234 



The Modern Bee-Hive. 



[June. 



The production of honey and beeswax is essentially a local 

 industry. Very large apiaries located on one spot are 

 economically unsound, for the simple reason that a given 

 district, however rich in flora, is capable of employing profitably 

 only a definite small number of colonies, seeing that the 

 effective range of the honey-bee's flight is generally limited 

 to a radius of, perhaps, a couple of mJles. Bee-keeping pure 

 and simple, is therefore, by a law of nature, reserved for the 

 small man, and must ever remain so while our present system 

 of agriculture lasts. There may come a time when planting 

 exclusively for honey and v;ax production may develop into a 

 payable project, and then, by degrees, large apiaries will 

 probably oust the smaller ones altogether: but to consider 

 that now would be a mere Utopian " dealing in futures." The 

 visible logic of the situation is to regard honey and beeswax 

 as, wdiafthey essentially are at present, by-products of other 

 rural commodities, and beemanship a sort of wholesale 

 gleaning. For we are all gleaners at present, and nothing 

 more, though it is just " with your vrill or by your wuU " in 

 respect of the farmers: they must let our wunged thousands 

 pass whether they will or no. The bee-keeper, indeed, is in 

 this enviable position — he pays nothing for his raw^ material, 

 nothing in wages, and his labourers toil unremittingly for him 

 w^hile at the same time supporting themselves. His own con- 

 tribution to the enterprise is merely a warehouse and factory 

 costing a few shillings, a little of his spare time, and an odd 

 corner of garden-space. Xo w^onder it has become a truism 

 that bee-keeping on modern scientific lines can be made to 

 pay cent, per cent. 



This statement is literally true, but it needs accurate 

 definition and qualification. Bee-k'eeping will not pay unless 

 a clean sweep is made of many erroneous notions, both new as 

 • well as old. There is perhaps uo other pursuit in which such 

 wide diversities, even contrarieties, of opinion and method 

 exist among its professed exponents, all of whom, however, 

 command a certain measure of success. At first this seems 

 hopelessly paradoxical, until one realises the fact that the 

 redoubtable honey-bee wdll " make good " to a certain extent 

 under almost any conditions: if not because of the bee-keeper's 

 methods, at least triumphantly in spite of them. All that, 

 however, involves a great waste of bee-acumen and energy 

 intolerable in these urgent days. The conclusion of the whole 

 matter is that the deeper knowledge we get of the great 

 unalterable principles underlying hive-life as exploited by the 



