s authorities, to impress upon
those who keep apiaries the importance of transporting their bees from
pasture to pasture.

The advantage to weak swarms is very great, "but whilst so little of the
true principles of bee management is understood, as that the destruction
of the bees has been considered absolutely essential, in order to the
attainment of their stores, it is no wonder that so little attention
should have been paid to their cultivation in this country, and that it
should not have proved a more productive department of rural economy."

"Bees, like everything else worth possessing, require care and
attention; but persons generally think it is quite sufficient to procure
a hive and a swarm, and set it down in the middle of a garden, and that
streams of honey and money will forthwith flow; and, perhaps, commence
calculating, from the perusal of the statements of the profits made by
Thorley from a single hive, which he estimates to be 4300_l._ 16_s._
from 8192 hives kept during fourteen years! deducting ten shillings and
sixpence, the cost of the first hive!"

The bar and frame-hives are so constructed that they can be moved from
place to place with the greatest ease, and, perhaps, this may be an
inducement for bee-masters to try the recommendations of transporting
bees, and thus avoid one expense of feeding them during the winter.

Connected with the foregoing subject of transporting bees from place to
place, is the question of the distance to which bees extend their flight
in search of food, &c.; and the comparative excellence of the position
of an apiary depends in some measure on the greater or less distance the
bees will have to fly to their pasturage.

Dr. Chambers, and Dr. Hunter were of opinion, that the bee cannot extend
its flight beyond a mile, which idea they adopted on the authority of
Schirach; but then it must be recollected that the German mile of
Schirach is equal to about 3-1/2 English miles.

It was the opinion of Huber, that the radii of the circle of the
flight of the bee extended nearly to four English miles. And Huish says
"The travelling apiaries of Germany, particularly those of Hanover,
are regulated by the prevailing opinion, that the bee can, and does,
extend its flight to four and even five miles; and acting upon that
supposition, when the bee-masters move their apiaries, they always
travel about two _stunden_, that is, about eight miles, as they then
calculate that the bees are