1921.] 



The ]\Iodehn BEE-lfivE. 



craft, they have only the one answer for you — a smile, a shrug 

 of the shoulders, and a shake of the head. The children, 

 it seems, are to go without this incomparable sweet, with its 

 wonderful richness in vitamine, and he brought up on 

 rickety beet-sugar, just because father will not risk his 

 precious skin. 



The production of honey and its hardly less valuable con- 

 comitant beeswax, is, however, by no means necessarily a 

 hazardous business. All varieties of the honey-bee have their 

 vicious strains, it is true, and many bee-keepers persist in 

 retaining these strains in their apiaries for the reason, indispu- 

 table, that they are often splendid honey-makers. Yet it is 

 equally true that bees of even temper exhibit just as good 

 working qualities; and, setting bravado aside, no one, particu- 

 larly one's neighbours, is obliged to put up with the nuisance 

 of vindictive bees. In the course of the whole of last season 

 a well-known apiarist who has studied this matter, received 

 only two or three stings from his own bees, and these he 

 ascribes entirely to his ow^n carelessness. The writer, over the 

 same period, can remember being stung only once, though his 

 season's work included the frequent opening of hives, the 

 taking of swarms sometimes in difficult situations, and the 

 continual handling of honey-supers. 



Safety and comfort in beemanship depend, in the first place, 

 on having bees of quiet disposition; and. second and last and 

 all the time, on deft, deliberate, gentle handling dictated by 

 knowledge, together with abstention from fussy and needless 

 interference with the bees. Probably the old maxim — that 

 all knowledge worth having must be paid for — is as true in 

 the attainment of proficiency in bee-craft as in anything else; 

 but it cannot be too widely known that the production of honey 

 and wax is no more likely to prove, nor necessarily to he 

 regarded as, a prickly pursuit, than the cultivation of goose- * 

 berries. Indeed, as far as personal safety goes, the wTiter 

 would far rather superintend a score of bee-hives than have 

 the charge of one moderate-sized gooseberry-patch. 



The avowed purpose of these observations is to advocate a 

 return to the ancient and profitable pursuit of bee-keeping by 

 our cottagers and smallholder class of country-dw^ellers,- as a 

 practical contribution to the elucidation of the problem of 

 making life easier for the small man on the land. It is not 

 intended, however, to deal with the details of modern* bee- 

 keeping methods, but lather to indicate a few of the broad 

 principles on whir-h the success of small apiculture depends. 



