No. 23.-1881.] 



BEE CULTURE. 



27 



CEYLON BEE CULTURE, 



By Samuel Jayatilaka, Mudaliyar. 



{Read April 1th, 1881.) 



I have been interested in the culture of the honey bee of 

 Ceylon for about the last 25 years, from accidentally observing 

 at first the mode of bee-keeping by bee-hunters and others in 

 the Wanni, a remote part of this district (North- Western 

 Province.) I set myself to work at once in trying to improve the 

 system. By the courtesy of Mr. Ferguson, the senior Editor 

 of the "Ceylon Observer," I was enabled to secure works on 

 practical bee-keeping, and by carefully reading these I endea- 

 voured to improve the primitive means adopted by the native 

 apiarists, but without success. My thanks are also due to 

 E. T. Sharpe, Esq., and R. Morris, Esq., who encouraged me 

 much in the pursuit of my experiments by getting out for me 

 English bee-hives and apparatus for working them. 



There are four species of honey-bees in Ceylon :— ■ 



1. — Mi—©: Apis Indica; 



2. — Danduwel — <^§£>id : Apis Florea; 



3. — Bambara — ©§)cft: Apis Dorsata; and 



4. — Kana Veyiya — <2»<2o©s)c3j03 : Trigone. 



The Mi Messd (Apis Indica) is the common honey-bee of 

 Ceylon, and the only species kept by natives. I have had a few 

 colonies of these from the very beginning, and in the way of 

 improvement I have transferred them to pots of quite a 

 different shape from the ordinary narrow-mouthed pitchers 

 used by natives, which required the destruction of the pot to 

 get at the honey, thereby causing considerable destruction to 

 bee-life. The pots I substituted are in two sections : the first 

 section or entrance narrow-mouthed and oblong, which fits 



