232 



The Modern Bee-Hiye. 



[June, 



THE MODERN BEE-HIVE: ITS 

 DEFECTS AND POSSIBILITIES. 



TiCKNER EdWARDES. 



One of the mysteries of the country-side most puzzling to 

 students of English village-life, is the decline — one might 

 almost say the extinction — of cottage bee-keeping. 



While well within the recollection of many hardly to be 

 called old, the sight of a row of straw skeps in a village-garden 

 was a common incident of a day's tramp in the country, a 

 bee-hive is now the last thing the rural wayfarer would expect 

 to come upon. He will see small fowl-runs in plenty, corners 

 full of rabbit-hutches on stilts, and even pigstyes where farmers 

 are altruistic enough to allow their labourers to instal them. 

 Eor some unfathomable reason, however, the British cottager 

 seems to have given up keeping bees, with the result, as all 

 lovers of old Virgil's gentle craft well know, that many tons 

 of valuable sweet-food are being annually lost to the people. 



The mystery cannot be explained on the plea that our 

 villagers are scared by the prevalence in recent years of the 

 notorious " Isle of Wight " bee-disease. No doubt this 

 affection, since its recrudescence some seventeen or eighteen 

 years ago, has swept away thousands of bee-colonies, and 

 many of the more timid hive-owners may have thus dropped 

 out of the craft altogether; but cottage bee-keeping in this 

 country w^as in full decline long before " Isle of Wight " — 

 or Acarine — disease had been even thought of. The cause of 

 the decline, if it be discoverable at all, must be looked for 

 in quite another direction; and, in the writer's view, based on 

 the experience of a long life spent in various southern English 

 villages, the present unpopularity of bee-keeping among our 

 cottage-folk must be largely attributed to a very simple and 

 very human cause — a constitutional apprehensiveness in the 

 rising generation. 



The old bee-masters vv^ere as tough of heart as they were 

 of skin. They thought nothing of a sting or two. To anyone 

 qualified to judge, however, the fact is undeniable that among 

 present-day village-folk, there exists very generally a mortal 

 dread of the honey-bee's stiletto. The thing is obvious 

 wherever you go. Scarce one but will tell you tales of father's 

 or grandfather's prowess with bees, but when asked why 

 they themselves do not maintain the family tradition in the 



