Title: British bee journal & bee-keepers adviser
Identifier: britishbeejourna1902lond (find matches)
Year: 1873 (1870s)
Authors:
Subjects: Bees
Publisher: London
Contributing Library: UMass Amherst Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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Text Appearing Before Image:
Oct. 9, 1902.) THE BRITISH BEE JOURNAL. 405 is needful for the bees. I make all my own hives, which are constructed on the ' W.B.C principle, as I consider it best for all purposes. The little girl seen on top of the hive is my youngest daughter, aged six. She has no fear of the bees, and has never got a sting, whereas the older ones very often get stung. I have at the time of writing only nine hives with bees in them, and I do not care to increase, for I find they are as many as I can manage nicely. Some bee-keepers who spend a lot of time and thought on non-swarming hives will be surprised to hear that I have scarcely ever had a swarm, as I always give the bees plenty of room in advance of require- ments, and this fully answers the purpose of stopping swarming with me. On the question to suffocate in the brimstone-pit, and I used to go often and watch him working amongst them. He went out bareheaded, with leather apron on and sleeves turned up, and I do not remember him getting stung often. My grandfather brewed a kind of beer called ' bregwort' from the honey along with herbs, and he used scarcely any other medicine than this. I got a skep of bees from him in 1887, and started on my own account at Shawhead, about seven miles west of Dumfries. I borrowed a frame-hive from a neighbour as a pattern, and made one in which I put my bees the next year, together with a swarm that they threw, and this same hive and frames have never been empty since. Although there never has been a very big
Text Appearing After Image:
MR. ROBERT HASTINGS' APIARY, MOUNT ANNAN, ANNAN, N.B. of finding a market for my honey, too, I may truly say I have no difficulty whatever in dis- posing of all I can secure at about 8d. per lb. in bulk, or lOd. in either screw-cap jar3 or sections. The photo sent was taken by my employer, but the camera had to be too near to get in all the hives and house. " My first experience of bee-keeping dates back to the time I was at school thirty years ago, although it is just fifteen years since I Btarted on my own account. My grandfather, who was a shoemaker, kept bees in straw skeps, and attended more to them and to growing herbs in his garden than shoemaking, which was left to the journeymen and appren- tice?. He wintered always from ten to twelve skeps, so he generally had several casts return, my bees have always given me some surplus. I was very seldom at home for a number of years, so my mother attended to them, with the help of 'The British Bee- keepers' Book for Beginners.' Twelve years ago I married and settled in Annan, since when I have gone in for bee-keeping in earnest, and have since increased the num- ber of my hives, until I have now nine strong stocks. I give them plenty of room, and very seldom have had a cast or swarm during the last four or five years. Ours is not a very good locality for 'record takes' of honey, bat the honey is mostly of good quality, from white clover and limes ; the heather is too far away, and I think we have too many woods round about for extensive

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