Buetraltan Beekeepers' 
JOURNAL. 
Vol. III.— No. 4 .] FEBRUARY, 1889 . [Price 6i>. 
(BMtorial. 
THE PAST SEASON— FOREIGN NEWS, 
Ac. 
European and American bee journals arriving 
now are full up with articles and correspondence 
on wintering bees, and, indeed, this is a most im- 
portant and vital question with beekeepers in 
England and the North of Europe, as well as in 
the United States and Canada in America. To 
get their bees safely through the long and severe 
winters which ordinarily prevail there, demands 
all the care, ingenuity, and watchfulness possible 
from beekeepers. In no part of Australia, however, 
is our winter ever severe enough to keep the bees 
at home a single day from cold or snow, except on 
the high mountains, or in country elevated over 
3000ft. on its southern coast line. We sometimes 
read of the moisture which condenses in hives in 
winter being found frozen solid in Germany, and 
as the first layer jreezes, new moisture condenses 
on the ice surface till it grows like a solid wall of 
ice on the inner walls of the hives. Australian 
beekeepers have no such trouble to contend with, 
nor do they require to pack their bees away in 
cellars or underground, or put their bees in hives 
with double walls, packed between with chafT, 
tan, sawdust, or some other non-conducting 
material as our brother apiarists have to do in the 
colder climates referred to. Still Australian bee- 
keeping is not without its own special drawbacks, 
which are, however, very small when compared 
with difficulties presented by long hard winters, 
where everything is for weeks and even months 
bound up in snow and frost. Our sudden hot and 
dry spells are often very trying vicissitudes, not so 
much because of any direct injury to the bees as of 
the effect it has on the production of nectar in our 
flowers. If with a high temperature we have a 
few weeks without rain, nectar secretion is almost 
entirely suspended, and although flowers may be 
abundant, there is no honey flow. A mild spring, 
with promise of early summer is often rudely 
interrupted by a cold wet and stormy streak just 
as breeding is reaching full vigour, and the early 
honey flow is taxing the whole of the hives. Such 
occurrences are most injurious, and not unfre- 
quently ruin the chances of many weak stocks 
just as they begin to get strong. Nevertheless, 
the very worst difficulties brought about by the 
peculiarities of Australian climates are as nothing 
with those already referred to. In England, 
beekeepers have had a very bad season. Not 
only was the winter severe, but after a fair spring 
promise, wet and cold set in and continued till 
late in the summer, when all chances of a honey 
harvest was over. In America, a very fair bee 
season has followed the disastrous one of 1887, 
| where severe droughts prevailed over a large 
j part of the States, which was so bad in some 
j places that large trees shed their flower buds 
before they had opened. A similar state of 
affairs came to pass here, for prior to the late 
rains the flower buds from gum trees in many 
localities dropped from the trees through the great 
dryness of the air and soil, which will no doubt 
seriously diminish the autumn harvest in these 
places. 
The plentiful rainfall at the end of December 
and beginning of the present month, which has 
refreshed nearly the whole surface of Australia, 
certainly improves the outlook for our apiculturists, 
and with the weather we may naturally expect at 
this season, should result in a good harvest, where 
summer and autumn flowering trees and shrubs 
are plentiful. We still hear of foul brood appear- 
ing in apiaries in different parts of the colonies, 
but it seems to be easily got rid of wherever the 
clean hive and comb-building method is adopted. 
There is an animated discussion in the British 
bee journals of late concerning the qualities of 
various races of bees. Blacks. Ligurians, 
Carniolan, Cyprians and South Africans, the 
great popular leaning among amateur apiarists 
towards the Carniolans on account ol their 
gentleness, has brought this variety into consider- 
able repute, and Mr. Benton, who had hitherto 
been engaged in rearing pure Cyprians, either in 
the Island of Cyprus itself or in Austria, and 
supplying beekeepers all over the world with 
Cyprian queens, as well as advocating their 
