74 
THE AUSTRALIAN BEEKEEPERS’ JOURNAL. 
were certainly far better. The bees from these 
hilly parts would, too, be better suited for our 
climate. The number of apiaries visited was 
large, yet I can count upon my fingers of one 
hand all those who knew anything about their 
business ; and if those who took a real pride in 
the production of their queens, and who use really 
scientific means to insure the best results, then the 
number would certainly be less than five. 
I shall describe the apiaries of the best of these, 
and their methods; but before doing so. will give 
the conclusions which I came to with regard to 
Italians : That, excepting perhaps Carniolans, 
there are no better bees than Italians if care is 
taken to get the best queens from a breeder of 
recognized merit. 
That the bees of the mountains are hardy, 
vigorous workers, great honey-gatherers, prolific, 
and certainly gentle, aud in their own country not 
given to robbing much. 
That to get the best results from Italian bees, 
we must get a good strain to start with, and then, 
by careful selection, rear our own queens, and be 
constantly on the look-out for those having the 
most desirable characteristics, and to propagate 
from them only. 
I can name one very striking case in my own 
country, where all these points have had most 
careful attention given to them, and with the 
result that the bee-keeper is not only the best in the 
country, but one of the best in England, as far as 
results go; and practical results (the largest 
amount of honey, of the highest possible quality, 
got with the least expenditure of labour on the 
part of the bee-keeper), are what we require in 
this age of keen competition. 
The first apiary which I visited belonged to 
Jean Pometta, and was on the hills above Gudo, 
near Bellinzona. He had promised to meet me 
at Bellinzona station ; but on account of the 
breakdown of the telegraph wires, owing to a 
heavy fall of snow, he failed to be there. How- 
ever, it was not mech trouble to find him. Every- 
body whom I asked was aide to direct me to the 
man who had a lot of bees ; and after a most 
picturesque walk of two or three miles l arrived at 
his home, in the midst of vineyards, and with a 
waterfall close by. which would have made 
the fortune of any man in England who poss- 
essed it. 
He was from home ; not having got my tele- 
gram he did not expect me. I had a chance‘ 
therefore, of looking at his apiary at my leisure, 
and without any interruption, which is an advan- 
tage. His father (a venerable old man) received 
me in a very hospitable manner, and. as Mr. 
Pometta is a vineyard-owner as well as a queen- 
breeder, I was able to see all the vintage opera- 
tion in tull swing. I may say tnat he takes pride 
in his wine products as well as in his bees ; and he 
showed me with great interest an ancient-looking, 
squat flagon of Aqua Vitae, very old, of his own 
distilling, that had taken the gold medal at 
Zurich. 
I found an immense number of colonies of bees, 
many of them in bar-frame hives with straw sides ; 
the majority of them on the Italian plan, opening 
at the back, and iron tongs being used to remove 
the combs. There were, too, a large number of 
nucleus hives, with bar-frames lifting out in the 
ordinary way, The bees were the leather- 
coloured strain, not the bright coloured bees such 
as I saw later on in Lombardy. To show their 
energy, I may mention that Mr. Pometta told me 
that they are usually at work at six in the morn- 
ing, and that on one or two occasi6ns he actually 
saw them work by very bright moonlight. We 
have heard this same story from the Americans, 
and I fear every one has doubted it. 
On Mr. Pometta’s return we looked through 
many colonies, and I had explained to me his 
whole system of queen-rearing. 
The system used of rearing queens depends upon 
the time of the year. In the early spring (when 
loss of heat must be much guarded against) a 
colony is taken,, and, by means of three dummies, 
is divided into four nuclei, the hive being made 
with four entrances for this purpose. In this way 
five queens are secured from one colony, and 
though the system is a somewhat wasteful one, 
yet it answers, as the price obtained for queens in 
early spring is comparatively high. Another plan 
is to preserve a large number of small colonies 
with young queens in the autumn. In the spring 
two or three of these can be united, and one 
strong colony formed, and the surplus queens sold. 
As the season advances, the nucleus hives are 
used ; each nucleus being large enough to be 
again divided into two. By this plan better 
queens can be reared, and in good quantity too. 
The bars of these are of just such a siee that two 
will fit into the large bars of the Italtan hives. 
This, of course, is of great service to the queen- 
rearer in many ways, such as making up nuclei 
for queen fertilization, and afterwards for strength- 
ing such with hatching brood. 
SOME NOTES ABOUT BEES ; ALSO 
ABOUT THE FESTIVAL APIARY, 
REDLAND. 
Within the last decade of years a revolution has 
taken place in bee-keeping as great in its way as 
has occurred in dairying. Our fathers who kept 
bees in the rustic-looking straw skeps, and who 
annually consigned half of their industrious little 
workers to the sulphur pit, never even dreamed 
that their sons would consider such treatment as 
the height of barbarity, and would wonder at the 
ignorance of their parents. Bee-keeping is now a 
scientific occupation, exact and practical as is that 
of the pedigree stock-breeder, or of the manufac- 
turer. or of the mechanic. It was left by other 
nations to the practical Americans to so mechani- 
cally improve the construction of the bee-hive as 
to permit of any part of it being instantly investi- 
I gated ; thus the life history of the bee has been 
completely worked out, and man by still further 
mechanical contrivances, such as comb-foundation. 
&c., so aids the bee that these industrious insects 
waste no labour, as they previously did to an enor- 
mous extent when undirected by man. Instead of 
sulphuring the bees wholesale, the apiarist now' 
considers it sacrilege to kill a single bee, and even 
