HINTS ON THE MANAGEMENT OF BEES By the Rev. W. C. Cotton, M.A. (Continued from our last.)

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 265, 12 February 1848, Page 3

HINTS ON THE MANAGEMENT OF BEES By the Rev. W. C. Cotton, M.A. (Continued from our last.)

If you go into the country, you shall have Bees .and welcome. Indeed oue of the greatest pleasures of Bee keeping lies in dispersing them as widely as possible., From the apiaries thus established in all parts oi the country some swarms are sure to escape and take to the bush. And when our woods are fully peopled, then will be the time for honey without stint, and wax in such plenty as to.hecome an article of export. The Maories will .make capital Bee hunters, their accurate powers of observation exactly fit them to track a -Bee to its horne — and their ingenuity to adopts the best method of preparing honey and wax. I, for one, will do my best to put them in the light way, as well as to supply them with swarms. And I trust every Bee keeper w,ho reads this will do the same. We have hollow trees in abundance. Many of them! at the Bay of Islands district are already tenanted by Bees, and honey in considerable quantities has been brought iv by the Maories for sale. I have heard of an American Captain, who ought to have known better, who set, about taking honey from a tree by firing a blunderbuss loaded with small shot at the place where he saw the Bees the thickest. A 'little smoke and. a tomahawk will be more efficient wea r pons in the hands of ..the Maories, and they will learn to track the Bees to their home after the American fashion, which is. this:

They pat a piece of honeycomb in an open space in their woods as a bait or line to the Bees, who are soon attracted to it if their hive is within a reasonable distance. They gorge themselves and then their instinct leads them to make the best of their way homewards. The direction of their flight is accurately marked, the same operation is performed in another place at right angles to the line of the first Bees' flight, and the intersection of these two lines leads the hunter to his prize. Others I have heard catch the Bees while feeding on the bait and with a little gum attach a small piece of swan's down to its body, which, without materially impeding its flight, makes its course through the air more easily observed. By hook or by crook the Maories will find the wild Bees readily enough when the woods are full of them. They, rather than the Pakehas, will be the Bee hunters, and I only mention the subject here to shew that the woods, those Bee houses of nature, and not private apiaries, will yield the greatest supply of Bee produce. One more point remains in connection with the subject. When an apiary is fully stocked and a district contains as many Bees as it can profitably support, what is to be done with the increase 1 Shall we suffer all the swarms to fly away in the swarming season, or shall we revert to the barbarous old English custom of putting down our stocks in autumn — that is, basely murdering with a sulphur match those who have worked for us all the summer ? It has been the way of the English Bee keepers from the time of Shakspeare. Second part Henry IV, 4th act, 4th scene. Yet though a time honoured practice, I trust it " will never obtain in this new country." But the remedy belongs more properly to the subject of my next letter — the union of stocks rather than to this present one, though by their union the greatest part of the yearly yield of honey will be obtained.