je Jaw Jah dal AO re 
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-eulture 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 New 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 
