The Lore of the Honey-Bee

IT was in Naples—the Parthenope of the Ancients—that the “best poem by the best poet” was written, nearly two thousand years ago. Essentially an apostle of the Simple Life, the...

IF we are to accept all that the old Roman historians have put on record to the glory of their race, we must believe that their conquering legions found everywhere barbarism, an...

STUDENTS of old books on the honey-bee are generally struck with two very remarkable characteristics about them—their invariable fine old classic and romantic flavour, and their...

IN a village in Southern Sussex, close under the green brink of the Downs, there live two bee-keepers who represent, in their widely divergent methods and outlook, the extremes...

A DOCTOR DRYASDUST will manage to impart to the truths he meddles with a disastrous air of dulness and stagnation; but to walk in a fools’ paradise of beautiful, artistic error...

THE “turn of the days,” when the winter sun has passed its nadir of feebleness and just made its earliest wan recovery in the skies, marks the true beginning of the honey-bee’s...

IT has been said that the ways of the honey-bee are nearly all subject to variation—that in bee-life there are few hard-and-fast, undeviating laws. The rule, of one queen-mother...

At first she is all hesitancy; wandering to and fro amidst the crowd on the hive-threshold; coquetting with the sunshine; loath to return to the dim, pent, murmurous twilight sh...

WATCHING the inner life of the hive in the season of its full activity, it is not the untiring spirit of industry pervading the whole bee-commonwealth that most excites the stud...

THE modern commercial bee-keeper—the man who keeps his bees in hives of the most approved construction, all alike in colour and shape, and all in straight rows—is too prone to l...

THE old “swarm in May,” beloved of ancient beemen, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Modern hives and modern methods, although they have not as yet achieved their main in...

IN the foregoing chapters an attempt has been made to show that the honey-bee lives and moves and has her being in a world which must be actuated by something better than mere i...

IT is characteristic of those unlettered in bee-craft that they are often afraid when there is no danger, and will venture with the intrepidity that is born of ignorance where o...

IT is true that all bee-keepers are enthusiasts, and true that long years spent in the companionship of the hives invariably create a fearless fellowship, a prime understanding...

AS the year grows in the bee-garden, so it goes, with all but imperceptible tread and tread. In southern England, after the seed-hay is down, there is little more for the bees t...

IT is well enough to consider the scientific side of hive-life for its intrinsic interest, to treat it for what it really is—one of the most absorbing studies available for leis...

IT is a quality of English sunshine that it comes and goes capriciously, so that no man may be sure of the comradeship of his shadow from day to day. But when there is sunshine...