LECTURE ON BEE-KEEPING.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 204, 29 July 1937, Page 5

LECTURE ON BEE-KEEPING.

POINTS Foil THE. BEGINNER. .‘•Speaking at a .meeting at Ashhurst, on Tuesday, Mr IT. F. Dodson, apiary instructor attached to the Department of Agriculture at Palmerston North, gave a very interesting lecture on bees, covering the whole cycle of their life and giving valuable advice to those considering undertaking the care of hives or the development of an apiary. There was a satisfactory .attendance. The speaker described the queen, worker and drone bees, showing the great egg-laying power of the queen, who was the mother of a hive which might have anything from 25,000 to 75,000 bees in it. The care of (lie queen bv the workers, the organisation of the hive, the collection of the various requirements of the hive, the laying of the eggs and the development of the worker, drone or queen bees, swarming, the seasonal cycle of activities within the hive, tvere subjects touched on, among others, the lecture .being very well illustrated by a series of lantern slides’.

In the second part of his lecture Mr Dodson touched on the make-up of a modern hive, the process of extraction of honey and the various implements used in an apiary. He also gave a number-of hints to beginners, such a s the method of approach to a hive, and the correct way to handle the bees, and proceeded to discuss tlie choice of a site for hives and the choice of a locality, dealing with the different districts and the various types of floral sources of honey. emphasising what a prospective beekeeper should watch for and note. Hints on the marketing of honev closed the lecture.- the speaker pointing out that a person undertaking the keening of bees should find out first what other beekeepers there were in the area concerned, and emphasising that success for the industry involved co-operation, not competition, with fellow-pro-ducers.