244 AUSTRALASIAN 



CHAPTER XIV. 



WINTERING.— UNITING. 



A striking feature in the practical working of apiaries in the 

 Australasian colonies (and indeed in all the habitable regions 

 of the Southern Hemisphere, with the exception, perhaps, of the 

 most southern extremity of South America), is the facility for 

 carrying the stocks safely through the winter, as compared with 

 the difficulties experienced in that respect in the most important 

 bee-keeping districts in the Northern Hemisphere. 



DIFFERENCE IN CHARACTER OF WINTER SEASONS. 



In no part of New Zealand or Australia is there a lower mean 

 winter temperature than 40° Fahr., which is as mild as that of 

 Northern Italy, and in the greater portion of the Northern 

 Island of New Zealand, in New South Wales, Victoria, and 

 South Australia, it is up to or above 50°, with a perfect freedom, 

 in the level country, from anything deserving the name of heavy 

 frost or falls of snow. There are certainly many countries in 

 the northern part of the world similarly circumstanced, some of 

 which, like the countries of the Mediterranean, have been the 

 earliest seats of bee-culture, and others, like the Southern and 

 Western States of the American Union, are now amongst the 

 most advanced in that industry; but in consequence of scientific 

 apiculture having grown up in Germany, England, and the 

 Northern States of America, all of which countries have to 

 contend with severe and protracted winter seasons, it happens 

 that all the works which have been published on the subject of 

 bee-culture naturally dwell much, upon the difficulties to be 

 contended with in wintering bees, and the modes of overcoming 

 those difficulties ; and nearly all those works treat the subject 

 as if it were a difficulty inherent in the practice of bee-keeping, 

 and not merely dependent upon peculiarities of climate. At 



