In the establishment of a bee-farm the first care must be the choice of a suitable district. The nature of the surrounding country must largely govern the systems on which the farm can be most profitably worked. The first maxim in successful beemanship is to get all hives filled to the brim with worker-bees by the time the great honey-flow sets in. This time, however, varies according to the district. In the orchard-country we need bees early; in heather-districts we want them late. In south-west England, where the country is half fruit-ground and half moorland, the hives must be huge in population both late and early. But where the bee-keeper follows the sheep-farmer—and there is no better guide to honey than the sheep—his true policy is to work his colonies slowly and steadily up to their greatest strength by the time the main feed-crops come into blossom, which is seldom before the middle of May. And all these considerations land us on the brink of a very vexed question in modern bee-craft—whether bees should be artificially fed, and if so, how and when? If only the purest cane-sugar is used, and the syrup well boiled and never burnt, there is nothing to say against the practice on the score of harm to the stocks. Where early bees are wanted, it is absolutely necessary to give them a continuous supply of sugar-syrup from the first moment that breeding commences in the hives. Chemically, the sweet constituent in nectar is almost identical with that from the sugar-cane; and sugar-syrup has this advantage over honey given—that it more nearly simulates the natural flow. The bees responsible for the nursery-work in the hive and the regulation of the queen’s fecundity, are young bees that have never yet flown. They can, therefore, only judge of the progress of the season by the amount of nectar and pollen coming into the hive. Where this is steadily increasing day by day—and it is this regular natural progress in prosperity which the bee-keeper must strive to imitate in artificial feeding—the nurse-bees gain confidence, and brood-raising forges rapidly ahead.