CHAPTER VI 
HEREDITY IN THE BEE-GARDEN 
WE were in the great high-road of Warrilow 
bee-farm, and had stopped midway down in 
the heart of the waxen city. On every hand the 
hives stretched away in long trim rows, and the 
hot June sunshine was alive with darting bees and 
fragrant with the smell of new-made honey. 
‘‘ Swarming? ”’ said the bee-master, in answer to 
a question I had put to him. ‘‘ We never allow 
swarming here. My bees have to work for me, and 
not for themselves; so we have discarded that old- 
fashioned notion long ago.”’ 
He brought his honey-barrow to a halt, and sat 
down ruminatively on the handle. 
‘‘ Swarming,’’? he went on to explain, “‘is the 
great trouble in modern bee-keeping. It is a bad 
Icgacy left us by the old-time skeppists. With the 
ancient straw hives and the old benighted methods 
of working, it was all very well. When bee- 
burning was the custom, and all the heaviest hives 
were foredoomed to the sulphur-pit, the best bees 
were those that gave the earliest and the largest 
swarms. The more stocks there were in the 
garden the more honey there would be for market. 
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