BEE MANUAL. 281 
‘““In the middle of November the tree rata and pohutukawa begins, 
and lasts to the middle of February. The white rata (creeper) begins 
in December, and lasts till April; red rata (creeper) begins in January, 
and lasts till May; koromiko begins in January, and lasts till June ; 
nikau begins in February ; puriri begins in March, and lasts till No- 
vember, although it is easy to get a specimen all the year; hohere (it 
has a thick stringy bark), kohekohe cedar, mangeo, and another I do 
not know the name of, all bloom in April, May, and June. These are 
the principal trees we get honey from here. There are plenty of other 
trees that bees work upon, but they either give honey in small quan- 
tities, or we have not got them in sufficient number for the bees to 
store honey from.” 
In the Thames district, about as far south of Auckland as 
the Barrier Island is north of it, my own experience is as 
follows: Kowai commences to blossom in September, as also 
tauro and mahoi—the first lasts four weeks, the second sixteen, 
and the last eight ; hinau in November, lasting four weeks ; 
rata and flax commence in December, and blossom four or five 
weeks; cabbage-palm, beginning of December, lasting four weeks. 
Besides those enumerated, there are other native trees and 
shrubs which blossom between October and March ; amongst 
the best for honey are pohutukawa, kahikatea, puriri, matai, 
tawai, tariri, miro, karaka, native fuchsia, and nikau. Tea-tree 
blossoms in September, but yields no honey in the Thames 
district. 
The honey from most of the native flora of New Zealand is 
of a first-class quality, though not equal to that obtained from 
white clover. Some of it granulates very slowly ; I have kept 
samples nearly all through the winter without granulating. 
NATIVE FLORA OF AUSTRALIA. 
All the species of those two great families of trees so peculiar 
to Australia, EUCALYPTUS and ACACIA, are good for bee forage, 
yielding both nectar and pollen in abundance, and, what is of 
especial importance in a climate like that of most of the Aus- 
tralasian colonies, where the bees can gather surplus honey 
nearly all the year round, they seem as if specially designed 
to supplement each other; the eucalypti blooming, as a rule, 
in the summer half, and the acacias in the winter half of the 
year. 
