232 
NATURE NOTES. 
all in their power to encourage bee culture, and it is said that 
they went so far as to diminish the tax on land to those farmers 
who undertook to rear and protect these insects. Thomas Wild- 
man in his work on Bees, published in this country in 1768, 
quotes at page 14 of his preface the forcible language of i\I. 
Feydan de Brou, and one can imagine similar advice given b}’ 
those rajahs to their farmers : — 
“ The culture of bees is a branch of rural economy, the more 
valuable as it is within the reach of the poorest cottager. It 
requires not plowing, manure, cattle, nor rich meadows ; the 
whole that is wanted is an attendance which may be given by 
the meanest, and that but for a short time. In this respect it is 
reall}" reaping without sowing.” 
The method of hiving bees, as practised by these Punjab 
farmers, is still of the most primitive nature, but on the whole 
they appear to be very successful in the amount of honey they 
secure. It will not be without interest if I give an account of 
the structure of their hives, and some few details about their 
methods of honey-taking. 
The hives are cylindrical in form, the length being, on an 
average, twenty -two inches, and the diameter fourteen inches. 
They are really built into the wall of their huts, and placed at a 
slope towards the outside. At the base, and continuing for 
about midway there is a small tube fi.xed, which is about one- 
third of an inch in diameter. This tube is made in clay mortar. 
The whole of the inside of this domestic hive is smeared with 
moist clay, and at either end is closed by a round platter of red 
pottery which is built in flush with the wall inside and out, the 
inner platter being only slightly attached so as to be removable 
at pleasure ; the outer platter is pierced by a round hole to 
correspond with the tube, and both platters are more or less 
convex. In some cottages there are two or three of these hives. 
The natives assert that the bees appreciate this round form of 
habitation, for there is no waste of room for storage. In the 
winter, moreover, they are well preserved from the cold, and in 
the summer they are well screened from the sun by the trees 
surrounding the hut, while they are at all times secure from 
storms of wind and rain. 
In the months of April and October the honey is extracted 
from the hives, and here it is, as IMr. Barlow explains, that 
for want of skill many hives of bees fall a sacrifice to the rude 
method of removing the combs, and frequently also to the greed 
of the farmer in taking away as much honey as he can e.xtract. 
The farmer does this by slightly tapping the inner platter with 
his sickle or “ darauti,” which is soon disengaged from the wall ; 
he then places some straw on a dish containing burning charcoal, 
and holding it near to the hive blows the smoke on to the bees, 
who very soon disperse. He then cuts away the nearest combs 
with his sickle, and if he is experienced as well as humane, 
he will generally leave sufficient so as not to impoverish the 
bees. 
