But unhappily many bee-keepers take the idle and selfish course of leaving everything to chance. Mr Simmins claims that, where his directions are carefully followed, no hive need be lost. We quote the following from his book 'A Modern Bee Farm' (1914, p. 445):

(1) The substitution of a young queen of a vigorous prolific variety, during the active season, will turn a dwindling stock into a prosperous, highly profitable colony every time.

'(2) Any plan of division that, during the active season, separates the older and more seriously affected workers from those slightly or not affected, from the younger bees and the brood still to hatch, will always form a basis of cure.

'(3) Feeding any affected stock rapidly with suitably medicated food will subdue the worst case in twelve or fourteen days, changing the queen meantime.

'(4) Where the earlier symptoms of the disease are noticed--with no hairless, dark or bloated bees-the trouble is instantly checked by spraying with warm medicated water.'

Mr Simmins attaches great importance to the right strain of bee, not the pure English black, and also to sufficient ventilation, a point often overlooked. He mentions a case where bees were actually wintered successfully with no bottoms to the hives. All good hives are now made with adjustable entrances and ventilators. This alone gives them an immense advantage over straw skeps. Wood, moreover, and not straw, is the natural home of the bee, which in a wild state loves hollow trees. Whatever type of hive the beginner selects, he should keep to the same one, for it is a great convenience to be able to interchange the internal fittings of different hives. The W.B.C. hive, named after the inventor, the late Mr William Broughton Carr, is a double-walled hive, and holds the field as first favourite in this country today. Any one with a knowledge of carpentry can make his own hives, by copying a good model.

The standard size of frame is 14 inches long by 8 deep. Larger frames are commonly used in America, and we have seen them in the apiary of a French abbé. They give more room in the brood-chamber, which may easily become overcrowded, for a good queen at her best will lay up to 3500 eggs a day. Shallower frames are used in the 'supers' for extracted honey, and sectioncrates, containing twenty-one sections each, for section

honey. The frames should be fitted with full sheets of artificial comb-foundation securely wired in. This invention saves an immense amount of labour and honey, for the bees must consume at least 6 lbs. of honey to produce 1 lb. of wax, which is exuded in little plates or scales from the under-side of the abdomen. It also limits the number of drone cells. Over the brood-chamber, in which the young bees are reared, many bee-keepers think it essential to place a queen-excluder before they add the 'supers' or honey-chambers. This consists of a sheet of perforated zinc, through which worker-bees can pass, but the queen with her larger body cannot. She is thus prevented from laying eggs in the supers and rendering the honey unsaleable. But there is no doubt that this ingenious device is a great hindrance to the free passage of the bees, who are often most reluctant to begin work above it. If the bee-keeper takes care to supply the queen with sufficient space below, removing the honey when necessary, she will not as a rule ascend into the supers to lay.

Section honey is preferred by some people for the table, but run honey is more profitable to produce, for the combs, instead of being eaten with the honey, are returned to the hive and filled again. A honey-extractor, costing about £2, is worth buying, if it cannot be borrowed. The combs are simply uncapped with a sharp carving knife, placed in the extractor two at a time, and the honey is extracted by centrifugal force as the handle is turned. Heather honey is thicker, and cannot be extracted in this way, but is squeezed out in a specially designed press. It commands a higher price; and the wax can be melted down and used for household purposes. Happy is the bee-keeper who can cart his hives to the moors some night in August, when the clover has ceased to yield nectar. He secures a second harvest.

In September the bee-keeper must make his preparations for winter. Perhaps he will be able to secure some healthy bees from a straw skep whose ignorant owner has condemned them to the sulphur-pit rather than keep them through the winter consuming their own honey. This stupid and barbarous custom still survives in out-of-the-way districts. Such bees may be obtained cheaply; nor is the old superstition quite extinct that

it is unlucky to take money for bees. But it is safer to avoid those from infected neighbourhoods, for the I. O. W. disease in its first stage can only be detected by a bacteriologist. In any case, a weak stock should always be united to a stronger one, as it may die in the winter. A strong stock economises heat and consumes less stores proportionately than a weak one. The beekeeper's great aim should be to winter strong stocks only, and thus be ready to take advantage of an early honey-flow in spring.

How to deal with the swarming propensity is one of the most difficult problems of all. He who lets his bees swarm at will may increase the number of his stocks, but he will diminish the output of honey, for, when the swarming fever possesses a hive, it becomes idle. Moreover, swarms may issue at a time when no one sees them, decamp before they are hived, and so be lost to their owner, who cannot legally recover them if they once go out of his sight. Modern bee-science therefore aims at preventing natural swarming, and making artificial swarms as needed. Directions for doing this are given in all up-to-date handbooks. If natural swarming is to be prevented, plenty of space must be given in advance, and also plenty of ventilation; for heat and overcrowding are the main causes of swarming. But there is nothing better than a good natural swarm for a beginner to start with. It is more easily managed than an established stock or colony. The third method of starting is to obtain a 'nucleus,' that is to say, three or four frames of comb covered by bees, with a queen. As much as 51. 5s. is now being asked for a three-frame nucleus of a good strain. A nucleus needs liberal feeding and gives no return till the following season, but it is small and easily handled by a novice.

Feeding is no difficulty, when sugar is obtainable. Treacle-tins and jam-jars covered with muslin and inverted over the frames make good feeders. Bees amply repay generous treatment. It is much better to rob the store-cupboard of sugar than to risk starving the bees in winter, especially as the sugar thus used can be replaced with an equivalent quantity of honey, even for cooking and preserving purposes. The general principle is to allow equal weights of sugar and water for spring and

summer feeding, and about two-thirds of sugar to one of water for autumn feeding. Candy may be laid on top of the combs in winter if required. Recipes are given in the handbooks. Careless bee-keepers often neglect to provide 'winter passages' under the quilts. These are made by placing two strips of wood under the quilts, to allow the bees to travel over the top of a comb in cold weather in order to reach fresh supplies of honey in another comb. Another precaution often neglected is to grease all moveable parts with vaseline before putting them on the hive. This prevents the bees from glueing them tightly down with propolis, to the great discomfort of the bee-keeper, for all jarring should be avoided when the frames are lifted out for examination.

During the winter months the bees should be left severely alone. They are in a state of semi-hibernation, only coming out for a 'cleansing flight' on warm days, when they void their accumulated excreta; for the bee, as Aristotle observes, is a very clean creature, and never under normal conditions soils the hive. Sometimes sunshine on snow will lure them out by shedding a deceitful glare on the alighting board. Then little holes will be found in the snow where foolish bees have alighted on it and been unable to rise. The entrance should therefore be shaded at such times. Tits and other birds also take their toll of bees in winter, while moths attack the hive from within. A ball of naphthaline should not be omitted in the autumn.

But the surest preventive of trouble at all times is a numerous population, strong enough to repel all vermin, including wasps in autumn. Wasps will soon clear a hive of its honey if allowed. One spring the writer offered a halfpenny each for queen wasps to the local school-children. The result was that he received over 500 dead queens, and there was a welcome scarcity of wasps in the following September. Bees will also rob one another, and an outbreak of robbing is often very difficult to stop. It is usually caused through careless exposure of honey. A piece of glass or a handful of hay over the entrance of the robbed hive sometimes stops it, but the best device is the 'claustral' hive, the front of which can be entirely closed, being fitted with ventilating shafts. We have known a hive robbed of all

its honey by a neighbour's bees, in spite of its owner's efforts, till the worker-bees lay dead in heaps, and the queen, always the last to die, roamed solitary over the empty combs.

Though a queen-bee can, as we have seen, lay the almost incredible number of 3500 eggs a day-that is, twice her own weight in the twenty-four hours-in the last resort all depends on the care and forethought of the bee-master. If he interferes too much with Nature, he will spoil her plans, but if he does not assist her, his profits will be small, for the bees are working for the benefit of their own race and not his. Between October and April, when little or nothing can be done in the bee-garden, he will make his preparations for the summer, and not leave everything till the last moment. If he does not see that his hives are warm, wellventilated, and waterproof, if he grudges honey or sugar to his bees, and lets them send out swarms as often as they choose, and fight their own battles against disease and vermin, he does not deserve success. But success is worth attaining, as we have endeavoured to show, and is much more easily attained now than in the days of Virgil's old Corycian pirate, who established so happy a fellowship between himself, his bees, and his garden:

'In spring, the first to pluck a rose new-blown,
In autumn, first to shake the pippins down;
And when glum winter split the rocks with cold,
And curb'd the rivers in its icy hold,

E'en then soft curls of hyacinth he drest,
With fie for late spring, and for laggard west!
No wonder then, if first of all was he
To lead the swarm and tend the matron bee;
And first the bubbling honeycomb to press,
For limes had he, and pine-trees numberless.
And every fruit the tree at flowering wore,
The same in autumn fully ripe it bore.'

(Virgil, G. iv, 158. Blackmore.)

T. F. ROYDS.