BEE MANUAL. ' 



MODERN ART OF BEE-KEEPING. 



This may be considered to have commenced with the second 

 half of the present century, although the most important strides 

 in the progress of the honey industry have only taken place 

 within the last twenty years. In the year 1845, the results of 

 Dzierzon's investigations were first made known in the Eiclistadt 

 Bienen-Zeitung, and in 1848 his book on the "Theory and 

 Practice of Bee Culture " was published at the instance of the 

 Prussian Government Not many years afterwards, Lang- 

 stroth's work on " The Hive and Honey Bee," and Quinby's 

 " Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained," appeared almost simul- 

 taneously in America. All these men had been working inde- 

 pendently for some twenty years, studying the habits of the 

 bee, and inventing a hive and a system which should enable 

 the apiarist to control the working of his bees, and to obtain 

 the largest amount of surplus honey without injury to them. 

 They all attained a very high degree of success, and they 

 bestowed the knowledge of their successful labours upon the 

 public nearly at the same time. All their works have great 

 and independent merits, and must always remain as classics in 

 bee literature. To Dzierzon must be allowed the merit of having 

 so completely worked out and supplemented Huber's theory 

 with regard to the physiology of the bee, and also the priority 

 at least in the publication of his system of bar-hives. Lang- 

 stroth and Quinby both produced frame-hives, simpler and 

 more practical than that of Dzierzon, and each of them have 

 their advocates to the present day. Subsequently the inven- 

 tion of the honey extractor, of comb-foundation, and a number 

 of ingenious implements and appliances, have led to a complete 

 revolution in the practice of bee-keeping, and helped to raise it 

 to the rank of an important national industry which can no 

 longer be neglected in any country possessing the natural capa- 

 bilities for its establishment. 



BEE-KEEPING IN NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA. 



None of the countries of the New "World, of North or 

 South America, or of Australasia, were found, when first dis- 

 covered, to possess any variety of the true honey-bee (Apis 

 mdlifica) ; a necessary preliminary, therefore, to the practice of 

 bee-culture in any of those regions was the introduction of bees 



