Few people are unsuited for bee-keeping. The invalid can manage to attend to a few hives during the warm sunny weather in summer without fatigue. The only persons who are really unfitted to take up bee-keeping are those who have not the desire or opportunity to attend to the bees regularly, or those who at first, perhaps, take up the new hobby with great zest, only to leave their pets to neglect when the novelty of the thing has somewhat worn off, or on the occasion of the first difficulty. Such a one should not keep bees. When we become the possessors of dumb animals, which depend more or less upon human aid for their well-being and comfort—and bees certainly do—a responsibility rests upon us which it would be wrong to ignore.
There are few places in this country where bees may not be kept. The heart of a large city is perhaps the most unfavourable place for bee-keeping, but even in London bees have been kept successfully in Regent Street, Holborn, and in other parts. Wherever flowers flourish, bees will generally find a subsistence. In country districts where Dutch clover and sainfoin are largely cultivated, and on the heather-clad moors of Yorkshire and Scotland, they will yield considerable returns of honey in favourable seasons.
On the whole, bee-keeping is a fascinating pursuit to those who are engaged in it, and thus almost every intelligent bee-keeper is more or less of an enthusiast, and there is, I think, a general fellow-feeling and desire to help one another amongst all interested in the craft, be they old hands, beginners, or even merely desirous, would-be bee-keepers, which is a pleasing indication of genuine love of the work they have at heart.
[Illustration: OLD-FASHIONED SKEP AND MODERN FRAME HIVE.]
The best advice I can give to those who intend to start bee-keeping is to go and see a practical bee-keeper living in the neighbourhood, who keeps a few colonies of bees in the modern wooden hives. Choose a warm, sunny day sometime this month for the visit, and ask him to open one of the hives before you, and to explain its contents to you and how to handle the bees.
It will be seen that a bee-hive consists essentially of three separate parts, (1) the floor, (2) the stock-box, and (3) the roof.