PRE FACE. 



The first edition of "The New Zealand Bee Manual," published in 

 September, 1881, was a small book of some 150 pages, and was 

 intended to convey, in a popular form, such information with regard 

 to the modern system of bee-culture as might tend to awaken an 

 interest in that pursuit among the settlers in these colonies, enable 

 those who should desire to make a beginning to do so in the proper 

 manner, and induce others, who were already working in the dark 

 with candle-boxes and gin-cases, to discard such appliances and adopt 

 a more rational method of bee-keeping. The best proof that the 

 subject was beginning to attract attention will be found in the fact 

 that the first edition was disposed of in thirteen months, and a second 

 thousand had to be issued in October, 1882. That edition being also 

 exhausted and a new one required, I felt bound to consider the 

 greatly altered circumstances under which it would have to be pub- 

 lished, and to endeavour to make it, as far as possible, suitable to 

 those new conditions and to the advances made in the art of bee- 

 culture up to the present day. 



In the interval since the issue of the first edition, bee-culture has 

 taken an established footing in Mew Zealand and the Australian colo- 

 nies, the suitability of the climate and the flora being no longer a 

 matter of speculation but one of experience. My duties as Editor of 

 "The New Zealand and Australian Bee Journal " during the two years 

 of its circulation, brought me into very agreeable communication with 

 bee-keepers in all parts of these colonies, and the consequent inter- 

 change of views and experiences has enabled me to obtain an amount 

 of information with regard to the condition and prospects of the 

 industry in this part of the world which was previously entirely want- 

 ing. I came to the conclusion that there is a rapidly increasing class 

 of people who are turning their attention to apiculture in Australasia, 

 and who, whether as professed apiarists or as amateurs, would require 

 a manual of bee-culture which, while giving in a general but not 



