this subject, " If a twenty-acre 

 field of grass, well sprinkled with the flowers of the white 

 clover, yield to the suck of bees loolbs. at least per 

 day, value 5/., and twenty acres of good heather yield 

 probably 200 lbs. of honey every day, value 20/., who will 

 venture to calculate and give the sum total ofnoney value 

 of all the counties of Great Britain and Ireland ? . . Who 

 can accurately weigh or number the millions upon millions 

 of pounds of honey that pass away (ungathered by bees) 

 into the atmosphere ? Who can estimate the millions of 

 pounds' worth of honey thus wasted on the ' desert air ? ' 



" Suppose a mild form of mania were to seize the rail- 

 v/ay porters of the stations of the various railway com- 

 panies of this country ; and suppose it were to run in the 



