Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

BEE FARMING. 201 Beginners are very apt to assume that bees are bees, and that one hive of them is just the same as another. That, however, is a mistake. There are races of bees almost as distinguishable to experts as the different races of men—different in appearance, in size, in working characteristics, in productiveness, in tempers and dispositions. Our native English black bee is in many ways distinct from others that have been imported from different parts of the world. In 1859 a distin- guished apiarist introduced from Liguria, a com- partment of Italy, a bee in size and form not unlike our own, but marked with yellow rings, and believed to possess many valuable characteristics. It has been found a better worker— getting to business earlier in the morning and stick- ing to it later in the evening, more enterprising in searching flowers that our bees neglect, more prolific, and, above all, more amiable in disposition, not so ready to sting, and therefore more con- veniently and easily managed. In the same way we have had importations from Cyprus, from Palestine and other parts of Syria, and from some parts of Austria, each importation being supposed to have its special merits. With all of these there has, of course, been cross breeding,and practical apiarists find great differences in different stocks. I his should be borne in mind in purchasing bees, and careful inquiry should be made into the lineage and character of their “ queen.” One of the first things that will excite the interest and astonishment of any beginner in the study 26 EXAMINING A HIVE OF BEES. of bees is the fact that the swarming thousands of them filling a hive to overflowing—twenty thirty, forty, and even fifty thousand of them —are all the offspring of one mother bee, the “ queen ” of the hive, who in the prime of her life will begin laying eggs early in the year, and will go on depositing two and three thousand eggs a day for weeks. That fact will, of course, suggest the im- portance of know- ing a little about the queen from whom the entire colony will derive some of their characteristics. A queen bee will live for four or five years, and every year, if properly fed, will be more or less prolific, though she is most fecund when in her second year, and this is the age at which a com- mencing bee- farmer should start with her. The working bees, in the height of their labours at honey making, are worn out in about five or six weeks, and they die ; so that unless the queen keeps up her egg-laying the hive will soon become depopulated. That, indeed, is her only business in life, and as soon as she begins to fail in that the workers get rid of her and set up another in her place. One queen and her progeny will be quite enough for a novice to start with. A bee- farm such as is shown in our illustration should not be attempted by a beginner. It should be worked up to by degrees, and it is one of the peculiar advantages of this business that all the essentials of it may be learned just as well with a very small outlay and with only a single hive as by launching out on a big scale—better indeed.