¶ESTC T133239. First edition. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries there was much debate in bee-keeping circles as to whether bees should be kept in wooden, wicker or straw receptacles. Some bee-keepers who kept their bees in straw or wicker skeps not only sheltered them in sheds or barns but placed them in 'bee-boles', niches in stone or brick walls. John Keys advocated the use of wooden hives and methods of taking honey from the hives without killing the bees, as was the practice at the time. Keys implies he had retired from 'the avocations of life' and in the preface notes that 'this is his only child; the child of his old age; which, though now weak, sickly, and helpless, he flatters himself, may, by a little of their kind assistance, become extensively useful'. However he published one last work, The Antient Bee-Master's Farewell (1795), in which he developed the methods he had used earlier which he claimed were based upon 30 years experience. This work is noted in an article entitles The Welsh Bee-Keeper published in 2009 by the Welsh Bee Keeping Association, which records Key's address as Bee Hall, Pembroke. This is from evidence taken from his 1795 publication, which implies he moved back to Wales from the Hertfordshire address given here, sometime after 1780. The work is not recorded by ESTC in any Welsh library.