If 127 Nest of Vespa sylvestris..ccersecssscscssevenreceesssessceeeeeesteeasestenee sees 163 PREFACE. Very few words are needed by way of preface to this little work. The author trusts that it will be found to be practical, for it has been his intention throughout to m2zke it so simple that any village bee-keeper may with ease follow its teaching, especially those who may have the happiness to possess a hive of bees in the cottage garden, and delight to listen to their cheery song, when seated after the toils of the day on the rustic bench, shaded with the trailing woodbine. It is better to be practical than scientific; nor has the author aimed at any elegance of style, preferring that the merit of the book should lie in its simplicity and reliability. His principal desire has been to benefit the large and increasingly intelligent class of bee- keepers in this country. It is certain anyone can keep bees without the aid of a guide-book or manual xii PREFACE. on bee-keeping, but it is equally true that no one in this age of progress can afford to dispense with the experience of those who have spent years in learning what they are again wishful to teach others. The author hopes that, by the perusal of these pages, he may induce many to keep bees who have not hitherto done so; that he may enable those who have done well with the old fashioned system to do much better in future; and that he may persuade all to become bee-farmers in the true acceptation of the term; for those who have kept only two or three stocks may just as easily and with little extra ex- pense keep a hundred. If they will do so, they may rely on a good income from their bee-farm, for we have no hesitation in saying, that, in pro- portion to the capital expended, bee-farming will be found the most profitable business known. Let Tennyson’s farmer’s proverb be learned by heart at the outset, “Them as has munny has all. Wots beauty? the flower as blaws. But proputty, proputty sticks, an’ proputty, proputty graws.” PREFACE. xiii Then gradually increase your stocks by natural swarming, and look well after your bee-farm ; it will speedily yield a rich return. Remember— The wise and active conquer difficulties By daring to attempt them, Folly and Sloth Shiver and shrink at sight of toil and trouble, And make the impossibilities they fear, FropDsHaAM. PART I. PRACTICAL BEE-FARMING. BEE-FARMING. THIs is anew name; but any trade which gathers the produce of the soil may be called farming, and the place where it is carried on a farm. ‘The culture of bees, therefore, may well be termed Bee-farming. ‘There are so many books on bees, written for the purpose of palming off some hive upon the public, that bee-keeping has obtained an ill name with many, and has often been given up in despair, being looked upon merely as a hobby suitable only for those who can throw away a few hundred pounds upon it. We hope, however, to dispel these illusions. Our experience is this: Bee-farming, if rightly worked, is really a money-making profession, but to make it pro-. fitable we must first throw overboard every hive which is too large to be workable, and then invest a few shillings upon the Italian honey-extractor. No trade can be profitable unless attention and care are expended upon it. In every trade, if instead of throwing all your energy into it you grow careless or idle, and never look after your business, it cannot succeed. Just so with Bee-farming ; look well after your stocks and they will richly reward your efforts. We have no doubt any cottager living in a village, who has fifteen hives, which is but a small number, might derive a far higher income from his bees than from manual labour, if our B a BEE-FARMING. system is adopted. If the hives in the Alps, with very little summer to labour in, can turn out a good honey harvest, what may not an English labourer expect ? To show the yield by good management in the British islands we quote the following from Pettigrew’s work: “ Robert Read, of Carluke, states that from one hive, with its swarms, he obtained, in 1864, 328 lbs. as follows: Mother hive (old stock) . . 92 lbs. First swarm - s . F 160 ,, Second swarm . ‘ ;: ° 96 55 Total . 328 lbs.” In 1866 he had a hive of 148 lbs. In 1869 he took 400lbs. from ten stocks. Our experience has scarcely given so high a yield of honey as the above, partly because our stocks are kept in the neighbourhood of large chemical works, where vege- tation is not nearly so vigorous as in more favoured localities. We live in a practical age. Proposals of all sorts are weighed against gold. “ How much willit bring? Can I turn an honest penny by this business??? We do not pretend to say bee-farmers are rich men, or that the way to a fortune is through a bee-hive, but we do assert that a poor curate, vicar, or cottager working all day on the neighbouring farm, may add to their present small income some 100/, annually from Bee-farming. The fact is here; the honey taken from the combs by the Italian ex- tractor is so limpid and clean that it is easy to obtain eighteen pence per pound for it; each hive in a dry summer will yield at a very low computation 8olbs., thus 6/. is earned; and, as very little more labour is re- quired to look after twenty hives than one, an income BEE-FARMING. 3 of r0o/. annually is not a mere myth, a something impos- sible, but is feasible for any one at all industrious and painstaking. Why, then, do so many farmers’ wives and cottagers after a few years’ experience of bee-keeping give it up in despair? ‘Oh! they don’t pay.” Many good reasons can be assigned why they do not pay. Here is one cause of failure: cottagers still use the common straw skep, all made of one shape and size, and exactly similar in ap- pearance. ‘These hives, sometimes to the number of a dozen, are arranged side by side, in a row, either exposed on a bench, or sheltered by the old-fashioned wooden bee- house. The young virgin queen, when out upon her wedding flight, in returning mistakes the hive, enters that in most cases next to her own, and is not allowed again to escape, but is invariably in a few minutes carried forth dead. In the spring the cottar’s wife, when inspecting her apiary, expecting to see each stock flourishing, is astonished to find one half dead, owing in nine cases out of ten to the above cause. But there are other things practised by cottagers which must always lead to failure. They often reply to the above question, ‘“ When the hives are taken up in the autumn we never find more than five or six pounds of honey in each, and it is not worth our while to bother with them, for in the swarming time we are compelled to watch incessantly, and the time thus lost is never repaid oy our stocks.” ‘This results from the hives being too small. I have each autumn for several years driven a great number of stocks for my neighbours, for the sake of the bees, with which I have improved my weak colonies, or built up new stocks, and [ find the majority of the hives I have saved from the brimstone match have averaged 11 inches by 8 inches (inside measurement). Now, what B2 4 BEE-FARMING. can be expected from hives of this small size? If they possess a prolific queen, the cells, in all the combs except the two small outer ones, are always filled with brood in various stages of development; the room, in fact, is so limited that the queen watches for every vacant cell, and no sooner does.the young bee leave it than it is again tenanted. They are prolific in one thing — that is, swarms. No wonder swarm after swarm issues, because the bees, becoming overcrowded, and having no room for honey storage, must either swarm or perish. To save themselves—for bees are often blessed with more foresight than their proprietors—they raise a queen and swarm. Again, what are the swarms really worth when they do come out? Ihave seen scores of swarms hived as separate colonies which would not, if measured, fill more than a pint. A pint of bees can do but little as a distinct stock. Whilst other branches of rural economy have kept pace with the times, bee-keeping has been, and still is, retrograding amongst cottagers. There are not nearly so many apiaries now as in the days of our forefathers. How is it that bees flourish so well in a wild state in the vast primeval forests of America, so that when a stock is taken from a hollow tree it is not uncommon to secure an hundredweight of honey? Cottage bee-keeping can be made very profitable, if farmed in a proper manner; it will not only pay the rent of the labourer but find cloth- ‘ing also for his family. The old-fashioned small skep must be abolished if success is to be secured. I do not wish to push any expensive bar-frame or costly hive upon my village friends ; it can be done with the same, or less, outlay than at pre- sent. “There are heaths in abundance on which the cheer- ful hum of the honey-bee is seldom heard, and hundreds of acres clothed with white Dutch clover, yielding the purest honey, are waiting to be kissed by the bee, THE SYSTEM OF BEE-FARMING. 5 Cannot this state of things be remedied? We now import an astonishing quantity of both honey and wax from America, not reckoned by hundredweights but by tons, which ought to be produced at home to the benefit of our own land. Let us cry to do it; but first the chief bee-keepers, who are cottagers, must be shown a better plan; then, finding it successful and worth their time and labour in a monetary point of view, they will not be slow learners. A further good will be gained; it will tend to keep the husband at home in the evenings, making and mending hives, or overhauling his stocks, instead of visiting the ale-house. The bee-bench has often had far greater attractions than the beer-bench. THE SYSTEM OF BEE-FARMING. Some fifteen years since, soon after the American Civil ‘War, there came a rumour across the Atlantic from whence we import many hundreds of tons of honey that the system adopted by all the large bee-farmers in the Southern states was far different from the old-fashioned plan (still in use in this country), viz.: destroying the in- dustrious workers when their season of toil is over in the autumn with the reeking fumes of the brimstone pit. The rumour, however, led to no results. Afterwards, we heard through a continental traveller, who had been making extensive inquiries in Italy, principally about the Ligurian or Alp bee, that the Italian method of bee-culture was one worthy of adoption, in fact the only way of making money out of bees. This differed very little from the American systein. We state these facts at the outset, because we lay no claim to originality, seeing ours is not a new or untried system of Bee-farming. Our hope and object is 6 BEE-FARMING. to persuade thousands of our own bee-keepers to begin Bee-farming, and not to be content with merely keeping a few stocks for their amusement. We are thoroughly satished that under this humane method thousands of stocks may be kept where we’ now find single ones in cottage gardens. To come to the point. After keeping bees for nearly twenty years, and trying every plan we could hear of, we have learned one important fact, viz. bees will not thrive or do well, to say nothing of profit, if the hives be too large. It has become quite a rage with some apiarians, principally those who can afford to pay for their hobby, to have immense hives holding about 1oolbs. of honey. We have given this « saticnt and thoughtful trial; the result has been “immense loss from using the immense hives.” ‘The only hive we have found successful is one not more than 12 inches square internally. This is taught us by the fact that our cottagers’ wives who use the old-fashioned skep of about 12 inches square can generally succeed in having a fair honey harvest when their neigh- bours who employ large hives such as the Woodbury can seldom obtain much honey from them, except in unusually good honey seasons, which come round about once in five years. The cottager, however, destroys his. bees in the autumn; this also is a ruinous system. What we want besides the right size of a hive is some way of taking the honey from the bees without destroy- ing either the honey-gatherers or the comb in which it is stored. As the Italian method will do this—it is just the thing we are in need of. Now this system of Bee- farming rests upon the principle of not killing the goose which lays the golden eggs, or not destroying the comb for the sake of getting some 3 or 4lbs. of honey out of it. Each of our small cottage hives would yield about THE SYSTEM OF BEE-FARMING. 7 1lb. of wax if the combs were all melted down. To manufacture this quantity of comb the bees have con- sumed 20]bs. of pure virgin honey. The loss we thus sustain yearly is incalculable. It is a ruinous waste both of the honey and of the time required by the bees to manufacture it into waxen cells. Both the time and honey are saved by this homely plan of Bee-farming. Having secured the right size of hive, the next point is to obtain a honey-extractor. There are several kinds of this machine in the market; ours, which will be fully described in a future page, is a cheap article as well as serviceable; if fairly used it will last and do the work of a large bee-farm for many years. We advise all our readers never to use supers on the hive; let the bees manage their own affairs and send out swarms as often as they like. Placing supers on the top of the hive to secure a supply of virgin honey may seem to a novice very pleasant, but it deters the bees from swarming. Which is best,—a swarm that may be sold for ten shillings or more, and may be worth three times this sum to you, or two or three pounds of honey at the most? Our way never prevents swarming, for the bees, ever active and industrious, go on storing honey day by day; then the plan is this,—about twice a week, in the height of the honey season, puff a little smoke into the entrance of the hive, just to terrify them and make them quiet, then gently slip out the bar at each end of the hive, and having very carefully, if it happens to be sealed over, cut off the tops or caps over the cells by means of a sharp knife kept for the purpose, place it in the extractor in a cool place away from the hives; two or three whirls round completely empty it of all the honey; then give it back again to the bees; the comb not being in the slightest degree injured is again filled in three or four days, to be again emptied out. At each operation not less than six pounds of 8 BEE-FARMING. pure limpid honey comes out of the extractor clean and free from comb, &c. This is worth nine shillings, if sold privately. The honey being so pure, clean, and fresh, sells easily all the season round, which is not the case with the honey pressed out of the dirty comb, filled with decay- ing larvae of the bees, &c. In fact, the black-looking autumn honey is of this description, and tainted as it is with sulphur it is a wonder that any one can think of eating it. Our system, if followed honestly, should bring an annual income of ten pounds per hive. This perhaps is rather a high estimate, but in good honey seasons it will do more than this. In poor seasons it should clear six pounds. Taking swarms into consideration, as part of the profits of the bee-farm, we know of no trade so lucrative as that of a bee-farmer. BEE-FARMER’S HIVE. These being the general principles of our system, we proceed to treat them more fully in detail. And first of the character of the hive. We strongly urge this point to all who wish to become bee-masters, and not only bee- keepers ; any one, even the most unskilled, can keep bees, but very few, alas! as our experience teaches us, are bee- farmers. We should like to make all our readers first-class British bee-farmers, keeping, if circumstances would allow it, fifty hives in their apiary. First, then, see to the hives; discard every hive over which you have not complete control. For instance, drones may increase to an alarming extent, so as to destroy the productiveness of the colony; you must be able at once to change the bars, and to place those bars containing BEE-FARMER'’S HIVE, 9 drone-cells at the end of the hive, where the bees will only use them as honey-storers, and give up rearing any more drones. ‘You cannot do this with a plain straw skep, the bees in these hives will have their own way in spite of you. Or your hive may be working badly, very few bees entering in or flying abroad ; something is evidently going wrong, and the sooner you find it out the better; you may in our small bar-frame hives easily detect what is wrong. Smoke the stock, then pulling out the frames one by one you may find it is queenless; if so, a remedy is at hand ; at once give them a bar from another hive containing eggs just laid; the bees will forthwith with joy commence to rear another queen and during the interregnum will work heartily as ever. If you are ever to make a good income from your apiary you must of necessity select bar-frame hives; with any other it is all up-hill work and constant loss. We have stated the ruinous result of destroying the bees and combs every year just to obtain a few pounds weight of honey. To prevent this incalculable waste yearly, both in bees and treasure (combs), it will be need- ful to obtain a hive with frames easily removable, so as to take out the honey by means of the extractor. The best hive, all points considered, is the bar-frame hive, often amongst British bee-keepers called the “ Wood- bury hive.” There are many modifications of this-hive, either in size, shape, the manner in which the frames are fixed, &c: such as Carr’s improved Woodbury (this is too small, and from this cause alone worthless, if we have an eye to profitable Bee-farming), Siebert-on-the-W old, Major Munn’s bar-frame hive, Pettitt’s bar-frame, Pettitt’s temple- hive, Neighbour’s new frame hive, Lee’s octagon hive, Lee’s Woodbury bar-frame hives, with straw sides, and others almost too numerous to mention. By procuring a good well-made bar-frame hive, and carefully studying its construction, you may, if you can. 10 BEE-FARMING. use a few joiner’s tools, soon make as many as you require for your apiary. Others prefer to buy from some maker, and perhaps our readers will expect me to recommend a maker, but it would be wrong of me to recommend one before another. Try them, as I have done; procure their catalogue, or, what is better still, correspond with them ;. you will find them honourable men and most willing to give any information about hives, &c. Having settled in our minds that wooden hives are in many respects superior to straw, then we must work the bar-frame hives; but first ask yourself this question, whea commencing bee-keeping, “ Shall I work them so as to have a fair quantity of good super honey every season, or do I wish to increase my income from this source”? In ths latter case it will be better not to work them for supers. Many persons who are in good circumstances keep bees for their own amusement; in this case they do not care whether they derive any profit or not; but, on the other hand, there are thousands, such as cottagers and agricultural labourers, who keep bees to procure a few extra blankets for the coming winter—in other words, they wish to make as much money by them as possible. If you purpose keeping bees for amusement more than profit, and wish to make for your own table a little pure honey in the comb, then use only the ordinary bar-frame hives, which contain ten frames. When they exhibit signs of swarming, place a super, such as a neat bell-glass, on the top of the hive; the bees will immediately take to this, and, if the honey harvest is abundant, they will soon fill it with honey. But those who keep bees, hoping to make a profit from them, I would strongly recommend not to attempt to work supers on their hives, but to follow my plan; think not of working supers, which are the common fashion of these days, but hive a large swarm in a bar-frame hive. For BEE-FARMER'S HIVE. II the first fortnight feed them liberally with syrup, which they will rapidly convert into wax for the combs: you will find the bees will repay this kindness with interest. When the bees have filled the frames with comb, the queen will reserve the middle, or those frames situated in the centre of the hive, for breeding purposes, and the bees engaged in storing honey will make use of the frames on the outside; the queen might possibly breed in the outer frames, but I have not known of such a case in my ex- perience. TI have the top board on my hives made in three parts, so that I can remove the outer boards without disturbing the whole stock, or interfering with the breeding arrangements in the centre of the hive. But a chief point is the size of the hive. Ask any bee- keeper who has had in use for any length of time the ordinary size of Woodbury hives—they all have a pitiful tale to tell: “ Our bees do not seem to do well, we rarely see a swarm, and we gather but a small amount of honey from them.” At this hour, from one end of England to the other, we hear only the cry—‘ Oh! bee-keeping is a poor paying game, we wish we had never seen them.” The following fact, which recently took place, may, per- haps, be startling to some, it is nevertheless true. In one of our best conducted weekly magazines we saw advertised six hives with bees, &c. to be sold by a gentleman in the South of England. We wrote, asking price, kind of hive, and his reasons for thus selling his whole stock. His reply was to this effect: ‘“ My bees have cost me many pounds for hives, &c. I have also tried the Ligurian bee, a stock of which cost me 4/., thinking they would be better honey- makers, but my experience, if it is worth anything, is that they are nothing but a constant loss and vexation. I have only obtained eighteen pounds of honey the whole of last season. I had only one swarm last year, which I gave my man. I cannot tell how it is, they do me no good, for J 12 BEE-F ARMING. have the best Woodbury hives, each containing thirteen bars; one of my neighbours, a poor widow, has cleared more than her rent last year from honey, and she keeps none but the common straw hives.” The above will afford us a lesson, if we only faithfully listen to its teaching. Here is a wealthy gentleman, who has given about 2/. each for his hives alone, yet he con- fesses he is sick of spending his money, and obtaining no return for his investment, while a poor cottager in the same village does well. Why? Because she has only hives, so far as size is concerned, just suited to the require- ment of the bees; her bees are comfortable, they fill the hive with ease, swarm abundantly, and give her an abun- dant harvest, whilst her neighbour, with all his wealthy appliances, fails completely, because his hives are too large— the bees never fill them, they become dispirited, never swarm, and yield a poor return. The words of Mr. Miner, an American bee-farmer, are worth listening to, for very few have had such extensive experience, or have kept such an enormous apiary :— “Various are the reasons for making all hives of the same size. Ifwe make them too sma// the bees are liable to perish from the effects of an unfavourable winter, in consequence of the weak condition of the family. The queen in such cases, as before stated, is curtailed of her necessary room, and not as many bees will be produced ; and whatever operates as a check to the production of larve is a fatal error in the management of bees. “ If we construct our hives tvo /arge the bees will require two years to fill them, and the natural increase by swarming is lessened, and in some cases entirely prevented, for a series of years. Hives of this character are those made about fourteen inches in diameter, by about fifteen or eighteen inches in length. Such a size I consider to be opposed to the natural requirements of the bee BEE-FARMER’S HIVE, 13 «When bees are placed in hives adapted to their natural wants, giving no excess of room, nor curtailing the use of such space as they actually require, they then cast off their first swarm of such numbers as nature teaches them are best adapted to prove prosperous, and it matters not how large your hive may be if a swarm be cast, which is sel- dom in families with large hives; it will not be in proportion to the size of the hive but in accordance with the laws of nature governing the bee. “T have found, from many years of close application to the nature, economy, and general management of bees, that hives about one foot square in the clear, that is, in the inside, conform more to the natural habits and require- ments of bees than any other size. “In 1842 I had a few hives made 12 by 18 inches in the clear, that is 12 inches wide and 18 inches long. I found that it took the bees two seasons to fill my large hives, and, when filled, they did not swarm at all some seasons, for the reason that, however great may be the quantity of bees in the hive in the summer, they dwindle away before spring to a certain quantity, and thus leave a vacant space at the bottom of the hive of some six inches or more, to be filled up with the increase of spring, while smaller hives are full and are throwing off swarms in profusion. Here lies the philosophy of adapting the hive to the natural wants of the bee. I will illustrate this fact by a case. ‘‘ An apiarian placed a swarm of bees in a hive about 14 inches in diameter by 2 feet in length: the bees might possibly fill the hives with combs the second year, but swarming is entirely out of the question with a stock of bees in such a hive. The increase of every suc- ceeding year disappeared before the spring following, since all the bees existing in hives in the spring of the year, save the queen, were the young of the preceding summer and fall. Now ten years have past, and this hive is in pre- 4 BEE-FARMING. cisely the same condition that it was in nine years ago. Not a single swarm has ever issued therefrom. “ven gene- rations of bees have existed, nine of which are passed away. «We now pass to what would have been the result if the swarm had originally been put in a hive about twelve inches square. «© The second year a swarm would have issued without doubt, and perhaps two, but we will say one, in order to be on the safe side, as it is not my intention to give an over- wrought picture in anything that I may discuss. We will now take the very reasonable and low estimate of one swarm from every stock every season, and count up how many would be the result at the end of ten years. « aureum Saxifraga hypnoides » cespitosa - crassifolia I11.—From the heginning Allium Schenoprasum Fritillaria meleagris Lilium Martagon Asphodelus luteus Polygonatum officinale 3 multiflorum Iris graminea »> germanica »» pallida > sibirica Polygonum Bistorta (also pollen) Rheum undulatum (also pollen) »» Thaponticum (also pollen) Populus balsamifera propolis Armeria maritima Salvia pratensis » verticillata Betonica officinalis Melittis melissophyllum Origanum creticum » Onites Amygdalus nana = communis Persica vulgaris Prunus Armeniaca »Mahaled Orobus vernus Esculus hippocastanum Geranium phzum (also wax) Viola odorata Arabis alpina Aubrietia deltoidea as columnz a microstyla Barbarea vulgaris Lunaria rediviva » biennis Corydalis cava 6 solida Helleborous fetidus Adonis vernalis (pollen) of Fune till the end of Ful. Digitalis purpurea » ambigua oy «site: Veronica latifolia Polemonium ceruleum Syringa vulgaris » persica Centaurea scabiosa Valeriana officinalis Diervilla canadensis Lonicera Peryclymenum » caprifolium Cratzegus coccinea 9 nigra Rosea lutea » Spinosissima Fragaria chilensis $s grandiflora » Virginiana Cytisus Laburnum Robinia Pseud-Acacia PLANTS SUITABLE FOR BEE-CULTURE, Pavia flava and carnea Ruta graveolens Dictamnus Fraxinella Althea officinalis x «rosea Reseda odorata Sinapis alba and nigra 91 Isatis tinctoria Papaver somniferum (pollen) Berberis Aquifolium Aquilegia vulgaris Thalictrum flavum T. aquilegifolium IV.— From the end of Fuly till the middle of September. Anthericum ramosum (also pollen) Gladiolus floribundus Lilium candidum (also pollen) Gladiolus gandavensis Polygonum Sieboldii Cannabis sativa (pollen) Statice Limonium Lavandula officinalis Dracocephalum Moldavicum Salvia zthiopis + hispanica Monarda didyma ” punctata ” barbata a Kalmiana Teucrium chamedrys Leonurus cardiaca Pentstemon barbatum Nicotiana rustica m Tabacum 33 macrophylla Physalis Alkekengi Borago officinalis Cerinthe major ay gymnandra Hydrophyllum virginicum Phacelia congesta Nolana paradoxa Convolvulus tricolor Ipomea coccinea Asclepias Syriaca Campanula Medium 55 pyramidalis = carpatica Lobelia Erinus Solidago virg-aurea Senecio sarracenicus Helianthus annuus ” argyrophyllus Tagetes patula Echinops exaltatus ” sphzrocephalus Centaurea moschata Sanvitalia procumtens Ageratum mexicanum Helenium pumilum Silphium amplexicaule (pollen) Cephalaria transsylvanica Scabiosa lucida (pollen) os atropurpurea (pollen) Sicyos angulata Bryonia alba et dioica Heuchera americana 33 divaricata Sedum Fabaria Portulaca oleracea propolis Lythrum salicaria 5 flexuosum Godetia albescens (pollen) Clarkia pulchella » elegans Qénothera Lamarckiana (also pollen} Epilobium angustifolium Spirea hypericifolia » chamedrifolia Rubus odoratus (pollen) Rhus typhina (pollen) Balsamina hortensis 92 BEE-FARMING. Linum perenne Bunias orientalis Melianthus major Macleya cordata (pollen) Lavatera trimestris (pollen) Delphinium Ajacis a thuringiaca (pollen) 3 grandiflorum Kitaibelia vitifolia (also pollen) Nigella sativa Kélreuteria paniculata » damascena Reseda odorata » hispanica Hesperis matronalis Dr. Miinter makes one more period—namely, from the middle of September till October, and includes the colchicums as well as some of the foregoing plants,—so much depends upon the weather after the beginning of September as to what bees will do. POLLEN, OR BEE-BREAD. Many erroneous notions prevail amongst bee-keepers respecting pollen. If you watch the entrance to the hive about noon on a very warm day in summer, you will per- ceive, if the hive is prosperous and possesses a fertile queen, many of the worker bees carrying in a quantity of yellow, brown, or reddish substance on their legs (in fact they are so heavily laden that they can scarcely Ay)—this is often, though erroneously, supposed to be materials for making the wax. Walk round the garden border, and perhaps on one of the beds you will find some showy white lillies; upon examining the centre of the flower you will see a few yellowish-looking heads or knobs, sup- ported on long stalks, these are what botanists call the stamens ; the heads, which are filled with yellow powder, are known by the name of anthers; the stalks are the filaments, and the powder itself is pollen, or the fertilizing agent in plants. The anthers when ripe split up the sides, then the pollen grains fall upon the viscid or gluey stalk which you see exactly in the centre of the flower, POLLEN, OR BEE-BREAD. 93 called the stigma, so as to fertilise the young seeds; but in every flower there are many thousands of pollen grains more than are needed for the purpose of fertilisation ; yet in nature nothing is wasted; the little industrious bee comes in for his share, often a lion’s share. The bee uses the pollen not for making its combs to store the honey in, but only for feeding its young whilst in the larva or grub state. Some think it is eaten for food by the mature bees; this also is a mistake. Huber demonstrated very clearly that it was used only for the young brood. For example, he confined a colony of bees to the hive con- taining no honey, but having in the cells a great amount of pollen or bee-bread; the bees in a short time died, leaving the bee-bread untouched in the cells. Then he placed a large quantity of young hatched brood in the hive containing much honey but not a particle of pollen; the young brood all perished, and were found dead and decaying in the cells. This proves that the bee-bread gathered in a breeding season in such large quantities is used solely to nourish the brood. Experiments have been made by Langstroth and others to test the disputed question as to whether the bees consume the bee-bread when building the comb, or only honey. It was found by Langstroth that bees confined in a hive with both honey and bee-bread, but without any brood in the cells, consumed both when rapidly secreting wax to build the combs; but Gundelach, a German bee- keeper, found that bees with a fertile queen, confined to the hive and supplied only with honey, rapidly built a comb, in which the queen deposited eggs; but, after the eggs were hatched, the young larva could not be fed with pollen—it died in every case within twenty-four hours. Every intelligent bee-keeper will watch his hives most jealously early in the season, from the last week in January or the first week in February. If tie bees are 94 BEE-FARMING. carrying no pollen to the hive the queen has not com- menced to deposit her eggs. It is a joyous sign to the bee-master to see the little workers (really very small in size after the winter’s idleness) loaded with pollen early in the year; he knows then that all is doing well inside the hive, the queen must be healthy, and it is also the best sign he can have that he may look for early swarms ; but, if no bee-bread has been carried in by March, he should begin to suspect that something is wrong. ‘The hive ought to be at once overhauled, the queen examined —most probably the hive under these circumstances will be found queenless. If the worker bee is carefully observed, it will be seen. covered with small hairs, and if followed to the flower where pollen is abundant it will be seen to roll itself over the anthers, or by going down the tubes of the flower the pollen dust falls upon it, then it scrapes as it were the pollen off its legs, and gathers it together in a hollow (in. bee-books called a basket) on the thigh. When the laden bee has returned to the hive, it somehow attracts the attention of others; these, perhaps engaged in feeding the larva, take a portion, sometimes all the pollen, from its legs. This may be required for immediate use, as suggested by Langstroth; however, the hard-worked bee is not always aided in unloading, for often when the pollen is being brought to the hive in abundance the bee has to take and press it down one of the cells. It is very interesting to watch this operation; it places the lower half of the body in the cell and scrapes off the pollen with its legs in the same manner that it pressed it on the thighs when in the flower. Not unfrequently the bee finds it dificult to press the pollen in lumps on its legs ; then in this dilemma it rolls amongst the anthers, and returns to the hive with its body thickly covered with the powder. We have tried to find out the reason for this non-adhesive- POLLEN, OR BEE-BREAD. 95 ness of the pollen dust; at first we thought it must be because of moisture, as it will be observed that large quantities of the powder are thus carried early in the morning succeeding a rainy day; but I have since disco- vered that many plants produce pollen which is not adhe- sive under any circumstances; such pollen, when ex- amined with high power under the microscope, is found to be spherical (like an orange). Other grains, such as the crocus, snowdrop, &c., which are oblong in shape are very adhesive, but that from the dandelion and many composite flowers is non-adhesive. The pollen from the mallow, the cheese-cakes of children, is very beautiful when magnified ; studded over with a multitude of sharp points, resembling thorns, thus making it very adhesive. When more bee-bread is collected than is sufficient for the immediate use of the brood, it is stored away in worker cells; first it is tightly pressed down in the cell by the head of the bee, until the cell is rather more than two-thirds full, Over the bee-bread a little honey is placed, afterwards the cell is sealed up with wax, to await a rainy day, or a time when the pollen is scarce. An im- mense number of the cells are found in old hives in winter, when the whole colony is resting from their labours, partly filled with bee-bread. ‘These are unsealed, and the cells are never sealed or covered over with wax unless filled either with young brood, honey, or bee- bread. If something could be discovered that would supply the place of the bee-bread in early spring, so as to induce the queen to deposit her eggs shortly after Christmas or at the beginning of the new year, it would be hailed with delight by every intelligent bee-keeper. It is true the German apiarians supply their stocks in February with finely-ground rye-flour, and it is said the bees carry it into their hives with evident pleasure. Dzierzon first made the discovery by 96 BEE-FARMING. observing his colonies carry it into the hives from a mill close by. If the queen can be persuaded to deposit her eggs early in the season, it must have the effect of strengthening the stocks with young bees, and they be- come exceedingly strong just when the honey-harvest is commencing; thus a great advantage is gained. Many stocks are, comparatively speaking, worthless, simply be- cause weak through being late hatched. It should be borne in mind, when seeking a substitute for pollen, that it is a substance highly nitrogenous; both unbolted wheaten, rye, and barley flour contain a fair propor- tion of nitrogen, and might be serviceable in very late seasons. A good plan to feed the hives with flour is to place it on a large dinner-plate at a little distance from the apiary, and on stands about the same height from the ground as the hives, care being especially exercised to keep the flour very dry and free from moisture. Each bee collects. apparently only from one kind of plant. We judge this, because if they gathered it from several different kinds of plants the pollen would doubtless be of several colours. After most careful scrutiny I have never observed a bee with more than one colour of pollen on its legs. The bees in spring, when new pollen begins to be plentiful, although they may have a large stock of last year’s pollen in the hive, disregard this and prefer the new bee-bread; but, if unfavourable weather comes on, the old pollen rapidly disappears. Our large timber or forest trees yield a rich harvest of bee-bread for the bees. About one of the first trees which afford aid to the hives is the elm; long before its leaves appear the naked branches are clothed with thousands of clusters of reddish-looking flowers, and one of the most pleasant sounds in early spring is the hum of bees gathering pollen from the elm avenue, especially on a fine day, POLLEN, OR BEE-BREAD. 97 warmed with the sun’s genial rays. Amongst the crocus, anemone, and snowdrop beds the bees collect their first and earliest supply of pollen; and, as soon as these are fading, the lesser celandine puts in an appearance on every sunny bank, This was Wordsworth’s favourite flower :— “The first gilt thing That wears the trembling pearls of spring.” Wordsworth, Nature’s poet, hailed this humble blossom every spring with great delight. By some disease of the respiratory organs he was confined the greater part of the winter to his house, but, when the warm days of spring came again, he felt pleased to be in the fields, where gene- rally the first plant he hailed and welcomed too as a harbinger of bright and warmer days was the lesser celandine. Then the dandelion and daisy follow in rapid succession, and the fields are shortly clad with a golden dress of buttercups :— “ Buttercups and daisies, Oh, the pretty flowers, Coming in the spring time To tell of sunny hours. When the trees are leafless, When the fields are bare, Glossy golden buttercups Spring up here and there.” No sooner does the month of May (the flowery month of our forefathers) come in than the pollen-gatherers tind plenty to do—from this month until September there is no scarcity of bee-bread. The honey-harvest may and often does fail by the beginning of August, but the flowers must yield pollen long afterwards. The latest that I can ever remember the bees to be collecting bee-bread was until November in 1869. It is but seldom the Abrist, horticulturist, or farmer thinks how greatly he is indebted to the little honey and H 98 BEE-FARMING. pollen-gatherer for his beautiful flowers, rich luscious fruits, and splendid seed-harvests. Many flowers cannot be fer- tilised; no perfect seeds or fruits can be produced without the direct agency of insects. It has been proved without doubt that many stone fruits cannot “set’? without the ee conveying pollen to the stigma. In springs when much unfavourable cold weather prevails, accompanied with easterly winds, the honey-bee very seldom under such circumstances leaves the hive; in the meantime, the plum, damson, and cherry trees have bloomed without the usual friendly visits of the bee, the consequence being great scarcity of these fruits. The farmer will probably say: “ Oh, it is the fault of the cold easterly winds;” it may be so, we freely confess, so far as confining and making involuntary prisoners of the poor bees; for, if the bees had been able to sing their cheerful hum amid the flowers, there would have been no scarcity of fruits. The bee is often much blamed in the south of Europe for eating the tender grapes; the bee is not able, however, to bite the outer skin, but it does eat the soft pulp inside the tough skin when it finds any fruits that are bruised. ‘The wasp or hornet are the real enemies to fruits, and not the bee; they are provided with strong jaws for sawing wood, of which their cells are composed, where the larva is reared in their nests; but the honey-bee has not the strong saw- like jaws of the wasp, and is wholly incapable of injuring the most tender fruits, Watch the wasp, or rather the hornet, on the pear-trees, eating the finest and most ripe fruit it can find, and you will at once discover the real “rascal,?? and the worst thief the horticulturist has to deal with, 99 PROPOLIS, OR HIVE CEMENT AND VARNISH. The fact that bees are excellent architects and builders has been known from very early times. The greater part of their building is composed of wax, but as houses require besides bricks and stones cement or mortar, so bees also have their cement, which they use to fasten securely the new and delicate combs to the top of the hive ; not only so, they make their dwelling both wind and water tight, by cementing up most securely even the smallest crevice or opening, though not larger than a pin’s head. As our polishers and painters to complete their work varnish it over, so the bees, when the cells are complete—if not immediately tenanted and filled either with honey, oee- bread, or the young bees—coat them over with a thin film of varnish. About the end of March or commencement of April, a little before sundown, the atmosphere is some- times filled with a balsamic perfume, a pleasant hum is distinctly audible, unheard in the busy part of the day ; the perfume arises from the balsam poplar, whose leaf-buds — are now, under the genial influence of spring, rapidly expanding ; the gum or gluey substance, which coated the buds like hard varnish, and rendered them impervious to wintry rains, frost, and snow, is being eagerly gathered by the bees ; hence the humming sound. Why do they collect this sticky stuff? was a question once placed before the writer. “Che answer cannot be better given than by quoting the experience of the learned though blind Huber. One spring, to observe their mode of gathering the gum, he planted in pots near his apiary a quantity of the branches of the balsam poplar, before the buds were expanded, “ The bees alighted on them, H2 100 BEE-FARMING. separated the folds of the large buds with their forceps, extended the varnish in threads, and loaded first one thigh and then the other, for they convey it like pollen, trans- ferring it from the first pair of legs to the second, by which it is lodged in the hollow of the third.” This cement, gathered like pollen from many sources, is called “ propolis; ” it is a very hard substance, at least it hardens soon after it is employed by the bees. I have seen perforated zinc used at the top of the hive for feeding, &c. when uncovered for a few days become coated over with propolis, so hard and tough that it is necessary to employ a sharp knife to detach it from the zinc plate. It is principally the gummy exudation of trees, from leaf-buds and bark; sometimes when doors are newly varnished bees will eagerly scrape off the varnish to use as propolis, and they have been known to gather the pitch from boats and vessels as they are floating up canals. A friend of mine who keeps an apiary on the banks of a canal was at first puzzled to account for his bees working about the masts and ropes of the barges that were going to and fro, and returning laden with a brownish substance on their legs, which he thought for a long time was pollen; in this case it was a mixture in which pitch mingled largely. Inthe summer of 1868 J was preparing a jar of Venice turpentine. After melting the resin and mingling with it the turpentine, I un- thinkingly left it exposed in my garden walk. Whilst very hot it emits a strong odour, which may be detected at a long distance; this attracted my poor bees, who, no doubt, thinking they were about to gather rich spoils of propolis, alighted on the surface and were as quickly killed. The slaughter was very great; I found not less than 1500 bees destroyed. The jar was filled to the brim with dead and dying bees. The hollyhock buds yield a supply of propolis, which PROPOLIS, OR HIVE-CEMENT. Iol the bees largely appropriate; they collect it also from the birch and alder bark, and in abundance from the bark of various firs and pines. In spring the horse-chestnut buds are large and conspicuous; when unfolding the gummy matter is softened, and this the industrious insects pick off. This gum has been known to entrap small birds, notably the golden-crested wren, in the same manner as birdlime, yet it can be carried away by the small weak bee. Such is the fact, for I never yet saw a bee fastened to it, although I have searched on the buds expecting this result. It takes a much longer time for them to collect this worthless product than either honey or pollen, therefore it a substitute to save this waste of time can be placed within easy access, or close to the apiary, by all means let it be done. Langstroth says, “Io men time is money, to bees it is honey ;”? not only is time lost in collecting it, but it takes a much greater time to make use of it, from its glutinous or tough character. A composition of one part of bees-wax with three of resin has been recommended to be placed in a dish beside the apiary. We have, however, thought that if this composition was made and placed near the hives, like everything else collected by bees, they would not rest contented until it was all carried off, and inside the hives would soon be one mass of propolis; in the end it would become a perfect nuisance, both tu the bees and all cleanly apiarians. For my part, speaking, too, from experience, what they require let them gather, but do not leave any newly-varnished work unwatched or unguarded until perfectly hard, when it will defy all attac«s. The most important use to which propolis is applied by bees is to fasten securely the newly-made combs. They use it also for other purposes. About August, 1869, I witnessed in a neighbouring apiary a deadly struggle going on betwixt a colony of bees in a common straw hive and wasps. The entrance or mouth of the hive was, 102 BEE-FARMING. as is too often the case in cottagers’ skeps, too large, no attempt being made by the owner to make it less, so as to give the bees a better chance to defend their home against the wily enemies, who were rapidly depopulating the hive and eating up their hoarded winter’s store of honey. I anxiously watched the result from day to day, and in the end I was much pleased by seeing the bees victorious. I placed a small pebble in the mouth of the hive to con- tract the entrance a little, and the following fact will show the foresight of these marvellous insects. They went out in crowds to a fir plantation, so I supposed, about half a mile distant, and returned laden with propolis; by degrees, but quickly, considering the circumstances, the mouth was built uc and narrcwed, so that only about three bees could pass and repass at one time. Then the bees were quite prepared to fight for their queen and colony. Two or three sentinels were placed on the alighting board, who appeared to give warning to those inside when an enemy was in sight, and if he attempted to enter he was compelled to beat a hasty retreat. “This hive became a valuable stock the following season, and waz sold by the fortunate owner for a goodly sum. Other uses are found for this cement. Maraldi, on one occasion, found a large black snail had worked its way into the interior of one of his wooden hives. “The bees stung it so fiercely as to cause its death, The next ques- tion was how to remove its large slimy body, which if left inside the heated hive would soon putrefy and become offensive ; in this extremity, they, as if by agreement, neglected the other work of the hive, and went forth in a strong body. Maraldi for a time was left in doubt as to their intention; however, they soon returned laden with propolis, which they applied to the dead body, and thus coated it over with an impervsous cement, rendering it inoffensive. PROPOLIS, OR HIVE-CEMENT. 1U03 Another snail story is recorded by Dr. Bevan as having occurred in the apiary of M. Réaumur. A garden-snail with hard shell crawled one evening through che entrance of the hive, apparently unnoticed by the sentinels guarding the entrance; at least, having a hard shell, the bees, we should judge, were unable to destroy it by their stings. Next morning M. Réaumur observed it resting with slime upon the glass with which one side of the hive was covered ; at the same moment he noticed the bees were wild and excited, evidently disliking their strange visitor, who had so coolly taken up his quarters as a tenant in their home, and as the sequel will show he was destined to be a permanent fixture in the hive, for they applied propolis dexterously around the edge of the shell in contact with the glass; this when hardened was as firm as cement, and securely fastened the snail to the glass, so that he was unable to stir from the spot where he had ensconced himself. I have heard of the body of a mouse being encased in propolis similar to the snail, but cannot vouch for it as a fact. Bees collect propolis in the gredtest quantity about noon. It is very seldom gathered either in the early morning or in the evening, whilst honey and pollen are both brought to the hive at all hours, Propolis can be collected best in the heat of the day, when softened by the sun. According to Vanquelin, who analysed it direct from the hive, it consists of one part of wax to four of resin. When brought to the hive it is of a soft, pliant nature, but in a few hours so rapidly does it harden that ofttimes it is difficult for the bees to tear it away from the legs of those who have gathered it. When an old-fashioned cottager’s skep has stood on the stand for a few months it is so firmly glued down with propolis as to be immov- able, except a knife is passed between the straw and the 1O4 BEE-FARMING. stand ; even if it be loosened they are not long in again securing it, perhaps led by some instinctive dread lest their home with its beloved contents should be swept off by a gale of wind. I stated above, propolis is gathered from many sources. Mr. Knight observed his bees tearing away the varnish, composed of wax and turpentine, which he had applied cover the trunks of some of his trees where the bark had been lost, and Dr. Evans spent many hours watching them gather the viscid substance found on hollyhock buds. He states they would rest ten minutes on the same bud, first moulding the substance with the fore-feet, then trans- ferring it to the hind legs, somewhat after the same manner that pollen is gathered. Propolis is never stored in the cells for future use; it is gathered when most needed by the colony. For example, Réaumur placed a new swarm in a hive made of wood and glass. The glass was carelessly fastened: only with paper and paste. “Ihe bees immediately discovered this defect, .and saw the glass was insecure, therefore they indignantly gnawed away the paper and fastened the glass securely with propolis. Insects of all kinds seem to abhor turpentine, and look upon it in the same light that we should regard poison ; but bees frequently gather it when mingled with either wax or resin, as in the varnish used by Mr. Knight to his trees. HOW TO AVOID THE BRIMSTONE-PIT. No apiarian has laboured more effectually for the aboli- tion of the brimstone-pit among cottagers than the late Rev. W. C, Cotton. About the year 1838 he sent out two letters addressed especially to the cottage bee-keepers of England, containing much practical good sense and HOW TO AVOID THE BRIMSTONE-PIT. 105 advice, under the title of a “ Bee-Preserver.” He after- wards collected other information and valuable notes upon apiculture, which, together with the two before-named letters, he incorporated into a volume called “My Bee Book.” Mr, Cotton’s plan was to stupefy the bees with the fumes produced by burning puff balls, or puff fungus, a plant not uncommonly seen in fields in the autumn, gathered half-ripe and carefully dried; then to shake out the bees, cut out the combs, and replace the bees in the hive, and in the evening, having fumigated another full hive, to introduce into it the bees out of the combless hive. This method, though it has doubtless proved service- able to many cottagers, is not so easy as the simple driving system, which I will now describe, HOW TO DRIVE BEES, Choose a fine warm day between 10 A.M. and I P.M., when the bees are actively engaged working in the fields. First prepare two empty straw hives, one of them as nearly resembling in shape and size the stock to be operated upon as possible—a long roller towel with the seam removed so as to be used in one length—a long piece of strong cord, a small roll of linen rags, and a bucket. Inexperienced per- sons are recommended to wear a bee dress. Stand the bucket firmly on the ground, two or three yards from the condemned hive, and having lighted the roll of linen rags with a match, so as to cause it to smoulder and produce a good quantity of smoke, then gently blow the smoke into the entrance of the hive; just a few whiffs are sufficient. Having done this, frequently the cottage hive, especially if it has stood on the bench unmolested for a couple of years, will be found to be firmly fastened with propolis to the 106 BEE-FARMING. stand ; if so, pass a knife betwixt the board and the hive all round. Then lift up the hive and blow a few puffs of smoke amongst the combs to cause the bees to retire to the top of the hive. At this stage of the process the bees will not be inclined to fly about; on the contrary they are generally very peaceable. Now carefully carry the hive and place it in the bucket, with the crown downwards, at the same instant covering it with one of the empty hives, and wind around the part where the two hives join, the roller towel, to prevent any bees from escaping, and tie it firmly on with a cord (four turns of the string is sufficient, two around the lower and two around the upper hive). Having proceeded thus far successfully, you may rest a moment, not forgetting at this stage to place on the stand exactly where the hive stood the other empty hive; this will perhaps prevent fighting with the other stocks, and cause the bees who have been out working to enter it. If the day be sultry, and working hard in the sun un- pleasant, remove the bucket containing the two hives to some shady spot, beneath a tree if possible, and commence drumming smartly with both hands on the lower hive, at the bottom of which the bees are gathered; for directly bees are surrounded with or smell the smoke they become terrified and rush to the top of their hive, where the honey cells are generally found, to fill their honey bags. The bees, if a constant drumming is kept up, are not long in quitting their domicile, and clustering on the top of the empty hive; generally speaking the driving is complete in fifteen minutes, although sometimes it is very difficult to. make them quit their old hive. It must never be at- tempted on a dull rainy day ; choose only a fine and warm day, smoke well, and the driving is easy. After beating the under hive for a quarter of an hour, unloose the towel,. and look carefully inside the hives if all the bees are seen clustering like a swarm on the top of the empty skep, UNITING STOCKS. 107 cept perhaps a few stragglers; remove the hive now containing the bees to the stand, to take the place of the old skep, and leave it there until evening. When driving put your ear close to the top hive, and listen; if the swarming hum (a peculiarly sweet sound made by the wings) is heard, all is going on satisfactorily. But, if no humming sound is audible, they have not been terrified or smoked sufficiently. The few bees left amongst the combs may be either shaken out on the ground, or, what is better still, brushed out with a feather ; they will not be long in returning to their companions on the stand. Now attend to the hive with the combs. If it is left in the neighbourhood of the bee-house an hour or two, probably very little honey will be found in it when wanted. Remove it at once to a cool room where the bees have no access. It is also a wise plan to drain out the honey from the combs after nightfall, to prevent robbing by the bees ; it is very unpleasant to have them buzzing around the room, which they most certainly will be if honey is scented in working hours. UNITING STOCKS, The driven bees will not do much good if left to them- selves, without comb and honey, and with winter coming on. Examine all the remaining stocks; very likely you have a second swarm (often called a cast), which are weak and contain but few bees. “You will do well to strengthen these, or any weak stock you have in the apiary, by uniting with them the driven bees. In the evening again put a match to the linen rags, and blow a few whiffs of smoke into the weak hive in which you purpose placing the con- demned stock. Spread on the ground opposite the hive a tablecloth, on which place two walking-sticks, or other supports, for the hive to rest upon, so that no bees will be 108 BEE-FARMING. crushed, and with a sudden blow knock out all the bees in the combless hive betwixt the two sticks, and as quickly as possible lift the weak hive from the stand and put it on the sticks over the bees. The bees scrambling over the cloth will not be long in seeking shelter in the hive, where they generally receive a hearty welcome. Next morning, when you remove it to the stand, one of the queens will be found dead on the cloth; the strongest as a rule will be the reigning queen in the double hive. The bees when mixed together or united are very seldom known to fight. I have not known a single instance of fighting, although I have in the autumn for several years united a great number. I have had seven distinct stocks thus mingled, so as to form one large colony. If there is the slightest chance that the bees will not be received kindly when united as above, adopt another plan. Soon after you have driven the first stock, smoke the weak stock, and drive them in the same way you pro- ceeded with the condemned stock, only drive them into the same hive, so that they both are alike terrified and alarmed, and mingle peaceably together. “Then, at once, do not wait for evening, knock them out upon the cloth, and place the original hive, with combs, &c., over them, and they will ascend, joyfully humming their delightful song of peace. ‘Thus, with very little trouble, you will secure a good stock of bees. If they winter well, and come out healthy in the spring, they will probably send out an early and strong swarm, besides being in good con- dition for securing the honey harvest, whereas the weak colony would have done very little good; nay, I have in- variably found them to cost more in watching and feeding than they were worth, PART IL. INHABITANTS OF THE HIVE. Itt NOTES AND HINTS ABOUT BEES, To persons not much acquainted with bees the fol- lowing notes and hints may be useful:— Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. 1. Fig. 2. Fig. 3. 1. The Queen Bee: the head is of a triangular shape; her wings very short, not extending beyond the one-half of her body, which is longer, and more pointed, than that of the working bees. Her legs and corselet are copper- coloured; thorax grey, and abdomen brown. There is only one queen to a hive; while there are from 10,000 to 15,000 workers, and perhaps 1000 or 1200 drones. 2. The Drone, or Male Bee; the head is round, its large body is almost entirely covered by its wings. It has no sting. The drones appear only at the season of swarming, and are all put to death by the workers in the autumn. 3. The Working Bee. Head somewhat tri- angular; the smallest and most numerous of the hive, which every one knows as the honey-bee, It builds the combs, makes the honey, and feeds the young. 112 BEE-FARMING. Queen-bees are matured on the fourteenth day from the egg being deposited in the royal cells, and will usually begin to lay eggs fourteen days after maturity. Worker Bees are matured in twenty-one days from the egg. Drones require twenty-four days from the egg. Stock Hives are without brood on the twenty-fourtl: day after swarming, which is the best time to turn them out, if this be desirable. Casts, or Second Swarms, need not be watched for later than the tenth or fourteenth day after a natural swarm. Second swarms are always preceded by piping. Third Swarms will occasionally follow the second, either the same or the following day: but should always be returned the same evening to the old hive. Situation of Apiary must always be in a sheltered spot ;. Le sure about this. Keep your Stocks strong: without this it is impossible to succeed as a Bee-farmer. A moderate increase of stocks every year is the best plan. Always smoke the hive before meddling with the combs. Bees gorged with honey never venture to attack any one; they are, therefore, quite harmless and quiet when swarming. Veigh every Hive in September, and feed up to about 18 lbs, Ventilate your hives thoroughly at commencement of the winter. Cleanliness is most important. Be sure to keep hives,. extractor, feeder, &c. clean. Watch your hives as keenly as the bees do against enemies, such as moth, wasps, mice, &c. in September and October. THE QUEEN-BEE. 13 Make entrance very small in winter, and enlarge it as required in summer. Transfer a new swarm both to the hive and stand they are to occupy permanently on the day they issue from the old hive. Distance between your hives should be about three feet. Fighting. If you perceive any hive being robbed, close the entrance for twenty-four hours; if the fighting con- tinues, remove the hive some distance away. Luck. No such thing is known in bee-management, it is care and forethought. Try again, If you are disgusted with the old system and have given it up in despair, let us persuade you to try again; you may depend upon having a generous return for your trouble if you follow the calling of a bee-farmer faithfully. THE QUEEN-BEE. ‘The queen-bee, very appropriately called in Germany the mother-bee, is the only perfectly developed female bee in the hive. She is easily known from the other bees by the greater length of her body, her peculiar short wings, and the longer legs are not provided with baskets like the worker bee. “The abdomen tapers to a point, and her sting is curved, but she is recognised by her slow majestic walk, and, when she moves about the comb, her subjects form in a circle round her. A queen in the height of the working season is esti- mated to lay from 1,500 to 2,000 eggs each day, and every year is supposed to produce at least 100,000 bees. This enormous number is probably not an over-estimate. It is remarkable that the homage or deference paid to the queen is not lavished on an unwedded or unfertile queen, for the inmates of the hive appear to know the I 114 BEE-FARMING. difference. Dr. Dunbar strikingly illustrates this: ‘So long as the queen remained a virgin, not the slightest degree of respect or attention was paid to her ; not a single bee gave her food; she was obliged, as often as she re- quired it, to help herself, and in crossing the honey-cells for that purpose she had to scramble, often with difficulty, over the crowd, not an individual of which got out of her way, or seemed to care whether she fed or starved ; but no sooner did she become a mother than the scene was changed, and all testified towards her that most affectionate attention which is uniformly exhibited to fertile queens.” “ But mark her royal port and awful mien, Where moves with measured pace the insect queen. Twelve chosen guards, with slow and solemn gait, Bend at her nod, and round her person wait.” —Lvans. Though provided with a sting like the worker-bee, she never uses it in self-defence, excepting only in combat with a rival queen. Not unfrequently, after the first swarm has left the hive, which is always led by the old queen, she leaves behind her two or three young queens in the cells; and it may occur that two of them leave the cell at the same time; in that case, if the hive is not suffi- ciently populous to throw off another swarm, the two queens fight; the victor reigns afterwards supreme over the colony. In this case, Huber states, she uses her sting to destroy her rival. The queen lays the eggs, which may produce workers, drones, or queens. lLangstroth, the noted American apiarian, who has devoted many years to the study of bees, says, “It has been noticed that the queen-bee usually commences laying very early in the season, and always long before there are anv males in the hive.” How, then, are her eggs impregnated? Francis Huber, of Geneva, by a long course of indefatigable investigations, THE QUEEN-BEE, 115 threw much light upon this subject. He ascertained that, like many other insects, she was fecundated in the open air and on the wing, and that the effect lasts for several years, and probably for life. To his amazement he found that unwedded queens laid eggs, but they always produced drones. He tried this experiment repeatedly, but always with the same result. Bee-keepers, even from the time of Aristotle, had observed that all the brood in a hive were occasionally drones. Before attempting to explain this astonishing fact, I must call the attention of the reader to another of the mysteries of the bee-hive. It has always been stated that the workers are proved by dissection to be females, which, under ordinary circum- stances, are barren. Occasionally some of them appear to be sufficiently developed to be capable of laying eggs ; but these eggs, like those of unwedded queens, always produce drones. Sometimes, when a colony which has lost its queen despairs of obtaining another, these drone- laying workers are exalted to her place, and treated with equal regard by the bees. The eggs of bees are of a lengthened, oval shape, with a slight curvature, and of a bluish white colour. Being besmeared at the time of laying with a glutinous substance, they adhere to the bases of the cells, and remain unchanged in figure, or situation, for three or four days; they are then hatched, the bottom of each cell presenting to view a small white worm. On its growing, so as to touch the opposite angle of each cell, it coils itself up, to use the language of Swammerdam, like a dog when going to sleep, and floats in a whitish transparent fluid, which is deposited in the cells by the nursing bees, and by which it is probably nourished ; it becomes gradually enlarged in its dimensions till the two extremities touch one another and form a ring. in this state it is called a larva or worm. So nicely do the bees calculate the quantity of food which will be required 12 116 BEE-FARMING. that none remains in the cell when it is transformed into anymph. It is the opinion of many eminent naturalists that pollen does not constitute the sole food of the grub, but that it consists of a mixture of pollen, honey, and water, partly digested in the stomachs of the nursing bees: one point is clear, it is highly nitrogenous. The larva, having derived its support in the manner above described for four, five, or six days, according to the season, continues to increase during that period till it occupies the whole breadth or length of the cell. The nursing bees now seal over the cell with a light brown cover, externally more or less convex (the cap of a drone- cell being more convex than that of a worker-cell), and thus differing from that of a honey cell, which is paler and somewhat concave. ‘The larva is no sooner perfectly inclosed than it begins to line the cell, by spinning round itself, after the manner of a silkworm, a whitish silky film or cocoon, by which it is encased as it were in a pod. When it has unde:gone this change it is generally called nymph or larva. It has now attained its full growth, and the large amount of nutriment which it has taken serves as a store for developing the perfect insect. The working-bee nymph spins its cocoon in thirty- six hours. After passing about three days in this state of preparation for a new existence it gradually undergoes so great a change as not to bear a vestige of its previous form. When it has reached the twenty-first day of its exist- ence, counting from the time the egg was laid, it comes forth a perfect winged insect. The cocoon is left behind and forms a closely attached and exact lining to the cell in which it was spun. By this means the breeding-cells become smaller, and their partitions stronger, the oftener they change their tenants, and may become so much diminished in size as not to admit of the perfect develop- ment of full-sized bees. Such are the respective stages of THE QUEEN-BEE. T17 the working-bee. Those of the roya/ cell are as follows: she passes three days in the egg, and is five a worm; the workers then close her cell, and she immediately begins spinning her cocoon, which occupies her twenty-four hours ; in the tenth and eleventh days and part of the twelfth, as if exhausted by her labour, she remains in complete repose. Then she passes four days and part of the fifth as a nymph, It is on the sixteenth day, therefore, that the perfect state of queen is attained. The drone passes three days in the egg, and six and a-half as a worm, and changes into a perfect insect on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth day after the egg is laid. The development of each insect proceeds more slowly when the colonies are weak or the air cool. Dr. Hunter has observed that the eggs, worms, or nymphs all require a heat above 70° Fah. for their evolution, Both drones and workers, on emerging from the cell, are at first grey, soft, and comparatively helpless, so that some time elapses before they take wing. The workers and drones spin complete cocoons, or inclose themselves on every side, while the royal larve construct only imperfect cocoons, open behind, and enveloping only the head, thorax, and first ring of the abdomen, and Huber concludes, without hesitation, that the final cause of this is, that they may be exposed to the mortal sting of the first hatched queen, whose instinct leads her instantly to seek the destruction of those who would soon become her rivals. If the royal larvae spun complete cocoons, the sting of the queen seeking to destroy her rivals might be so en- tangled in their meshes that it could not be disengaged. “Such,” says Huber, “is the instinctive enmity of young queens to each other, that I have seen one of them, im- mediately on its emergence from the cell, rush to those of its sisters, and tear to pieces even the imperfect larvae. Hitherto philosophers have claimed our admiration of 118 BEE-FARMING. Nature for her care in preserving and multiplying the species. But from these facts we must now admire her precautions in exposing certain individuals to a mortal hazard,”’* The queen bee may survive five or six years, but she is not so productive after the third year. In ordinary years, in our climate, she ceases laying in October, and commences again in January, or, as is sometimes the case in very cold springs, in February. It is curious to note that when enfeebled with age she still lays abundantly, but the eggs produce only drones. Hives such as the bar-frame hives, which allow the queen to be removed when the bees can raise another and younger queen from the worker brood, are invaluable to practical bee-far mers. THE WORKER-BEE. The worker-bee is an imperfectly-developed queen or female. They vary in number, for in a prosperous colony they may number above fifteen thousand, whilst in a weak hive there may be no more than ten thousand. Some writers have divided them into several sections, according to their work or tasks assigned them in the hive; thus they have nurses, wax-makers, ventilators, honey-collectors, &c. This we believe to be only imaginary, for every bee in the course of its life may undertake each of the above divisions of labour. This, the hard-working member of the industrious hive, is very short-lived. Dr. Bevan thinks the limit of its age to be from six to eight months. When we consider the immense numbers killed by accident or eaten by birds we are astonished to think how the strength * Bevan, THE WORKER-BEE, 119 of the hive can be kept up, without taking into account the large numbers required to make up the two or three swarms annually sent out to commence house-keeping on their own account. However, nothing seems to us so pitiable as an aged worker-bee with its torn wings striving some warm day in early spring to again attempt the collection of pollen or honey; rising feebly from the entrance, it sinks to the ground to die a miserable death—a sad end after its fruit- ful toils, The worker is the stinging bee ; by the sting it defends the hive to the death, and it never survives the use of this weapon of defence. We need say but little about its well-known industry. Pettigrew thus touchingly notices this grand trait in their character: “Imagine a large and prosperous hive full of comb, bees, and brood; fancy 20,000 little grubs in this hive requiring constant attention and proper food, and all receiving them in due season; fancy the care and diligence of the bees in mixing and kneading this food before they give it to their young; fancy 2,000 of these grubs daily requiring and receiving beautiful lids on their cells, to cover them up whilst they pass into the insect form and chrysalis state; fancy 800 or 1,000 square inches of this brood being built up every three weeks; stand and look at that beehive, and remember that all therein goes on with unerring exactness and without light; then think of the untiring energy and perseverance of the bees outside the hive, ranging fields and woods from morn till dewy eve, gathering up the sweets and pollen of flowers, storing the one in sacks the other-in baskets, returning to their home laden as donkeys with panniers, increasing their honey- store in weight from two to six pounds per day, securely locked up after it has been twice swallowed and disgorged, and thus made into honey proper.” What a world of wonders is in a beehive! ! The more we think over ip 120 BEE-FARMING. wonders the more do we love these hard-working members of the ever-busy hive. If apiarians had given a moment’s thought to the fact that an ordinary worker-bee cannot survive over nine months, they would never have constructed the enormous hives which are now being sold so very extensively; especially when we consider that only one queen exists in the hive, from which all the workers must spring. DRONES. These insects, the non-working or non-producing part of the colony, are often regarded by the apiarian as a nuisance. Many good and apparently flourishing stocks have been destroyed or brought to a state of poverty and destitution by these idlers. We are sometimes led to question the utility of so many in the hive, when we consider that only one is re- quired to fertilize the virgin queen, and yet in many hives that we have kept there have been thousands; these, instead of diminishing as the season advanced, have often, until August, gone on increasing rapidly week by week. The earlier the drones begin to appear, the earlicr we may, as a rule, expect swarms. The great laying of drone- eggs by a vigorous young queen generally takes place in the early part of April. The drones, as most people are aware, are male bees. Fortunately they possess no stings, and may be handled with impunity. Their age is much less than that of the workers; they are also much larger than the workers, but they seem to be clumsy, and when on the wing make a loud buzzing noise. If the stocks are closely watched on a fine summer afternoon, they may be observed leaving the mouth of the hive by hundreds; this is for the purpose of meeting with the queens, who also leave the hive at about the same hour. DRONES. 121 WHY SO MANY DRONES ARE PRODUCED. If each stock of bees produced only one drone during the season, the chances are very much against the queen being able to meet this one in the air when she sallies out to mect her mate; and, if her Majesty was thus compelled to go out day by day in succession for a lengthened period, very likely she would be gobbled up by some hungry bird in search of a meal, or be destroyed in some other way— to say the least, her life would. be jeopardised. But thousands of drones are hatched in most hives, so that the queen is seldom compelled to make more than one flight; for at the time she flies abroad there are scores if not hundreds of males buzzing here and there in the vicinity of the apiary. Thus impregnation takes place in the majority of instances on her first flight from the hive. STRANGE THEORIES RESPECTING DRONES. Many strange theories have been given to the world by professional apiarians which have no foundation in fact, such as the following: It has been asserted they are pro- duced to fertilise the eggs as fast as the queen deposits them in the cells; others state they are nurses, or prepare the food for and feed the larve; others declare they sit upon the eggs and hatch them like birds; whereas others, and these latter have been a very numerous class, believe they are produced for the purpose of keeping up the tem- perature in the hive. It seems never to have struck the minds of these writers that the queen lays her eggs long before any drones make their appearance in the apiary in the early part of the year. Who or what fertilised these? 122 BEE-FARMING. Again, how were the larve nursed or fed in early spring, and again late in autumn after the destruction of the drones? This needs no answer, and Dr. Evans is cer- tainly mistaken in his theory. The same with the other theories, for they are merely theories, which every sensible bee-keeper now knows to be foolish. We know no work on apiculture more readable than that written by Huish, but we are sorry to state he is far from trustworthy as a guide in many particulars: for example, what will our intelligent bee-keeping readers say to the following extract: “If by any accident or untoward event a hive be deficient in drones, the fecundation of the eggs of the queen does not take place, and consequently no swarms are produced??? All our readers know perfectly weli, at least that portion of them who have taken delight in apiarian pursuits, that hundreds, if not thousands, of the busy industrious little workers are hatched and reared long before the drones make their appearance every season. Huish also states: ‘ When a hive swarms a number of drones follow the emigrants, in proportion to the number of working bees.” We are quite prepared to admit that some few drones are generally found in the swarm, but this is the result of accident ; they are not needful to the swarm. And swarms will be produced whether drones exist in the hive or not. We have had one instance our- selves, when we carefully extracted all the drone-cells as fast as they were made; not a drone was reared during the whole summer, yet it sent out a very heavy swarm the first week in June. We not long ago read a continental work on bees, and were much amused with the curious statements made by the writer, statements that could only have been the creation of a fertile brain. For instance, when speaking upon this subject, he very gravely asserts that drones are constantly engaged carrying water for the colony, or words APPEARANCE OF DRONE-BEES. 123 to this effect. We wonder whether he had watched them engaged in this aqueous exercise, and what kind of vessels they used when employed as water-carriers. APPEARANCE OF DRONE-BEES. Dr. Bevan, as well as other English authors, tell us that drones make their appearance in April. But the time varies very much, according to the season or the strength of the stocks, We have several years seen them in April; in other years their appearance has been delayed until May. Bevan also says, “ the laying of drone eggs, which is called the great laying, usually commences at the end of April or the beginning of May.’? From the time of the egg being laid by the queen, to the time of the per- fect insect leaving the cell, is exactly twenty-four days; by bearing this in mind, the time when the great laying takes place may easily be calculated in every apiary. We are disposed to think Dr. Bevan is correct in respect to the mass of drone-eggs being laid. MASSACRE OF THE DRONES. Many opinions prevail amongst bee-keepers as to the cause and manner in which drones are destroyed. It is well known that after the swarming, or rather when the honey-harvest begins to fail about the end of July or in August, a general massacre takes place. The first indica- tion of this slaughter is casting out the baby drones to perish. Bevan remarks upon this subject—‘ The work of the drones being now completed, they are regarded as useless consumers of the fruits of others’ labours, love is at’ once converted into hate, and a general proscription takes place. The unfortunate victims evidently perceive their 124. BEE-FARMING. danger, for they are never at this time seen resting in one place, but darting in and out of the hive with the utmost precipitation, as if in fear of being seized.” Huber says he ascertained that the death of these insects was caused by the sting of the workers, whilst others have declared that they were harassed and driven from the hive by the more active workers; thus they are wearied of life. In some of our hives we have found on examination, before closing them up for the winter, the drones in a large mass dead in one corner of the hive. These must evidently have died of actual starvation, and we believe their death results more from starvation than any other cause, al- though we have seen others tumbled unceremoniously out of the hive, writhing in the throes of death on the ground. ‘These were doubtless stung to death. In other instances we have observed them crawling beneath the hive disabled by having their wings injured and bitten off. All these methods may be resorted to, to get rid of the uscless members of the colony , but we think the bees never resort to the sting except when all other means have failed to effect their purpose (as this may cause also the death of the worker bee). It is curious to note that in some seasons the massacre will take place simultaneously in nearly all the hives in the apiary. Huber records an observation of this kind when six hives com- menced the destruction on July 4, and with the same peculiarities in every case. HOW LONG DO DRONES LIVE? The drones in this country put in an appearance usually in the month of May. Some, it is true, are dis- covered in April; but we now speak of the great mass, ot what some writers have called the gencral hatching. HOW LONG DO DRONES LIVE? 125 Their average life will not be more than three months. If the colony has suffered the loss of their qucen and is forced to raise another from the egg of a worker, then the hive defers the destruction of the drones. In cases of this kind they may be allowed to live four months, In some few instances we have discovered drones in the hive in the depth of winter, but never in a stock having a vigorous and fertile queen; it has been in hives devoid of a queen. Huber is said to have found them in his hive in January. We have never found them in prosperous hives, and it may be at once set down that something is going wrong if drones are seen so late in the season, and the sooner the hive is overhauled the better. Drones die immediately after the QUEEN’S WEDDING. We do not know whether this statement has ever been satisfactorily solved; it is, however, generally believed. Neighbour in his excellent little manual thus writes:— “The drone that happens to be the selected husband is by no means so fortunate as at first sight appears, for it is a law of Nature that the bridegroom does not survive the wedding-day. Her Majesty, although thus left a widow, is by no means a sorrowful bride, for she soon becomes the mother of a large family. It cannot be said that she pays no respect to the memory of her departed lord, for she never marries again. As is the case with most insects, the queen once impregnated continues productive during the remainder of her existence.”? Old queens, however, are said to lay none but drone-eggs, 126 BEE-FARMING. HOW TO REGULATE OR KEEP DOWN THE DRONES. Sometimes the stock is overfilled with these idle insects, who never gather a drop of honey. Even if they gathered sufficient for their own maintenance it would not appear so bad, but they are often produced in such enormous numbers that some plan must be adopted to keep them down, or the colony will suffer to that extent that it is useless to expect any surplus honey from it. In the bar- frame hives it is easy to take out the bars and cut out all the drone-cells, which ought to be done early in the season; but in common straw skeps or the Ayrshire hives it is exceedingly difficult to extract any of the drone-comb, Our continental apiarians, especially those in Germany, are always wide awake, and are continually inventing some new method, so as to make apiculture as profitable as possible. We strongly recommend all our readers to adopt our simple and cheap Bar-frame Hives; but, as many of our village bee-farmers still persist in using the common straw hives, they will doubtless be glad to hear of the drone- catcher, THE DRONE-CATCHER. This is a simple though clever contrivance for entrap- ping these useless insects—one, moreover, which can be made by any working-man who is able to use his pocket- knife, and knows how to twist a few wires. Without any description on our part, its construction may be gleaned from the engraving. It is a simple cage, the mouth being cut out of a block of wood, and the wires of THE DRONE-CATCHER. 127 the cage being large enough to allow the worker to escape, whilst, at the same time it imprisons the larger drone. It acts precisely upon the same principle as the “ catch-em- alive? mouse-traps. The mouth and the bottom-board should, if possible, be made of one piece of timber, and a part should be cut off the mouth corresponding with the letter @ to allow the workers returning from the fields to DRONE CAGE, enter the hive. It is advisable when using this trap to place it on the hive about 2 o’cluck in the afternoon, and to watch it, so that when filled it may at once be taken from the hive and emptied; thus the hive or worker bees will not be hindered in their work. We have seen them made with a loose mouth; these are far better to work, for the simple reason when the drones are killed with boiling water they may the more easily be taken from the trap. The part marked a’ is a prolongation of the mouth; this is to prevent the drones crawling back to the hive again, which they would easily do if the wire-work was only connected with the hive. Those of our readers who have not the opportunity or inclination to make these traps may obtain them from Messrs. Neighbour, of High Holborn, London. The use of the drone-trap saves the worker-bees much extra labour and some danger. 128 BEE-FARMING. LIGURIAN, OR ITALIAN BEES. Not a few authors have looked upon these beautiful insects as merely a novelty, a new toy or fashion, which, like fashions in dress, would rapidly change and disappear. We, however, think they are a most useful novelty, and a fashion which we trust will never again disappear from our English apiaries. As to their superiority, the fol- lowing facts speak for themselves. They are a much larger bee, also very beautiful, although they are and can certainly be proved to be only a variety of the common black bee. By very careful testing, side by side, with their older sisters, the queens are larger and more prolific. The workers are less sensitive to cold; and when bred in combs of their own building they are much larger, and as a natural result the honey sac is larger, thus they must be better honey gatherers. They also appear to be far better tempered ; very rarely do they venture an attack. Dr. Kirtland 1e- marks with truth, that their beauty of colouring and grace- ful forms render them an object of interest to every person of taste. My colonies are daily watched and admired by many visitors. They will, no doubt, prove a valuable ac- quisition to localities of high latitude, and will be peculiarly adapted to our climate. Langstroth declares, “If we may judge from the working of my colonies, the Italians will fully sustain their European reputation ; they have gathered more than twice as much honey as the swarms of the com- mon bee.’ Quinby says, “I now began to watch their peculiarities with considerable interest. White clover was blossoming in abundance, and the early red, or June clover, in small quantities. Here was a chance to see if the Italians fre- LIGURIAN, OR ITALIAN BEES. 129 quented the red clover more than the natives. I found nine Italians to two natives on this plant (the two excep- tions might have been black hybrids), This was im- portant to me; if the honey from white clover would’ sustain 60 or 80 colonies, that from the red would sustain nearly as many more, and I could keep double the number in each yard.” It has been asserted by several observers that they are longer lived. We cannot, from our limited observation, declare if this be so, but it would account for their swarm- ing properties, which excel everything we have witnessed in native bees. They swarm more, begin some two or three weeks earlier, and continue later in the autumn. This may arise, in some measure, from their vigorous nature. Watch the hives some dull morning; here are two skeps, one containing pure Italians, the other black bees ; the Italian whizzes past you with terrific force, whilst the black bees seem to go lazily along, as if it was too much trouble to go abroad on so dull a day. In rainy weather the Ligurians are as active as possible, when the black bees never stir out of the hives. One season our Italians began to swarm three weeks before the others; the first we hived came out on 20th May, the second from the same hive on 30th May. By the 11th July the same hive again sent out a very large swarm. The first swarm, on 20th May, again swarmed on 7th July, a virgin swarm—very scarce with us, and another on 20th July; whilst the second swarm, hived 30th May, swarmed on 19th July, making a total of six swarms in one season; four of them were sold in the autumn for 8/, This same year, being a wretched honey season, my black bees could scarcely live; out of five hives we only obtained four swarms. As honey-gatherers they far excel the others, and, if the bee-farmer do not keep the honey extractor constantly K 130 BEE-FARMING. going, they will speedily fill the whole hive with honey to the exclusion of eggs, for no sooner does the sharp-eyed Ligurian observe a tenantless cell than it is speedily made use of for honey; but if the two end bars are removed frequently, and the honey taken out, it will prevent them encroaching upon the central combs, which will, in this case, be conscientiously used as a nurscry. THE VALUE OF ITALIANS. To the active bee-farmer this bee opens up a rich harvest. Hundreds of bee-keepers would gratefully pur- chase swarms of pure Italians, but they cannot be ob- tained excepting at exorbitant prices, too high for the general run of bee-keepers in this country. A few words may help our readers to help themselves. First, if possi- ble, and no other way seems open, purchase a queen from some dealer who will deal honestly with you, and introduce this to a good flourishing stock in the Bee-Farmer’s Bar- frame Hive. Keep this stock apart from your other bees, at some cottage, where no bees are kept for some dis- tance. Early the following year it will commence swarm- ing. “Take care of every hive or swarm until you have succeeded in obtaining a good apiary of Italians. The fol- lowing year you may search for orders for swarms; each will be worth a guinea if sent away the same day as hived in a common skep; the honey of itself will reward your toils; this can be gleaned whilst the breeding and swarming are in active operation. Speaking within bounds, a second year should witness a dozen good swarms; we say this from experience. A working man, on the outskirts of Manchester, a few years ago, realised in one year 120/, from his Italian swarms. In a quiet neighbourhood sheltered from the winds vast results THE VALUE OF ITALIANS. 131 should be obtained from the bee-farm, even with common bees, and much more with Ligurians. To introduce an Italian queen the following method should be pursued :— Having smoked the native stock, re- move the top board as gently as possible, because the queen is so shy and retiring that it is difficult to find her. Search each bar-frame separately, then remove them to an empty hive placed so as to be handy for use. If the search be unsuccessful over the frames, examine the clusters of bees in the corners of the hive. When found, remove her with care to a cage, together with a few workers, 7. e. to a small box, in which a piece of comb, 3 x 2 inches, filled with honey, is placed. She may be wanted again, for it may unfortunately occur, as it did once to ourselves, that the strange queen is not accepted by the stock; in such a case the old queen by being replaced saves the entire stock. When the queen is removed replace all the bars in the old hive, with the bees; the loss of the queen will not be detected immediately, but after the lapse of a few hours they will be discovered running to and fro eagerly search- ing for her amongst the combs. Introduce the new queen thus: Secure her with two or three of the workers and a little honey in a wire cloth cage and insert it between the combs. This is to insure her safety. At the end of twenty-four hours or there- abouts she may be loosened on the top of one of the bars. She will then be welcomed by her new subjects. We sometimes sprinkle a small quantity of syrup amongst the bees just before liberating the queen, or smoke the stock well from the entrance. We have never known a queen sacrificed when these simple precautions have been adopted, 132 BEE-FARMING. HOW TO FILL THE APIARY WITH ITALIAN STOCKS. We are not well versed in raising artificial queens, because we have never followed this method; our plan having been, to make the apiary profitable. An apiary in which experiments are being constantly performed will never prove successful. The late Rev. W. C Cotton at one time purchased fourteen good stocks the same year, and lost them all by experiments. We, therefore, give Mr. Quinby’s account of artificial rearing of Italian queens, so that any bee-farmer who wishes to do so may try his plan. “ Queens enough can be reared in one summer to supply the whole apiary no matter how many may be required, and if this is decided upon take no pains to isolate, but rear all the queens at home, and let them meet the native drone. These will produce mixed workers but pure drones. «To rear queens artificially, inclose a few bees, a pint or a quart, without a queen, with a small piece of comb containing larve or eggs. To do this, make a little box or minature hive large enough to hold three combs or more—four or five inches square. Suspend frames within just as in the hive. Fit in them pieces of dry comb, and fasten with a bit of tin. Get a piece of comb containing eggs or larva (about two inches square); cut a piece ex- actly the same size, except underside, out of the middle of one of the combs and insert it. The bees will weld it fast in a few hours. Not finding a queen, they will in a few hours commence rearing one or more, by converting common cells into queen cells, and working larvz into queens. When the larve are just the right age six or ITALIAN STOCKS. 133 eight queens will sometimes be matured in ten or eleven days ; at other times in sixteen or eighteen ; but if the grub is over four days old it is doubtful if it can be changed to a queen. «The bees to rear queens should, when practicable, be obtained from hives at least a mile and a half from the place where the queens are to be raised. ‘Take them from a strong colony. If from the box-hive, invert it and drive out a quart or two into an empty hive or box; look out the queen if among them and put her back. If they are to be taken from the moveable comb hive, take out two or three combs and shake off the bees beside the box, into which they will run if it is set down with one edge raised a little, taking care all the time not to get the queen. If the bees have been taken from a colony at home it will be necessary to confine them from thirty-six to forty-eight hours, otherwise they may return to the old colony; but if the bees be taken in the middle of the day the majority will be young bees that have never left the hive, thus far more valuable for your purpose. “From noon to 3 p.m. is decidedly the best time in the day to obtain the brood. Whilst busy at work the bees have not time to notice what is going on. Go to. the hive containing your best Italian brood, and take out different combs till you find a brood of the right age, and with a sharp knife cut out suitable pieces. Care must be taken not to allow brood or queen cells to becume chilled.” If several queens be raised at one time in the box they must be watched daily; the first hatched will ruth- lessly destroy the others, if not prevented. We have heard repeated and loud complaints from our neighbours that the yellow bees are dreadful thieves ; there may be some truth in this statement. They will defend their own hives with a determined dogged perseverance to 134 BEE-FARMING. the death. No one need be alarmed lest the Italians be robbed, yet we fear they are themselves robbers when they have the chance, but it is always weak defenceless stocks that they plunder. We advise our English bee-farmers to have none but pure-bred Ligurians ; the half-breeds or hybrids are very savage in disposition, and are far from being so indus- trious ; neither are they better as to swarming than our black bees. BEES IN OTHER LANDS. The continent of Africa in all its widely-extended regions seems well stocked with bees, particularly towards the sea-coast. In Lower Egypt their cultivation forms the employment of many of the poorer classes during a great part of the year. During the inundation of the Nile the cultivators, unable to find pasturage for their bee- stocks in the lower province, transport them in boats to Upper Egypt, resting occasionally by the way to allow the industrious insects an opportunity to forage. The insect supposed to be Apis fasciata bears a considerable resemblance to that cultivated in Greece. On the western coast, where it is intersected by the Senegal, sepa- rated as this region is from the most northerly parts of Africa by mountains and deserts which form an insuperable barrier to the passage of the inferior classes of animals, we find what we are assured is another species of bee, viz. A, Adansonii. It has, however, a very near resemblance to the Ligurian bee, its difference being in the first two rings of the abdomen, and the anterior half of the third, which are of a pale chestnut colour. In the neighbour- hood of Gambia a species of small black bee is found in the woods, in all likelihood the same with those last men- tioned; and the town of Vintain, situated on the southern BEES IN OTHER LANDS. 135 side of the river, is much resorted to by Europeans on account of the great quantities of bees’-wax brought thither for sale. It is collected in the woods by the Feloops, a wild and unsociable race of people. The honey they chiefly use themselves in making a strong intoxicating liquor, much the same as the mead which is produced in this country. It is said by some writers that the bees along the west coast of Africa are destitute of stings. It was not so found by Park, to whom we are indebted for the above information; and that those further in the interior, about the eleventh degree of west longitude, are well pro- vided with this formidable weapon appears from the fol- lowing incident mentioned by the same traveller as having taken place near Doofroo: “ We had no sooner unloaded the asses than some of our people, being in search of honey, unfortunately disturbed a large swarm of bees. They came out in immense numbers, and attacked men and beasts at the same time. Luckily most of the asses were loose, and galloped up the valley; but the horses and people were very much stung, and obliged to scamper off in all directions—in fact, for half-an-hour the bees seemed completely to have put an end to our journey. In the evening, when they became less troublesome and we could venture to collect our cattle, we found many of them much stung and swelled about the head. Three asses were missing; one died in the evening, and one next morning. Our guide lost his horse, and many of the people were much stung about the hands and face.” On the eastern side of the same continent the bees appear to resemble those of the western coast in their colour and diminutive size, but differ from them in the mode of con- structing their nests, which are formed under the surface of the ground, while those of the others are lodged in the hollows of trees. To the southward and in the Hottentot countries the insects are found in great numbers, but, as 136 BEE-FARMING. appears from the report of some late travellers, never build their nests in the trunks of trees; and, though they are sometimes found nestling under the surface of the ground, make their dwellings chiefly in the clefts of the rocks, and one large rock in the Cape Colony has so long served as a favourite residence to these insects as to obtain from the Dutch settlers the name of Honig Kiss, 7.e., honey-rock, The following anecdotes relating to this species are from Burchel’s Travels in Africa (vol. i. 377): “ My bedding having been left out in the open air all day, we found in the evening the mattress taken possession of by a swarm of bees which had taken shelter under it for the night, and as a favour to these industrious creatures we left them undisturbed. They remained there till the next day at noon, when they departed in quest of some convenient chink in the rocks for their hive. Their manner of swarming appeared to us to differ in nothing from that of the common English bee. The same species, or others of the genus Apis, abounds in every part of this continent which has come under my observation, and is everywhere eagerly robbed of its honey. None of these nations have the least idea of bringing them under domestic management, but are content to take the honey wherever it is found; and this being done, often at an improper season, they make a useless destruction of the larve or young bees still in the cells.” “One of the Hottentots observed a number of bees entering a hole in the ground which had formerly belonged to some animal of the weasel kind. As he made signs for us to come to him, we turned that way fearing he had met with some accident; and, when the people began to unearth the bees, I did not expect that we should escape without being severely stung. But they knew so well how to manage an affair of this kind, that they robbed the poor insects with the greatest ease and safety. Before they commenced digging a fire was made near the hole, BEES IN OTHER LANDS. 137 and constantly supplied with damp fucl to produce a cloud of smoke. In this the workman was completely enveloped ; so that the bees returning from the fields were prevented from approaching, and those which flew out of the nest were driven by it to a distance. Yet the rest of our party to avoid their resentment found it prudent either to ride off or stand also in the smoke. About three pounds of honey were obtained, which, excepting a small share which I reserved till tea-time, they instantly devoured in the comb; and some of the Hottentots professed to be equally fond of the larvae. The honey appeared unusually limpid, and nearly as thin as water, yet it seemed as sweet and of as delicate a taste as the best honey of England. « Whilst I was engaged in the chase one day on foot with a Namaqua attendant, he picked up a small stone, looked at it earnestly, then over the plain, and threw it down again. I asked what it was, he said there was the mark (excrement) of a bee on it; taking it up, I also saw upon it a small pointed drop of wax, which had fallen from the bee in its flight. The Namaqua noticed the direction the point of the drop indicated, and, walking on, he picked up another stone, also with a drop of wax on it, and so on at considerable intervals, till, getting behind a crag, he looked up, and bees were seen flying across the sky, and in and out of a cleft in the face of the rock. Here, of course, was the honey he was in pursuit of. A dry bush is selected, fire is made, the cliff is ascended, and the nest is robbed in the smoke.” African ,travellers give us an amusing account of one of the modes by which the natives of the interior are enabled to discover the spot where the bees have deposited their treasures. They are guided by a small bird (Cuculus Indicus) of a brownish-grey colour, well named the honey- guide. This little creature is very fond of honey and bee- bread ; but, unable by its own exertions to gratify its taste, 138 BEE-FARMING. it directs the negroes by a peculiar cry or whistle to the tree where the bees have taken up their residence, ad- vancing before them by longer or shorter flights, according to the greater or lesser distance of the object of pursuit. If its followers lag behind, it returns with manifest im- patience, and by its redoubled cries appears to chide their delay. As it approaches the tree, its flights become more limited, its whistle is repeated at shorter intervals, and at last, having brought its associates to the desired spot, it hovers over it for a moment, as if to mark it out distinctly, and then quietly takes up a station at a little distance, waiting the result, and expecting its share of the booty, which it never fails to obtain. In the island of Madagascar and the Mauritius is to be found the single coloured bee (pis unicolor) of a bright shining black, without spots or coloured bands. Its honey, as appears by a specimen brought home by a French vessel, is highly aromatic, and is, while in the cells, or when recently abstracted, of a green colour, but becomes afterwards of a reddish-yellow. In these islands the bee is domesticated, and a French naturalist, M. de Lanux, has published a memoir on the form of the Madagascar hives, a circumstance which naturally leads to the sup- position that the inhabitants pay cousiderable attention to the cultivation of this insect. Knox, in his History of Ceylon, enumerates three kinds of bees found in that island; the first of which bears a close resemblance to the European insect, though it would seem by no means so irritable, and, like those near the Cape of Good Hope, builds in hollow trees, and also in holes in the ground which have been made by some bur- rowing animals. The natives, to obtain the honey, have merely to blow into these holes, upon which the bees instantly decamp without resistance, and the plunderers, without making use of any defensive covering, pull out the BEES IN OTHER LANDS. 139 combs with their hands, and deposit them in vessels brought for that purpose. It is probable, from this account of the facility with which this species is deprived of its stores, and the fearlessness of the plunderers, that, like others to be afterwards mentioned, it has no sting. A second species found here is of a larger size and brighter colour than our domestic bee. These build their nests in the branches of trees, and generally at a great height. At a certain period of the year the inhabitants of the towns go out in a body to despoil them, and return laden with the booty. The third species is a remarkably small bee, not larger than a common fly, and of a blackish hue. Their honey is not generally much regarded; but the children sometimes amuse them- selves by cutting a hole in the trunk of the tree where it is deposited, and carrying it off. Knox tells us that the inhabitants not only devour the honey but have a strong taste—akin to that of the Hottentots who feed on the larve—for the bees themselves; and that when they dis- cover a swarm on an inaccessible branch of a tree, they stupify them with the smoke of torches, causing them to drop on the ground, when they gather them and carry them home, “boiling and eating them, and esteeming them excellent food.” Honey bees abound also in the whole of the Eastern Archipelago; but we have no certain account of their distinctive characters. We only know that they generally build on the boughs of trees, and that they are never domesticated or collected into hives. In fact, no attention is paid to them, further than what is requisite to obtain their wax. This we are told (Marsden’s Sumatra) is an article of considerable importance in all the eastern islands, from whence it is imported in large oblong cakes to China, Bengal, and other parts of the continent. Their honey is much inferior to that of Europe, as might be expected 140 BEE-FARMING. from the nature of the vegetation. The honey of the Apis Peronii, found in the island of Timor, may be considered an exception to this. For our knowledge of this we are indebted to M. Peron, the intrepid French navigator, who describes it as having a yellowish tinge, more liquid than ours, and of an exquisite flavour. It is called by the natives bee-sugar. The distinctive characters of the insect itself consist of the two first rings of the abdomen (with the ex- ception of their posterior edges), the base of the third, and the greater part of the breast, being of a reddish yellow, and the superior wings of a brownish hue. It appears, from recent accounts, that in the distant regions of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, besides the in- digenous insect, the bee of Europe has obtained a firm footing, and already rivals the prolific race of South Caro- lina. The following account is from a periodical of ex- tensive circulation and great utility (Lowdon’s Magazine). «The native bee is without a sting, and is not much larger than a common house-fly. It produces abundance of honey and wax, but has not yet been subjected to culti- vation; and from its small size, and its building in very high trees, probably never will be so. “The European bee has been oftener than once introd ced into Sydney, but without success ; the swarms having left the hive for the woods. A hive was carried to Van Diemen’s Land, in the autumn of the year 1830, by Dr. T. B. Wilson, at the suggestion of his friend Mr. R. Gunter, of Earl’s Court, brought from London in a wire case. It arrived in safety, and the bees swarmed several times the first year ; and in the True Colonist (a Hobart Town newspaper) of Feb. 14th, 1835, it is stated that a hive descended from Dr. Wilson’s, belonging to a gentleman in the neighbour- hood of Hobart Town, had already swarmed eighteen tliues.” BEES IN OTHER LANDS. 14! The most famous honey of antiquity was tnat of the bees of the Hymettus, near Athens. Of its deterioration a modern writer gives the following account :— “This spot was certainly at one time more abundantly supplied with flowers than at present, these too so strongly scented that hounds on that account frequently lost trace of the game when hunting in these regions. But there is no land like Greece, in which for centuries the works not only of men but of nature also have been, as far as possi- ble, destroyed. Trees and shrubs were cut down in the continued wars without any thought of the consequence, and what the axe spared the shepherds burned, in order to raise from the ashes, during the first year, a few blades of grass for their goats. Were not the Grecian climate so favourable the greater part of the country must long since have become a bare, stony, and rocky wilderness. The Hymettus has now no better vegetation than the moun- tains of Attica, The honey of the Laurion moumtains was much prized (Erica Mediterranea, or tree heath, grows there in abundance). ‘Throughout Greece honey is more agreeable and aromatic than in other lands, owing to the heat being moderate, for which reason the juices of the plants are in a more agreeably concentrated state. “The honey of the Hymettus no longer possesses its superiority ; it is in other neighbourhoods finer and more aromatic, e. g. in many of the Cyclades, especially in Siekino. The greatest quantity of honey is obtained from the monastery of Syrian, to the north-east of the city: it is delivered to the local archbishop. “The shepherds at other parts of the Hymettus probably keep bee-hives, and the honey from Pentelicon is also reckoned among the Hymettic. The number of hives in these mountains yield- ing honey has been averaged of late years at five thousand. The principal food of these bees is Satureja capitata, then Lentiscus, rock-roses, sage, lavender, and other herbs. 142 BEE-FARMING. Otherwise the Hymettus is very bare on its declivities, and in some of the dales are wild olives, with shrubs of myrtle, laurel, and oleander. The sea-pine grows on its summit very imperfectly, but near the monastery it is pretty. Besides this, can be found hyacinths, amaryllis lutea, dark violet crocus, &c., from all of which the bees extract their sweets.” SAGACITY OF BEES. We adopt the word “ sagacity ’’ in preference to the word “ instinct’? as expressing our meaning more clearly. The following facts may be familiar to some of our readers, still we may be excused for bringing them before them. We have already cited the instance of a slug having entered a hive and been stung to death by the bees, after which, being unable to dislodge it, they covered it all over with propolis. Bevan states, “ A very striking illustration of the reasoning power of bees occurred to my friend Mr, Walrond. Inspecting his bee-boxes at the end of Oc- tober, 1817, he perceived that a centre comb burthened with honey had separated from its attachment, and was leaning against another comb, so as to prevent the passage of the bees between them. This accident excited great activity in the colony, but its nature could not be ascer- tained at the time. At the end of a week, the weather being cold, and the bees clustered together, Mr. W. observed through the window of the box that they had constructed two horizontal pillars between the combs alluded to, and had removed so much of the honey and wax from the top of each as to allow the passage of a bee ; in about ten days more, there was an uninterrupted SAGACITY OF BEES. 143 thoroughfare ; the detached comb at its upper part had been secured by a strong barrier and fastencd to the window with the spare wax. This being accomplished, the bees removed the horizontal pillars first constructed as being of no further use. During this laborious process, (says Mr. W.) the glass window in the box was quite as warm as I had felt it during any part of the summer, and the bees were as active within the box.” We have ourselves witnessed a similar proceeding. Huber has written a long chapter about his bees erecting barricades before the entrance of the hives, to defend the colony from the ravages of the sphinx-moth: this is certainly very interesting, and well worthy of much closer study. .We do not, however, attribute reason to bees as several writers do. Darwin’s bold view will be remembered by many. “ If we were better acquainted with those insects that are formed into societies—as the bees, wasps, and ants—we should find that their arts and improvements are not so similar and uniform as they now appear to us, but that they arose in the same manner (from experience and tradition) as the arts of our own species, though their reasoning is from few ideas, is busied about fewer objects, and is exerted with less energy.” SENSES OF BEES. Bees have the sense of smell acutely developed; they can at once detect anyone covered with perspiration, and soon become angry if annoyed with offensive odours. An experiment made by Huber demonstrates their faculty of smell; he placed vessels of honey in boxes perforated with very small holes to allow the odour to escape, but not of suthcient size to permit a sight of the honey; the bees 144 BEE-FARMING. came directly to the boxes. He also tried this experiment by means of small card valves, which the bees, after ex- amining the boxes all round, contrived to raise up that they might reach the honey. The extreme sensitiveness of smell is evinced by their promptitude in resenting an injury inflicted on any of their community: thus, if any of the bees are crushed in hiving a swarm, it makes them angry. This experiment may be tried: present the sting, with its accompanying poison-bag, at the entrance of a hive, their enmity is immediately aroused. Woe to the bee-master, if he happens to be close at hand. In reference to offensive breath, M. Hofer had been an admirer of bees many years, so that he would take the hive into the house and carry away the queen in presence of his friends; but he was attacked with a fever; on his recovery he again attempted this familiarity; the bees would never again allow of his approaching the hive, but fiercely resented it. The sense of touch is also apparent; it is by this means, so it is supposed, they are enabled to carry on their operations in the darkness of the hive. The antenne are thought to be employed for this purpose; we believe they have the sense of sound produced by these organs. Lin- nzus long believed that insects did not possess the sense of hearing ; however, there cannot be the least doubt that bees have it acutely developed, for, according to Huber, they are keenly sensitive to the queen’s song. But this does not need any argument ; every bee-keeper who has been accustomed to drive bees knows that they quickly detect the dr:mming noise on their skep or hive, and become so terrified that in fifteen minutes almost every bee will have deserted the rich stores. We cannot doubt also that taste is highly developed in the hive-bee. “The tongue must have a wonderful power to detect so rapidly the different taste of nectar, so as to SENSES OF BEES. 145 reject a flower with disdain, and immediately dash away to a more favourite blossom. Eye-sight is said to be very imperfect in this insect. Dr. Dereham proves very beautifully that, the cornea and optic nerve being at one and the same distance, they are not fitted to observe objects close at hand but can see well at a little distance. This is a wise provision for so tiny an insect, enabling her to roam some miles away from her home. We frequently (remarks Dr. Evans) observe bees flying straight homewards, through the trackless air, as if in full view of the hive, then running their heads against it and seeming to feel their way to the door with their antennz as if totally blind. It may be suggested that they find their way home,. when foraging at some distance, by the aid of memory ; no one, however, who has_carefully watched them, will deny that they fly in a direct line—“ bee line,” as it is called by the American honey-hunters. On all these difficult problems we advise our readers: who desire further information to study Langstroth We- cannot conclude this short chapter without noticing the theory of Dr. Virey. He has given it as his opinion that there are seven senses, which he thus divides: Four physical, namely—touch, taste, smell, and love: Three intellectual, namely—hearing, sight, and thought. Whether’ love and thought should be added to the above enumeration of the acute senses of bees is rather questionable. We do. not know upon what grounds their physical love has been made out, unless it has reference to the queen’s wedding. Something resembling thought is very conspicuous in many of their operations, but it cannot be distinctly pronounced to be such without much more evidence than we now possess. 146 BEE-FARMING. FOREIGN BEES. Mr. Cotton in his Bee-Book has the following remarks on bees in Siberia :— “« Although these insects do sufficiently secure to man the fruit of their labours by that admirable form of govern- ment and polity which they observe amongst themselves, yet they are so formed by nature to serve him, whenever he shall see fit to employ them, as to be subject to his directions, and to fly obedient to his call in as orderly a manner as sheep obey the voice of their shepherd. As the herdsman, by the winding of his horn, draws forth horses, mules, goats, &c., from their stalls, and by a second signal leads them to the water, and by a third reconducts them home, in like manner the master of the hives by a blast of his whistle can call all the bees of the village after him, conducting them by this signal sometimes into one field of flowers, sometimes into another, thus taking them by turns, in order to give the fowers time to recruit their stock of sweets, and thereby afford the bees a fresh repast. ‘With another blast of his whistle he leads them back to their hives, when either impending rains or the approach of night gives warning to sound a retreat. “This was a very common as well as an ancient practice in the East, and to this the prophet Isaiah alludes when comparing the enemies which God brings upon any nation to afflict it to a swarm of bees which a shepherd calls or dismisses by a signal given. He says: ‘The Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost parts of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria? This custom existed in Asia in the fourth and fifth centuries, and St. Cyril speaks of it as a thing very common in his time, and which he had very often seen.” FOREIGN BEES. 147 Mr. Stedman in his work on Surinam relates the fol- lowing characteristic anecdote about bees :— “ On the 16th I was visited by a neighbouring gentle- man, whom I conducted up my ladder; but he had no sooner entered my aerial dwelling than he leaped down from the top to the ground, roaring like a madman with agony, after which he instantly plunged his head into the river; but, looking up, I soon discovered the cause of his distress to be an immense nest of wild bees, or wassee, in the thatch directly above my head, as I stood within my door ; when I immediately took to my heels as he had done, and ordered them to be destroyed by my slaves without delay. A tar mop was now brought and the devastation just going to commence, when an old negro stepped up, and offered to receive any punishment I should decree if even one of these bees should sting me in person. ‘Massa,’ said he, ‘they would have stung you long ere now had you been a stranger to them; but they being your tenants, that is, gradually allowed to build upon your premises, they assuredly know both you and yours, and will never hurt either you or them I instantly assented to the proposition, and, tying the old man to a tree, ordered my boy Quaco to ascend the ladder quite naked, which he did, and was not stung. I then ventured to follow, and declare, upon my honour, that even after shaking the nest, which made the inhabitants buzz about my ears, not a single one attempted to sting me. I next released the old negro, and rewarded him with a gallon of rum and four shillings for the discovery. ‘This swarm of bees I kept unhurt, as my body guard, and they have made many overseers take a desperate leap for my amusement, as I generally sent them up my laddei upon some frivolous message, when I wished to punish them for injustice and cruelty, which was not seldom. “The above negro assured me that on his master’s estate was a tree, in which had been lodged ever since he L2 148 BEE-FARMING. could remember a society of birds, and another of bees, who lived in the greatest harmony together; but, should any strange bird come to feed on the bees, they were in- stantly repulsed by their feathered allies; and, if strange bees dared to venture near the birds’ nests, the native swarm attacked the invaders, and sturg them to death ; that his master and family had so much respect for the above association that the tree was considered as sacred, and was not to be touched by an axe until it should yield to all-destroying time.” Basil Hall gives the following curious account of bees in South America :— “From the Plaza we went to a house where a bee- hive of the country was opened in our presence. The bees, the honey-comb, and the hive differ essentially from those of Europe. The hive is generally made out of a log of wood from two to three feet long and eight or ten inches in diameter, hollowed out and closed at the end by circular doors cemented close to the wood, but capable of being removed at pleasure. Some persons use cylindrical hives, made of earthenware, instead of the clumsy appa- ratus of wood; these are relieved by raised figures and circular rings, so as to form rather handsome ornaments in the verandah of a house, where they are suspended by cords from the roof, in the same manner that the wooden ones in the villages are hung to the eaves of the cottages, On one side of the hive, half-way between the ends, there is a small hole made just large enough for a loaded bee to enter, and shaded by a projection to prevent the rain from trickling in. In this hole, generally repre- senting the mouth of a man, or some monster, the head of which is moulded in the clay of the hive, a bee is con- stantly stationed, whose office is no sinecure, for the hole is so small that he has to draw back every time a bee wishes to enter or leave the hive. A gentleman told me that an experiment had been made of marking the sen FOUL BROOD. 149 tinel, when it was observed the same bee continued at his post all day, “ When it is ascertained by the weight that the hive is full, the end pieces are removed, and the honey withdrawn. The hive we saw opened was only partly filled, which enabled us to see the economy of the interior to more advantage. The honey is not contained in the elegant hexagonal cells of our hives ; but in wax bags not quite so large as an egg. These bags, or bladders, are hung round the sides of the hive, and appear about half full, the quantity probably being just as great as the strength of the wax will bear without tearing; those nearer the bottom, being better supported, are more filled than the upper ones. In the centre or lower part of the hive we observed an irregular-shaped mass of comb, furnished with cells like those of our bees, all containing young ones, in such an advanced state that when we broke the comb and let them out they flew merrily away. During this examination of the hive, the comb and the honey were taken out, and the bees disturbed in every way, but they never stung us, though our faces and hands were covered with them. It is said, however, that there is a bee in this country which does sting, but the kind that we saw seemed to have neither the inclination nor the power, for they certainly did not hurt us, and our friends said, they were muy manso, or very tame, and never stung any one. The honey gave out a rich aromatic perfume, and tasted differently from ours, but possessed an agreeable flavour.” FOUL-BROOD. I have seen the effects of that fearful disease, the rin- derpest, amongst our live-stock, and never witnessed one clear case where an animal was attacked and showed un-~ mistakable signs of the disease in which it recovered. We have also heard heartrending accounts of the cholera 150 BEE-FARMING. and, what was even worse, the dreadful plague of London. Bad though all these were, yet in their desolating effects they are as nothing compared with the foul-brood amongst bees. ‘Some of our readers may smile at my making this comparison, and may even think foul-brood is made too much of by scientific apiarians, but, if they witnessed its frightful ravages when it makes its appearance in an apiary, they would be, as I have been, amazed at its effects. I write, not as most of our authors and writers upon this subject, merely to describe the disease, but I speak from experience. I have observed it as introduced into an apiary of fifteen fine stocks, kept bv a medical man, who prided himself upon his advanced system of management, and had the most improved Woodbury hives and other appliances: in this instance it was brought in with an Italian queen, and, though eveiyt'ing was adopted on scientific bases to check the disease, all was in vain. In one season every stock was infected, and by the autumn mv friend had not a single stock living—they were all dead. Had the disease not spread, the matter would not have been so serious, but in one season almost every stock throughout the whole neighbourhood—-and some were nearly half a mile apart—was diseased and worthless. This will to some extent show its frightfully infectious nature, and the fearful rapidity with which the infeetion spreads. Dzierzon, the celebrated scientific apiarian of Ger- many, commenced about 1838 with a single stock, but these had so wonderfully increased that in the year 1848 he prided himself upon having more than 500 stocks. In the interval he had lost seventy colonies from thieves, sixty destroyed by fire, and twenty-four by a flood. In the year 1848, he states, “a fearful pestilence made its appearance in my apiary, which spread so fast that it con- taminated every stock and artificial swarm I then pos- essed.”? He lost this year more than 500 stocks from the FOUL-BROOD. 1g foul-brood. This was almost enough to dishearten any man, and make him resolve never to keep bees again. It made its appearance amongst my stocks in 1870, At first I could not tell what was amiss, for the bees became quite dispirited. If any were seen working it was only with a lazy kind of effort, which seemed to indicate disease. I then removed those which were infected to a distance of nearly three miles, thinking it was possible to save them, but I had my trouble for nothing, for they gradually dwindled away, until before the autumn all became so weak that I buried both hives and bees to stay the spread of the disease. I find from experiments that if a healthy colony is fed with honey from a diseased stock they will be quickly infected; also, the disease is spread more by robbing than all other causes combined. When a stock is weak the neighbouring colonies, as well as those at a distance of a mile or so around, will prey upon it; but if a few bees from an infected stock are placed in a healthy hive they seem to carry the infection with them, although they are strong and healthy ; but we must bear in mind that it is the young brood in the cells which become diseased and putrefy, and not the old bees. Some authors have proposed to remove the queen; sup- posing that, breeding being thus prevented, the disease could not spread from hive to hive. The better plan is to destroy the stock if they are diseased. It is a hopeless task to attempt to cure them by any means; they only make matters worse if kept on the stand. Can nothing be done to stay its ravages? Nothing has yet had any influence in this direction, for chemicals, &c., all seem to be powerless. We must not forget that the disease infects the brood in the cells, and induces putrefaction, thus causing a most intolerable stench to issue from the diseased stock. The cells are filled with a dark-coloured, half liquid mass, resembling treacle. 152 BEE-FARMING. Many causes have been assigned for this disease. Some talented and thoughtful bee-keepers have supposed it was caused at first by the brood being chilled ; thus dying, they decay in the cells, and become a putrefying mass. This theory has long since disappeared. Microscopical science has revealed the true secret, which is a kind of mould (fungus), the spores from which may float about in the atmosphere, and when they find a suitable nidus they speedily generate the foul-brood so called. Speaking from my limited experience of this fearful malady as it appeared in North of England apiaries, I cannot hold out any hopes of a successful remedy. Where the bees are in straw skeps it is wise to destroy the stock, of course saving both honey and wax, for these are in no case injured for domestic consumption; then either burn the hive, or destroy it in some way, for to use it again without disinfection is only to foster the disease. But where wooden hives are employed in the apiary I should advise the bee-keeper to boil them well in soda, then dis- infect them thoroughly by means of either carbol:c acid or chloride of lime. Never allow any of your healthy stocks to feed on honey taken from a diseased stock ; some of my friends have thought they could do no harm by so doing, until, when too late, they discovered their folly. The appearance of the foul-brood, or of a stock thus ‘infected, is a thoroughly disheartening sight; they seem to have no energy or wish to labour—they fly about in a lazy kind of manner, and linger much about the entrance. Inside is worse still; the cells, generally sealed over, may be detected at once by having a dark colour, and with a few holes in each: every cell-cover is sunken. I hope none of my readers may have the sad experience of this infectious disease that I have had. It is enough, especially in the case of a young apiarian, to compel him to give up the pursuit in disgust, after labouring hard to make the THE ENEMIES OF OUR HONEY-BEE. 153 apiary profitable ; besides, the expense incident to all enter- prises of the kind is far from trivial, and then to find all in vain—nothing but loss—is very disheartening. My advice to everybody is simply this: Take care, in the first instance, to secure your first stocks from a healthy apiary, and do not employ or use any foreign honey in feeding your colonies—syrup, after all, is the best and most reliable food; and be careful in introducing any new queens. THE ENEMIES OF OUR HONEY-BEE. The domestic honey-bee has many enemies to contend against of one kind or other; man and beasts, insects and reptiles, together with birds, are all sworn enemies to the industrious, toiling bees, but the worst enemy of all is man. Other foes may destroy great numbers of bees, and rob them of an immense quantity of honey, but he slays at once the whole colony. Other enemies may take a pound or so of honey, but he is so greedy and selfish as to take the whole contents of the hive. I cannot do better to illustrate this part of my subject than quote the words of a recent writer upon this theme: “ Finally, the worst enemy of bees is man. There is the barbarous, cruel, and ungrateful treatment of the brimstone-match. The little innocents have toiled all the summer. They have thrown off a swarm—after the example of the Church of Scotland, which, by way of showing its internal strength, threw off a capital swarm in 1843—they have recovered all the effects of their secession, and amassed abundance for future days. The bee-cide felon called man digs a pit, lights four ounces of brimstone inside of it, and deliberately sets fifteen thousand bees, queen and all, above its really and truly infernal fumes,—suffocates and burns the un- happy martyrs, and then subscribes to various charities, 154 BEE-FARMING. and calls himself a philanthropist!!! He ought to be sent to the treadmill. Why does the Society for Pre- venting Cruelty to Animals take up the case of cab-horses, and overlook the murdered bees? But there are regular inquisitors who do not use sulphur. ‘These scientific crinkum-crankum hives, from which bees with difficulty get out and with more difficulty get in, are little purga- tories, over which the inquisitors preside. Vivisection is no worse. Yet these men complain that all who advocate simple, easily accessible, and comfortable homes for bees, are behind the age, and ignorant of apiarian progress. Do not let your bees find by painful experience that their bee-master is their worst enemy.”? Thus, without any explanation on my part, it will clearly be seen that man is the chief enemy of our domestic honey-bee—often, may be, from sheer ignorance of their requirements and habits. But he is not the sole enemy; he may be the only biped foe, yet there are other foes to be dreaded among the quadrupeds: for example, the fox, bear, rats, and mice. We do not so much fear any depredation in our day from the fox, and it seems superfluous to class it amongst the bee-enemies so far as England is concerned. In other countries, however, they are formidable foes, as, for instance, in France, where, if report is to be credited, he relishes a morsel of honey-comb, and passes by the hen- roost, perhaps filled with choice turkeys and fat geese, to overturn the bee-hives. On the other hand, in this. country he seems to disregard either the bees or bee-hives, M. Ducarne says: “These rascals of foxes eat the bees as well as the honey, but it is the honey to which they are most partial. For two years a particular fox came every winter to overthrow my hives. I put a chicken and some bread to amuse him, and some poison to kill him; but no, the cunning thief would not touch either, he went directly to the hives. Mark the sagacity of the Ti ENEMIES OF OUR HONEY-BEE. 15s animal; he would not come in the summer, when the bees were in full vigour, as he knew in what manner he would be received, but he steals slily to the hives when the inhabitants are in a state of torpor, and thus obtains their treasure without incurring any danger himself.” Another enemy we need not fear, in our day at all events, is the bear. He doubtless loves honey, and proves himself a capital bee-hunter in the primeval forests of the far-west of America. When a bee-tree is discovered, he will gnaw at the hollow trunk for several days, until he has made a hole sufficiently large to admit his enormous paws; then he pulls out in one confused mass honey, bee-bread, wax, and bees, and leisurely enjoys his feast. No wonder he is fat, when he retires to some secure place, generally a hollow elm-tree, lined most luxuriously with dried grass and leaves in the autumn, and lies in a torpid state until awakened by the warmth of the following spring. The Abbé del Rocca mentions some singular traits of sagacity regarding this animal. It appears the bear seldom attacks a hive openly, for fear of the stings, but he will in a most gentle manner take the hive in his paws and carry it out to the first river or pond, in which he plunges it until all the bees are drowned. ‘The bee-keepers in those regions in which the bear abounds, knowing his sly sagacity, chain down their hives to the stand, or fasten them securely to walls and tree-trunks, so that the bear, unable to carry them away, will not molest them, except in the autumn, when the bees are less active. Coming near home, rats and mice are undoubted enemies of the honey-bee. When the bees are removed to the shelter of a dry shed or outhouse, for the winter, they should be frequently examined. In the summer months it is but seldom that either rats or mice will ven- ture to attack a vigorous colony, from the simple fact that they would be roughly handled and rudely repulsed if 156 BEE-FARMING. they attempted an entrance. In the case of mice it is doubtful if they would escape with their lives. In the winter, however, matters are reversed, and mice especially will often, if the bees happen to be on a low bee-bench, find a shelter in the hive, where they find such snug warm quarters. They then speedily set to work, after having eaten a hole in the combs sufficiently large to construct a nest of hay or straw, Rats cannot effect an entrance through the mouth of the hive, but when reduced to straits in cold weather, if they can meet with old straw skeps, they are not long in making an entrance for them- selves. There is this difference betwixt mice and rats, when regarded as bee-enemies: mice eat the bees. Judg- ing of a few cases in my personal experience, they must consume a large quantity, from the number of heads and wings found on and around the stand. Rats on the con- trary take little notice of the bees, but consume the honey. Ia a few days a single rat will eat up the whole of the winter store. Destroy them if you can, the sooner the better, and thus save your bees from this plague. Darwin makes it out very satisfactorily that if the cats increase mice must as a result decrease, and humble-bees rapidly increase ; as a consequence, the favourite pansy of our gardens will produce an abundant crop of fertile seeds. The pansy or heartease cannot be fertilised without insect agency. Its fertilization is mostly performed by humble- bees. The greatest enemy the humble-bees perhaps have to contend against is mice. If cats are scarce, mice, of course, increase, and thus you must in a short time, unless the balance of nature is kept up, lose the much-loved pansy. Mice are doubly hateful to the bees ; they create a most disagreeable stench where they find a lodging, so much so that the bees on the return of spring will not be long in seeking a new home, and in abandoning the old tenement to the miee, Sometimes the losses by this THE ENEMIES OF OUR HONEY-BEE., 157 means entailed upon bee-keepers in some parts of England are very heavy. ‘The best plan to free the bees from the depredations of this animal is to place the hives on single pedestals, or stands, about two feet high, and as winter approaches lessen the entrance, so that only two bees can pass and repass at each time. Espinasse says he has known mice to take up their residence in hives without destroying the bees. This is contrary to the experience of every practical apiarian with whom I have come in contact. Mice are unable to walk in a reverted direction ; therefore hives on simple single stands are secure, unless something is placed against them, as is frequently done from thoughtlessness; then these creatures, ever on the watch for an opportunity, ascend. I have often thought that they are tempted to enter straw hives because of their resemblance in miniature to stacks of hay or straw, for they are never known to enter wooden hives, and it is morally certain they cannot smell either honey or bees in cold weather; thus they are probably allured at first by the thought of feasting on grain, such as wheat or oats, then, finding something more sweet, they speedily become tenants at wiil. Huish recommends a trap of the following construc- tion to destroy them, if they are lurking anywhere in the neighbourhood of the apiary:—‘“ Let a pea be soaked in water, then draw a thread through it, and tying a small stick at each end, place it in the ground the exact dis- tance of the width of a brick; the brick is then placed on the thread, and the mouse coming to gnaw the pea gnaws also the thread, and, the support of the brick being thus taken away, it falls and kills the mouse.” ‘This kind of trap may be found very serviceable, as mice are re- markably fond of seed-peas. Sparrows are blamed for much of the damage done to the rows of seed-peas in our gardens in early spring, whereas it is nearly, if not all, 158 BEE-FARMING. done by mice. Would not the common spring wire-trap, baited with oatmeal, answer much better than the one advocated by Huish? The toad may be considered as a great devourer of bees, and he does it in a very cruel and wicked manner. He gets close beneath the stand, amongst weeds or be- hind some heaps of earth, with just his head only peeping out, and, being almost the colour of dry earth, it is diffi- cult to detect his presence. In summer, just before swarming, when the evenings are warm, the bees cluster outside like a large bunch of grapes, often hanging from beneath the stand for five or six inches. Now and then, two or three bees will by some accident be loosened from the cluster, and drop on the ground. No sooner does this happen than they are gobbled up by the reptile; thus the poor bees have but little chance to defend themselves. Again, a toiling industrious worker has been out on the heath, perhaps some miles away from home, when it re- turns laden with both honey and pollen. Weary and exhausted when it arrives at home, just as it reaches the alighting board it drops off and falls. ‘The toad on the watch snatches it up in his ugly maw, and it is seen no more. The toad not only watches for bees, but is fre- quently seen close by the wall or hedge-bank which har- bours a wasp’s nest, and as greedily devours these yellow gentry as he does the more sober-tinted bees. The only safeguard against this foe is to watch for his appearance. When he sits “ seeking whom he may de- vour” in the eventide, take him by the hind leg and throw him as far as possible over the fence. It will take him some days, probably, before he will be able to reach his old quarters. In some of our popular bee-books I have seen the recommendation to empty the snuff-box on his back. This is great cruelty, and cannot be used, even on a toad, with a clear conscience. Our Irish bec-keepers, THE ENEMIES OF OUR HONEY-BEE. 159 through the kindness of their patron saint, are fortunately delivered from this odious pest. Without doubt, bees can reckon amongst their enemies the various kinds of soft-billed or insectivorous birds. The warblers probably destroy many bees, but the worst of this class of enemies is, that we are seldom able to detect them actually destroying bees, therefore we cannot : often honestly charge them with this hideous crime. Very few birds venture so close to our dwellings, as the bench which supports the cottage hives is situated no further away than beneath the kitchen window. Thousands, we believe, of our honey-bees are picked off the blossoms by birds, when, unsuspicious of danger, they are engaged sucking up the honey from the nectary of the flower. My bees are kept some distance away from my dwelling, therefore I have had a very good opportunity of watching closely this class of foes. After careful scrutiny I have come to this conclusion: that most of our birds which have been charged with this crime are innocent, in so far as killing the living insect is concerned. I have seen the thrush, tom-tit, robin readbreast, with several more, busy picking up for food the dead bees lying on the ground, beneath the stands, but I cannot say that I have ever seen them standing on either the hive or pedestal to catch the bees as they were leaving or returning to the hive. The worst bird enemy the British apiarian has to contend against is, I am convinced, the fly-catcher. These birds may be seen, on calm summer evenings, flying to and fro, opposite the hives, and catching the poor bees on the wing. Yet this bird may, after all, do far more good than harm, in ridding the air of millions of insect pests. The atmosphere would be unbearable were it not for insectivorous birds. Not only so, what would become of our garden vegetables, fruits, &c. were it not for birds? It is astonishing the quantity of insects and worms a 10u BEE-FARMING. single pair of fly-catchers destroy in the length of a day. Each bird in the early part of the day will return to its nest, carrying chiefly a mouthful of insects for its un- fledged young, not less than twenty times in an hour. ‘This can scarcely be credited by some persons, yet “seeing is believing.” The lively little tom-tit has again and again been charged as a bee-murderer. Doubtless there is some truth in the charge, for Lapoutre, a French naturalist, says,— «IT saw under a tree, in which there was a tom-tit’s nest, a surprising quantity of the scaly parts of bees, which this bird had dropped from the nest.” I scarcely, however, believe what Buffon places on record. In one of his works it is stated, “‘ with its beak and claws it pro- vokes the bees to come out, and then immediately seizes them.” I have seen it on several occasions about the hives, going beneath the pedestal and poking its nose in every nook and corner that it could detect, but I feel assured it was only to pick up as food spiders and other insects, for the bees at the time were going to and fro in ,hundreds, yet it never molested them; this to me was sufficient proof that he has often been unjustly charged. I was much pleased with a letter in The Times some years ago, and my readers will, no doubt, pardon its repro- duction :— “ Sir,—In reference to your interesting letters on bees, in The Times of last Thursday, I take leave to explain to you how I prevent tom-tits and other birds from molesting my industrious little friends, if they should feel so inclined. I affix before the door of the hive a piece of wire-work resembling the half of a round mouse- trap, and by this very simple means a bee is permitted to return to its house, or take wing as it pleases, without Jet, stop, or stay from this wicked hypocrite and his com- panions. This precaution being taken, I endeavour to THE ENEMIES OF OUR HONEY-BEE. 161 encourage all mischievous birds to abide with me, feeding the several tom-tits, to each of whom our gardens are so largely indebted, throughout the winter, with walnuts, and even providing them with sleeping places.— Yours, CLS. 8.” The woodpecker is another enemy to our hive inha- bitants, a serious one too; he does not come into the garden, but follows the bee unceasingly when busy in the fields, and more especially when gathering honey-dew in the early mornings, before the sun has acquired much power, Many of these birds when shot have been found with their stomachs nearly filled with bees. These birds are now becoming so rare that it is scarcely necessary tu refer to them. Let us not overlook this important fact in considering birds as bee-enemies, they principally destroy drones, not the workér bees. This assertion may be hard to prove, yet I think I can make it clear, How do they know the difference between the worker bee and the drones? They may not actually be able at sight to detect the difference, but they are seldom (that is the majority of birds) known to destroy them except in the afternoon, and it is only in the afternoon when drones take wing; again, drones do not fly nearly so fast as the worker bee, and are with more ease caught when on the wing. I do not give this thought to my readers as solely my own, for the same thought is thrown out by two of our best authors of recent times on apiculture. It must be acknowledged our domestic fowls are ex ceedingly partial to bees, and I have been inclined to mer- cilessly condemn them, but I do not now think so hardly about these useful birds, after watching hens, especially at the mouth of the hive, where they have been standing far more unconcerned than even the bee-eating toad, snap- ping up bee after bee, but they have, I firmly believe, in M 162 BEE-F ARMING. every instance been only drones. Can we not spare a few thousands of the male bees out of every hive? Let it be remembered they gather no honey and make no wax, yet they consume an enormous quantity of the finest virgin honey. If the birds could not in some degree dis- criminate betwixt a drone and a worker, how would the queen escape when flying through the air on her wedding flight ? She would be gobbled up by some hungry swallow; thus her life would ingloriously terminate, instead of her becoming the mother of thousands and the honoured head of the community. In birds which after being watched busy catching bees on the wing, then shot, upon examination. of the stomachs, nothing but drones have been detected. Therefore protect the poor birds; do not yet upon such slender evidence condemn them as bee-murderers. In America the king bird is doubtless very destructive to the apiaries; he has, however, one redeeming quality,, he drives away the crow from the corn-flelds. Mr. Hector St. John took as many as 171 dead bees from the craw of one of these birds. They must have been killed only a very short time, as, upon laying them out like corpses upon a blanket in the sun, fifty-four came to life, licked them- selves clean, then humming their thanks for delivery from death they joyously went back to their homes. Many tales of this kind are told, such as the recovery of flies found in Madeira wine perhaps two or three years old. An in- stance is related by Wildman, who states that his informant was a gentleman worthy of credit. He said the Madeira had been brought in bottles from Virginia to London, and that the flies, when exposed to a warm sun for an hour or two, were so completely reanimated as to take wing, thus putting to the test the truth of the opinion that a fly can- not be drowned. Of this adherence to life, advantage has been taken at the time of deprivation—recourse having been had to im- THE ENEMIES OF OUR HONEY-BEE, 163 mersion for removing a portion of the combs; the bees were afterwards spread on a cloth in the sun and became reanimated. Dr. Derham says that he has known bees revive after remaining twenty-four hours under an ex- hausted air pump. After long immersion the proboscis of the bee is generally unfolded and stretched to its full length. The first symptom of returning animation is a motion at its extremity, succeeded by a similar motion at the extremities of the legs. Having so far progressed towards recovery, the tongue is soon folded up again, and the bee prepared to resume its customary occupations. Our friends may take heart, if they should unfortu- nately find their skeps after a heavy thunderstorm totally immersed in water, and the bees apparently drowned and past recovery. J hada hive, in which a large hole was cut out of the straw at the top, some four inches in diameter, for the purpose of feeding, &c. Partly through sheer forgetfulness I left it exposed; a very heavy storm came on, which continued with very slight intermission for twenty-four hours. I thought surely they must all have perished, for hundreds were washed out of thehive through the mouth, on the ground beneath the stands. What was my joy, when I discovered them the following day, which fortunately turned out fine and warm, buzzing their wings, and humming in real gladness of heart! Those on the floor also recovered under the heat of the sun, and I do not think I lost a single bee. Oil, such as olive or sweet oil, is destructive to bees; if brushed over their sides, just beneath the wings, it causes death like poison in a few minutes, because it stops the breathing, which is performed by pores along the side of the abdomen. M2 164 BEE-P.ARMING. ‘THE WORST BEE-ENEMIES. Not unfrequently, if the eyes are used carefully in early summer, when rambling in some secluded village lane, or peeping beneath the overhanging eaves of the thatched cottage, we shail discover the nest of the wood- wasp (Vespa sylvestris). If it is found in its early stage, or when just completed, and before the architect has had time to deposit eggs in the cells, it may be detached and carried away without fear. I cannot point my readers to a more interesting object than this nest, a paper nest, more like in its external resemblance to a flower made with fine tissue-paper than anything with which I am acquainted: ao one can look at it without being filled with admiration at the elegance of its structure and design. They are not so rare as some people imagine: the real fact is, few per- sons, perhaps, have ever looked carefully for them, or they would doubtless long since have met with one. This species is more common in the north of England than in the southern counties, although they occur here and there all over the land. Having discovered one of these pretty little nests, and hung it up by means of a little glue to the top of the interior of a glass shade, as a chimney-shelf ornament, we should like to know a little about the history of these wonderful paper-manufacturers. If it be quite correct to describe our honey-bees as the first wax-makers, would it not be equally correct and appropriate to describe these littie active, though certainly irascible insects (the wasps), as the first paper-makers? They have known from the days of Adam how to make into paper almost every material which has been used for this purpose in modern times, long before the learned Egyptians employed the THE WORST BEE-ENEMIES. 165 leaves of the papyrus, from whence we derive our word paper, to make into books or for writing materials, First, about the nest and its construction. Carefully turn it over, or glance beneath, and you observe at the base a small orifice (see the engraving); this is the mouth orentrance. At the side, often about the centre, is a rim of paper completely encircling the nest, and cemented to the sides; this is designed very probably to carry off the rain without injuring the inner coat. Sometimes there are two, and I have seen as many as four, rims or hoods; when there are several hoods, it has then, when inverted, a very close resemblance to a double flower. By com- paring the outer envelope which surrounds the nest of the common wasp, we shall find it is made of much the same kind of material as that of the wood-wasp. In my NEST OF THE WOOD-WASP (VESPA SYLVESTRIS). country rambles, when lounging by the old wooden stile in our village, the two large posts of which are ash boughs, put carelessly or roughly together by our jack-of- 166 BEE-FARMING. all-trades the wheelwright, 1 have seen at various times scores of wasps busily engaged taking away the wood to form their nests. For two years, the bark not being re- moved from the wood, they actually made holes in the bark, then from an excavation beneath secured the object of their toil. But with all my watching I have never seen a single wood-wasp working on the ash stile; but I have observed one or two actively employed on an old sycamore tree, and on one occasion I caught one on a bench made from birch-wood. In the ‘fournal of a Naturalist it is said they procure their material from the willow and on an allied species, the sallow; I have, how- ever, not been so fortunate as to find them on this wood, although we have plenty of it exposed and decaying about the village. Whatever kind of wood is laboriously scraped together by these insects, it is doubtless some soft white wood, and it is afterwards cemented with what has been named animal glue, but wood alone is not used; withered leaves, fibres of plants, the down from the willow catkin, as well as downy hairs from many leafy buds, are made use of by these active paper-manufacturers. Wasps abound most in woody, wild districts. I have noticed in one wild woodland in Cheshire that wasps abound in such prodigious quantities that the peasantry have frequently informed me they cannot from this cause keep bees. One cottager in particular had four large colonies of bees in his garden last summer, streng enouzh, I thought, to resist any foe; however, every stock was destroyed in the autumn by wasps. In another district, about five miles from the above, not woody, but highly cultivated, it is almost a novelty to find a wasp’s nest. There are six distinct species of wasp in the British Islands, seven if we include the hornet, which, after all, is a wasp of a larger size, and all the species manufacture paper for their homes, although some use coarser materials THE IVORST BEE-ENEMIES. 167 Ul than others, therefore their nests look more rough and uneven; sometimes in a large nest we notice the paper of several shades of colour—this is because it has been put together by many different labourers, using several different kinds of materials. Let us closely watch that sharp little fellow on an old decaying rail; stand perfectly still, and he will fearlessly labour close to your face. It scrapes away bit by bit, seldom moving more than an inch from the place selected, until it has rolled up a good-sized pellet, then grasps it in its strong mandibles (jaws), and flies away to its nest. Having arrived (if it luckily escapes the hungry bird) at its domicile, it retires to rest for a little while—not for long, however, as time seems to be precious. Then we observe it with a pellet of wood, with its legs astride the outer margin, unrolling it carefully; as it unrolls it is firmly flattened or pressed, and glued down: then it rapidly goes over its work again and again, putting a touch here, and adding a little fresh saliva there, until it seems satisfied with its work. This process is repeated day by day until the nest is completed. The foundation of the nest is laid by a solitary (we might say lonely) queen. After she has laboured several days the structure looks like a tiny umbrella; an appro- priate name would be “ the fairies’ parasol.” Let us not forget the fact, when tempted to destroy “the horrid yellow things’ of nervous people: she builds the home, lays the eggs, which are fastened securely to the bottom of the cell, and, when these begin to hatch, she has to feed them as well as to carry on the task of building. Not only are wasps enemies to the honey-bee, but the _gardener often finds that, if not watched most carefully, they will make sad havoc among his juicy wall-fruits. However, they do some little good by preying upon the thousands of aphides which sometimes overrun our 168 BEE-FARMING. standard and other roses. This kind of food seems to be a dainty morsel for the young wasps. Dr. Ormerod mentions instances where the entire destruction of wasps has resulted in swarms of flies, almost as bad as the Egyptian plague in the days of Moses. Wasps certainly do much good as scavengers in destroying a large quantity of decaying vegetable matter ; but it is as destroyers of flies, spiders, aphides, caterpillars, and other insects, that their chief good isseen. Examine the ground beneath a large nest, and it is astonishing what a quantity of wings, &c., of flies are seen. In one of my rambles I fortunately witnessed a deadly combat between a ground- wasp and a large spider. Fora considerable time it was doubtful which would prove the victor; at length the wasp took a mean advantage over its adversary, and in- flicted its sting in the lower part of the spider’s body; in afew moments after the spider was dead. I expected, knowing that wasps are carnivorous, to see the victor carry away its spoil, but it appeared to be quite exhausted, and, instead, languidly took wing and disappeared; in about ten minutes it returned with a companion, who severed the body in twain, when it was easily carried away to the nest. A few years since I witnessed the destruction of a fine apiary solely by wasps, so that in October every stock was destroyed. In some villages wasps are more numerous than in others, but in any case “to be forewarned is to be forearmed.” Against this, as against other enemies that may creep inside the hive, such as mice, honey-meth, &c. the best defence is to make the entrance small, and you need not fear a host of them. During damp weather I noticed underneath one of my bee-stands three small holes somewhat like those made by mice, but scarcely so large. One evening about twilight as several stragglers were making their way SUPERSTITIONS RESPECTING BEES. 169 towards the hive, evidently quite tired and weary, two of them missed the entrance and dropped to the ground. No sooner did they touch the soil than they were, as quick as thought, conveyed down the holes we had previously observed. Not liking this destruction, and feeling sym- pathy for the worn-out and tired bees, I procured a shovel, determined to unearth the thief and murderer whatever it was; for the bees had disappeared too rapidly for me to make out the nature of the depredator. Digging down a few inches I found a blackbeetle or cockroach—I am not confident which, as it was injured with the shovel, but I believe it to have been the former insect. How- ever, I have kept a strict watch since, and whenever I have discovered these sly burrows I pour down a few drops of carbolic acid, which not only destroys the inmate but renders the home for a long time tenantless. J was not aware until recently that dragon-flies destroyed bees. Standing in the garden of a friend who owns a large apiary, I saw several large dragon-flies flying about. “Watch that fellow,” sharply exclaimed my friend. I did watch, and saw him catch several bees as they were returning to their hive heavily laden, and bear them to a large chestnut tree, where he speedily completed his work and returned to the slaughter again. This was repeated several times, greatly, I confess, to my astonishment. The garden was close to a marshy tract of land. This may, perhaps, account for the appearance of these enemies, as I never noticed them near my own apiary. SUPERSTITIOUS NOTIONS RESPECTING BEES. One would have thought that in this nineteenth century these foolish notions respecting our industrious 170 BEE-FARMING. and innocent honey-bees would have become extinct ; yet this is not the case in the minds of many ignorant and illiterate country people. All over England, if not in other parts of Great Britain, these superstitions are still in active existence; some few of the most common I will try to place before my readers. First, it is thought to be very unlucky to purchase bees, and many individuals who really love bees could not be persuaded on any account to give in exchange either silver or gold for them. If this notion generally existed, what would some of our practical apiarians do? They would soon have to relinquish the trade for one more pro- fitable. The plan adopted by these squeamish people is to persuade their neighbours to give them a swarm; then, when they have established an apiary, it is given back in honey in return. I am quite willing to give a hive to any poor cottager who really cannot afford to purchase a swarm; but when I inquire the reason why they wish me to give them the stock, and am told it is because the bees would not prosper if they were purchased, I invariably refuse to give the swarm, for the simple reason that I do not wish to encourage such a foolish idea. Most persons who hold this idea would rather relinquish all the profits attendant upon bee-keeping than purchase a stock, even if it were offered for one shilling. Again, on the death of any of the bee-keeper’s family, the bees must be informed, or the stocks would either die or leave the apiary. One way of doing this is to tap gently on the top of the hive with the key from the front door, and in tones sufficiently loud to be heard inside the hive to tell the active inmates the name of the person, and the day of his or her death. Another plan is to place black crape round the hive for a certain period. Passing by the garden of a poor widow some time since, I ventured to examine the hives, which I usually do if SUPERSTITIONS RESPECTING BEES. 171 time will permit, and sometimes in addition tender a little advice, to those willing to listen, upon their profitable management. I was rather surprised to find all the hives tenantless ; upon inquiring the reason why they were all dead, I was informed it was because they had omitted to remind them of her husband’s decease. “ They did not die,” she strenuously maintained, “ but all forsook their hives and went away.’’ I had the greatest difficulty to persuade her they had actually died during the previous winter or spring from starvation. She scarcely credited what I said even when I turned up the hives one by one and exhibited the dead bees by thousands; and, after all, when leaving her garden, she declared I was for once mistaken, for the bees must have gone away to some more hospitable place. In Switzerland, upon the death of any of the house- hold, the hives even in the depth of winter are turned upside-down when the funeral procession is leaving the house for the churchyard. A rather amusing instance of this superstition is narrated by Langstroth. The coffin containing the deceased was left exposed for a time outside the house, not far from the bees’-stand, on a hot summer’s day, when several bees alighted upon the coffin and com menced a happy, cheerful humming sound (invariably emitted when pleased), The relatives believed they were mourning the death of their master. On the contrary, they were delighted to find such a quantity of good pro- polis oozing from the pine-wood, and perhaps their hive just at the time stood in great need of this article. When conveying bees from one part of the country to another they must not be carried over running water, or they will assuredly die, or prove unproductive and unprofitable. It sometimes is difficult to avoid, if carrying them any distance, coming across a brook or other running stream; yet I have known them carried three or four miles in a circular direction rather than go over any rivulet. 172 BEE-FARMING. I seldom hear this notion expressed now ; it is several years since I heard it from an aged peasant. In some parts of the north of England the 10th of August is considered as a day of jubilee amongst bees. Why, I cannot tell, A swarm coming out on this day would not be hived under any circumstances, because they are said to be unlucky. Bees working on this day are named Quakers, perhaps because the members of the Society of Friends observe no holiday. This is near akin to the idea that the bees should not be allowed to quit the hive on Friday ; many apiarians belonging to the Roman Catholic persuasion, I am informed, carry this out literally by closing the entrance or the mouth of the hive on that day. A swarm of bees settling upon a dead tree, or a hedge- stake, or rail, which is considered “dead wood,” is a sign or token of death, 7.e., it predicts the death of some member of the family to whom they belong. A poor fellow with whom I was sympathising upon the death of his wife said to me, “I expected some one of us would be laid in the grave-yard before long.” “ Why?” said I, in reply. “ Because,” he answered, “the swarm of bees which came out first this season settled on the hedge-rail. When they settle on dead or dying wood it is always a token of death, and I have never known it to fail.” It is accounted unlucky for a swarm of bees to settle on your premises unless they are claimed by their owner and given up to him peaceably. Several years since a strong stock settled in an apple-tree in the garden of one of my neigh- bours. It would not have been very difficult, perhaps, to name the actual owner of this stray swarm, but the old gentleman in whose apple-tree they were clustered was by no means willing to part with them, Some of the neigh- bowrs whispered, “Ah! yourll see the old man, or his old-r wife, will die before long.” Accordingly it came to SUPERSTITIONS RESPECTING BEES. 173 pass; the kind master of the house was shortly afterwards carried to his long home. ‘This appeared to confirm the prediction, and the whispering neighbours and village gos- sips now point to this as an instance of the truth of the old saying. I was lately looking over the stocks in what was once a fine and flourishing apiary, but it appeared to have suffered severe losses. I was perplexed to account for the death of:so many stocks, except by starvation, which is the case in by far the majority of instances, but I was not left long in doubt, if the word of one of the domestic servants was to be credited. ‘Why, master,” she ex- claimed, before I left the premises, “you need not be astonished, for I have heard it said scores of times that bees will never thrive if folks fight about them.” “Well, but you don’t mean to say that any one fights about your bees,”? I replied. “If they don’t fight with their fists,” she answered rather pettishly, “they fight with words, and that is every bit as bad. And I say again, and go where you will you'll find my words true, bees will never do any good for anybody if they fight about them, for they are peaceable things, and knowing things too, those bees are, and they know well enough when anybody is vexed with them.” A great horror exists in the minds of not a few intel- ligent rustic bee-keepers against what they are pleased to term the new-fangled notion of driving the stocks into empty skeps in the autumn when taking the honey, and afterwards mingling them with other stocks well provided with food, instead of cruelly destroying them over the brimstone pit. I believe they have an idea that something unlucky will befal themselves or their families should the stocks be driven and preserved. 174 BEE-FARMING. A NORTH AMERICAN BEE-HUNT. BY WASHINGTON IRVING. The beautiful forest in which we were encamped abounded in bee-trees; that is to say, trees in the decayed trunks of which wild bees had established their hives. It is surprising in what countless swarms the bees have overspread the Far West within but a moderate number of years. The Indians consider them the harbinger of the white man, as the buffalo is of the red man; and say, that in proportion as the bee advances the Indian and the buffalo retire. We are always accustomed to associate the hum of the bee-hive with the farm-house and the flower-garden, and to consider those industrious little insects as connected with the busy haunts of men; and I am told that the wild bee is seldom to be met with at any distance from the frontier. “They have been the heralds of civilization, steadily preceding it as it advanced from the Atlantic borders; and some of the ancient settlers of the Far West pretend to give the very year when the honey-bee first crossed the Mississippi. The Indians with surprise found the mouldering trees of their forests sud- denly teeming with ambrosial sweets; and nothing, I am told, can exceed the greedy relish with which they banquet for the first time upon this unbought luxury of the wilderness. At present the honey-bee swarms in myriads in the noble groves and forests that skirt and intersect the prairies, and extend along the alluvial bottoms of the rivers. It seems to me as if these beautiful regions answer A NORTH AMERICAN BEE-HUNT. 175 literally to the description of the land of promise, “a land flowing with milk and honey ;”? for the rich pasturage of the prairies is calculated to sustain herds of cattle as countless as the sands upon the seashore, while the flowers with which they are enamelled render them a very para- dise for the nectar-secking bee. We had not been long in the camp when a party set out in quest of a bee-tree; and, being curious to witness the sport, I gladly accepted an invitation to accompany them. The party was headed by a veteran bee-hunter, a tall,. lank fellow, in homespun garb, that hung loosely about his limbs, and a straw hat shaped not unlike a bee-hive; a. comrade equally uncouth in garb, and without a hat, straddled along at his heels, with a long rifle on his shoulder. “To these succeeded half a dozen others, some with axes and some with rifles; for no one stirs far from camp without fire-arms, so as to be ready either for wild deer or savage Indian, After proceeding some distance we came to an open glade on the skirts of the forest. Here our leader halted, and then advanced quietly to a low bush, on the top of which I perceived a piece of honeycomb. This I found was the bait or lure for the wild bees. Several were humming about it, and diving into its cells. When they had laden themselves with honey they would rise up in the air, and dart off in one straight line, almost with the velocity of a bullet. The hunters watched attentively the course they took, and then set off in the same direction, stumbling along over twisted roots and fallen trees, with their eyes turned up to the sky. In this way they traced the honey-laden bees to their hive, in the hollow trunk of a blasted oak, where, after buzzing about for a moment, they entered a hole about sixty feet from the ground, Two of the bee-hunters now applied their axes vigorously at the foot of the tree to level it with the 175 BEE-P ARMING. ground, The mere spectators and amateurs, in the mean- time, drew off to a cautious distance, to be out of the way of the falling of the tree and the vengeance of its inmates. The jarring blows of the axe seemed to have no effect in alarming or agitating this most industrious community. They continued to ply at their usual occupations, some arriving full freighted into port, others sallying forth on new expeditions, like so many merchantmen in a money- making metropolis, little suspicious of impending bank- ruptcy and downfall. Even a loud crack which announced the disrupture of the trunk failed to divert their attention from the intense pursuit of gain; at length down came the tree with a tremendous crash, bursting open from end to end, and displaying all the hoarded treasures of the commonwealth. One of the hunters immediately ran up with a wisp of lighted hay as a defence against the bees. The latter, however, made no attack and sought no revenge; they seemed stupefied by the catastrophe, and unsuspicious of its cause, and remained crawling and buzzing about the ruins, without offering us any molestation. Every one of the party now fell to, with spoon and hunting knife, to scoop out the flakes of honeycomb with which the hollow trunk was stored. Some of them were of very old date, and of a deep brown colour; others were beautifully white, and the honey in their cells was almost limpid. Such of the combs as were entire were placed in camp kettles, to be conveyed to the encampment, those which had been shivered by the fall were devoured upon the spot. Every stark bee-hunter was to be seen with a morsel in his hand, dripping about his fingers, and disappearing as rapidly as a cream-tart before the holiday appetite of a school-boy. Nor was it the bee-hunters alone who profited by the downfall of this industrious community. As if the bees A NORTH AMERICAN BEE-HUNT. 177 would carry through the similitude of their habits with those of laborious and gainful man, I beheld numbers from rival hives arriving on eager wings to enrich them- selves with the ruin of their neighbours. These busied themselves as eagerly and cheerily as so many wreckers on an Indiaman which has been driven on shore—plunging into the cells of the broken combs, banqueting greedily on the spoil, and then winging their way full-freighted to: their homes. As to the poor proprietors of the ruin, they seemed to have no heart to do anything, not even to taste the nectar that flowed around them, but crawled back- wards and forwards in vacant desolation, as I have seen a. poor fellow, with his hands in his breeches pockets,. whistling vacantly and despondingly about the ruins of his: house which had been burnt. It is difficult to describe the bewilderment and con- fusion of the bees of the bankrupt hive, who had been absent at the time of the catastrophe, and who arrived from time to time with full cargoes from abroad, At first they wheeled about the air, in the place where the fallen tree had once reared its head, astonished at finding all a vacuum. At length, as if comprehending their disaster, they settled down in clusters on a dry branch of a neigh- bouring tree, from whence they seemed to contemplate the prostrate ruin, and to buzz forth doleful lamentations over the downfall of their republic. It was a scene in which the “ melancholy Jacques” might have moralised by the hour. We now abandoned the place, leaving much honey in the hollow of the tree. “It will be all cleared off by varmint,” said one of the rangers. ‘“ What ver- ‘ min?” said I, “Oh! bears and skunks, and possums, and racoons, The bears is the knowing’st varmint for finding out a bee-tree in the world. ‘They’ll gnaw for days together at the trunk, till they make a hole jig enough to get in their paws, and then they'll hole out honey, bees, and all.” N 178 BEE-FARMING. AUSTRALIAN BEE-HUNTING. From the absence of flowers in many parts of the bush of Australia, the little native bee may be seen busily working on the bark of the trees, and, unlike the bees of this country, which are ever on the move from flower to flower, it seems to be unconscious of danger. This may arise from the vastness of the solitudes in Australia, which are seldom if ever disturbed, except by a passing tribe, or by its own wild denizens, which are far from numerous. ‘The bee is therefore easily approached, and the bright clear atmosphere of the climate is peculiarly favourable to the pursuit. A party of two or three natives, armed with a tomahawk, sally forth into the bush, having previously provided themselves with the soft white down from the breast of some bird, which is very light in texture and at the same time very fluffy. With that wonderful quickness of sight which practice has rendered perfect, they descry the little brownish leaden- coloured insect on the bark, and, rolling up an end of the down feather to the finest possible point between the fingers, they dip it into a gummy substance which a peculiar sort of herb exudes when the stem is broken. They then cautiously approach the bee, and with great delicacy of touch place the gummed point under the hind legs of the bee. It at once adheres. “Then comes the resu't for which all this preparation has been made. The bee feeling the additional weight fancies he has done his task and is laden with honey, and flies off the tree on his homeward journcy at no great distance from the ground. ‘The small white feather is now all that can be discerned, and the hunt at once commences. Running on foot amid broken branches and stony ground requires, one would think, the aid of one’s eyesight; but with the native Australians it is not so. Without taking for a moment their eyes off the object, THE BEE-HUNTER. 179 they follow it, sometimes to the distance of half-a-raile, and rarely, if ever, fail in marking the very branch where they saw the little bit of white down disappear at the entrance of the hive. Here there is a halt, the prize is found, and they sit down to regain their breath before ascending the tree, and to light a pipe—to which old and young, men, women, and children, are extremely partial. When the rest and smoke are over, with one arm round the tree and the tomahawk in the other, the black man cuts notches in the bark, and, placing the big toe in the notches, ascends this hastily constructed stair until he comes to where the branches commence; then, putting the handle of the tomahawk between his teeth, he climbs with the ease and agility of a monkey till he reaches the branch where last he saw the white down disappear; he then carefully sounds the branches with the back of his tomahawk till the dull and distinct sound from the hollow tells him where the hive is. A hole is then cut, and he puts his hand in and takes the honey out. If alone, the savage eats when up the tree till he can eat no more and leaves the rest; but, if with others, he cuts a square piece of bark, and, after having had the best part of the hive as a reward for his exertions, brings down a mass of honey and comb mixed together, which, though not inviting, is greedily devoured by those below. In one of Cooper’s novels, I think the “Oak Open- ings,” will be found a wonderful description of a bee-huat, similar in its mode to the above. THE BEE-HUNTER. Whether the honey-bee (pis mellifica) is a native ot the New World, or whether it was carried there by some N? 180 BEE-FARMING. of the Pilgrim Fathers, is not known, though it has been observed by the Indians to be never far distant from the borders of civilisation. Long ago the invasion of Ken- sucky by Boone and the other pioneer backwoodsmen is said to have been foretold by a Shawnee warrior, who, see- ing a bee on the western bank of the Mississippi, warned his tribe that before very long their hunting-grounds would be invaded; and, later still, the settlement of California was predicted by a Gumas Indian, on discovering a bee- tree on the Gila river. In some of the south-western states, the collection of wild honey, as an article of barter or trade, has been made a business by some of the back- woodsmen; and as honey used to bring a quarter of a dollar a gallon, and some of the bee-trees yielded from six to a dozen gallons of honey, besides wax, it was not an unprofitable pursuit. The taste that leads a man to take delight in the boisterous music of a pack of deer-hounds, as they drive the stag to a stand, or in the rough danger of a bear-fight, is not a proper foundation upon which to build the bee-hunter. The bee-hunter is of a pensive turn, fond of solitude, fond of nature, delighting in flowers, though perhaps not from a botanical point of view. If he reads, he has probably read Burton’s “ Anatomy of Melancholy;’? most certainly he has read and re-read, time after time, Izaak Walton’s “Complete Angler,’ for there is no such anomaly as a bee-hunter who is not also a patient, skilful piscator. So fond is he of the silence of the woceds, whose stillness is only broken by the drowsy hum of a bee, or the gentle chirp of a bird, that the occasional sharp tap tap of the woodpecker sounds harshly to his ear. On the bank of some navigable stream the bee-hunter builds his log-cabin, fences in an acre or two of ground to grow his vegetables upon, depends for meat upon his trusty rifle, and for his bread upon his skill in detecting the stores of the wild bees; and, when he has collected three or four THE BEE-HUNTER, 181 barrels of honey, he rolls them down the bluft river-bank and into his boat, and paddling his cargo off to the nearest settlement, returns with a barrel of flour, powder, lead, or any necessaries he may be in need of. If he has settled upon one of the larger streams where the great river steam- boats ply, such as the Mississippi, he generally trades with the captain of some boat, thereby saving his time, yet perhaps at a slight sacrifice, as the captain will expect to make a little by the trade, though the freight on his own boat will be nothing, and the better price the honey will command at New Orleans will leave the skipper a fair margin for profit. The “ Father of Waters,” as the Mississippi has been poetically named, is a very bad translation of its true meaning. The name is derived from the once most powerful tribe of the South-west, the Choctaws, and in their language the two adjectives, Missah and Sippah, when separate, are used constantly to qualify the most familiar things ; but when compounded they serve to give the characteristic name to this immense river—issah, old, big; sippah, strong—Old-Big-Strong. The difference between a bee-hunter and an ordinary man strikes the observer at once. Relying upon the qualities of his mind, he has a profound contempt for the mere adornment of his person. An old battered sombrero, whose broad brim shades his eyes, graces his head; a blue and white striped hickory shirt, unfastened at the throat, and indeed not buttoned anywhere, hangs negligently on his shoulders; coat or waistcoat is dispensed with altogether, whilst his ‘unmentionables”? are of deer-skin, stained about equally with dirt and honey, and, if of less durable materials, are fringed with numberless ribbons, giving evidence of many a briar and brake that he has plunged heedlessly through when his eye has been intent on “ lining” some bee to its nest. 182 BEE-FARMING. Then the perfection to which he has educated his eye is wonderful ; for to his powers of vision he is principally indebted for his success. By the law of the woods, whoever finds a bee-tree and marks it by cutting a strip or two of bark off is en- titled to it at any future time; and any one who should be mean enough to fell and take the honey from that blazed! tree would be looked upon as a thief quite as much as though he had picked his neighbour’s pocket; and, to the honour of the thousands of backwoodsmen I have known, I have never heard of a single instance where this rule has not been respected. “ How many bee-trees have you marked this summer? ’” said J to an old negro, who was busily mending a broken. axe-handle. “Ninety-four, massa, and come fall I *spects to have a power of honey to trade.” These trees had all been marked in the neighbourhood of the plantation; and, though probably the negro him- self would never be able to find all the trees again, yet being marked they would not be interfered with though a dozen honey-hunters passed them. In my forest wanderings I have repeatedly come upon a bee-tree, only marking it when it was near some settle- ment, as I never had any intention of cutting down one cf the largest trees of the forest, only to be rewarded for my trouble by getting thoroughly well stung. In Africa the honey-bird ({ndicator Vaillantii) is a sure guide to the Hottentots. Directed by its shrill cry the hunter follows the bird, endeavouring always to keep it in sight, and tracks its course wherever it may lead. In America we have no corresponding guide, and either find the honey by accident, or by hunting for it as I am now about to describe. It was a beautiful autumnal morning that I set out to meet Tony Sneed, the bee-hunter, by appointment, on a THE BEE-HUNTER. 183 prairie near the edge of the San Bernard River. Tony was true to time, a curved-handled Collins axe in his hand, and a tin bucket on his shoulder, followed by his son, a great gawky lad of seventeen or eighteen, who also bore an axe anda couple of buckets. We had scarcely exchanged salutations when Tony, throwing out his arm —the one thrust through the pail handle—exclaimed, «Thar goes a bee right for that point of timber. He was a loaded bee,” he added meditatively, ‘* for his thighs were as yellow as a California gold miner’s legs. I can see a bee for a very long distance on a clear day ; how- sumever we’ve got one lined.” His preparations were beautiful from their simplicity. An old tin copper-cap box about half filled with honey, a common blue saucer, a glass tumbler, and a little phial of flour of sulphur, constituted Tony’s stock in trade. Blue, yellow, red, and white autumn flowers carpeted the prairie, and amongst them several bees were flitting ; occasionally four or five would be upon’ one weed, and when Tony’s glance fell upon them he would observe, “Them’s almost allus from one tree; what I wants is scattered bees to line and angle from.” I fancied I knew what he meant by line, but angle from was beyond my comprehension, and I asked him, “ How do you mean angle from?” « Ef you'll have a little patience, you’ll see all’s one as well as my telling.” Thus rebuked for my curiosity, I could only watch Tony’s proceedings in silence. Reversing the tin bucket, he set it upon the ground, and upon it placed the saucer, into which he poured about half a teaspoonful of honey, and drawing off a yard or so patiently waited. The smell of the honey soon attracted one bee, then another, and presently five bees were busy upon the honey 184 BEE-FARMING. in the saucer. Cautiously approaching the saucer an inch at a time, Tony, by a sudden and dexterous movement, placed the tumbler over the bees, and over this again his hat, remarking, as he did so, “ They works harder in the dark.” In about three minutes Tony raised his weather- beaten hat, and minutely inspected the first bee which had settled upon the saucer, and after this examination he pro- nounced the insect “about filled.” Taking a pinch of the sulphur flour between the finger and thumb of his right hand, and raising the saucer in his left, he stood watching for the bee to fly, and the moment it did so, and had cleared the edge of the saucer, it was lightly dusted with the sulphur. “There’ll be a muss in the hive when that chap gets home,” said Tony; “it’s gone right for the same place as the first one I noticed afore I set the sarcer.”” In a few minutes another flew, and was ‘sulphur-dusted as was the first, and this too, Tony said, went in the same direction as the other. A third was ‘served in the same way; but this, unlike the others, flew towards another point of the timber, which satisfied Tony that it belonged to a different tree. The bee-hunter ‘spoke confidently of seeing the bees, long after they were -out of my sight; and although my eyes had served a long apprenticeship in the pursuit of game, both in the forest and on the prairie, yet, strain them as I would, I lost sight -of the bees at less than two hundred yards? distance, so that I could only conclude that by very long and ceaseless practice Sneed had acquired his keenness of vision. Moving about two hundred yards to the right of our first position, ‘the bee-hunter again prepared his honey saucer, secured ‘some bees, and repeated his experiment. ‘This was to get the angle; and this, as it was explained to me, was done in this manner :—It seems that the organ of locality is so ‘strongly developed in the bee that when it has loaded itself with honey it starts off immediately in a straight line for THE BEE-HUNTER, 185 home; and so well is this characteristic known by the American hunters, that it is a common saying with them, when starting in a hurry, to say, “ Well, I shall make a bee-line for home,” or for any other place which they wish to reach at once. A bee-hunter then, having found the line of his bee, has only half performed his task; for the home of the bee may be a mile or two deep in the forest; but by taking a different position and a fresh bee, and marking where the point of intersection would be of the two flights, he can judge pretty well how deep in the forest the hive will be, as the two bees, if belonging to the same tree, will converge from their opposite starting points to the tiny hole by which they enter their home in the arm of some great forest tree. Practice enables the hunter to determine this in half the time it takes to explain it, even as lamely as I have done, and gathering up his various implements he starts in pursuit. Arrived in the neighbourhood of the tree, the reason why the sulphur was used is apparent; the dusted bees had disturbed all the other inmates of their little community by the disagreeable taint they had brought with them; and now the buzzing, humming noise of the colony directs Tony to his prey. The tree at whose foot we had arrived was one of the finest in the forest. For two centuries at least it had stretched its giant limbs towards the heavens, and its green leaves had fluttered in the summer breeze long before its destroyer’s grandfather was born; “ but the axe was laid to the root of the tree,’? and, whilst Tony Sneed plied his strokes thick and fast on one side, his son’s blows sounded quick and sharp on the other. Until the tree began to totter, the bees had not seemed aware that any danger threatened their home, but as soon as they understood the nature of the invasion they sallied out to attack the in- vaders ; and, though they inflicted many a sting, Sneed and his son were equal to the occasion. Ceasing from their 186 BEE-FARMING. chopping, they collected some brush and moss, and, piling: them up into two or three heaps, set them on fire, and soon the rank smoke made the bees beat a hasty retreat,. whilst Tony and his son, resuming their labours, soon. brought the forest giant to the ground. For myself I had kept at a respectful distance when the bees began to- attack, though near enough to watch all the proceedings. As soon as the tree was down Sneed and his son built “a. smoke,” at about four or five feet distance all around the limb which contained the honey; and, this effected, the philosopher, lighting his pipe, joined me. “I don’t like to kill the critters,’ he remarked, “though I want their honey. The smoke ’ll drive them off, and they’ll soon fiad another hollow. ‘Them as it don’t drive off it will only suffocate for a while, and they’ll come to as fresh as: paint an hour after we are gone.’? When the bees had been thoroughly driven off, we took some small biscuits, called crackers, from our pockets, and, dipping them in virgin honey, made our lunch, after which Sneed and his son filled their buckets, and we started homewards, having witnessed for the first time a. scientific bee-hunt. How thoroughly the senses of the back-woodsman are cultivated the following quotation from a friend will show: «The forest hunter is compelled to cultivate his sight to. a'most the same degree of perfection that characterises the: touch of the blind, and experience at last renders it so. kzen that the slightest touch of a passing object on the leaves, trees, or earth, leaves to him a deep and visible im- pression, though to the common eye unseen as the path of the bird through the air. This knowledge governs the chase and the war-path; this knowledge is what, when excelled in, makes the master spirit among the rude inha- bitants of the wood: and that man is the greatest chief who follows the coldest trail, and leaves none behind him. by his own footsteps.” GOLDEN RULES. 187 GOLDEN RULES FOR BEE-FARMERS. We extract the following notes from a kind of bee- diary—or rather notes of an amateur’s work in apiarian matters, trusting they may be useful to those who are in- experienced in these things, and thus prevent loss, and, what is even worse to some people, disappointment. Many of our friends who have commenced an apiary have given up the pursuit solely because they did not find it all straightforward, and met at first with a few disappoint- ments. The golden rule in bee-keeping is, “ Keep your stocks strong.”? For the first few years of our bee-keeping we tried to increase our stocks as rapidly as possible. “To do this we hived every swarm as a separate colony, and in some seasons our old stocks have thrown off a swarm and two casts. These were all hived in separate skeps, thus making three stocks, where, if we had been wise, there would only have been one. It was what in other things would have been called “making haste to be rich.” How- ever, the result was nothing but loss and disappointment the ensuing season, Some of the casts, or what are generally known as swarms, would not, if measured, have contained a pint of bees. Being so small at the commencement, we could not expect them to make good strong colonies. Perhaps had we been sufficiently wide-awake we could in the autumn have placed in each hive two or three condemned cottagers’ stocks, then they might have wintered well, and very likely had a fair start in spring. We fed them liberally with syrup and honey, still they seemed to dwindle gradually away, and the coming spring saw them all dead, or so very feeble and weak as to be worthless. The reason why we hear such an outcry against bees 188 BEE-FARMING. and bee-keeping amongst our cottagers is, that this golden rule seems to be completely overlooked. Profitable bee- keeping is a subject much talked about as well as written upon, but somehow or other—perhaps from the fact that people have been so misled by popular publications—the idea has now taken hold of the bee-keepers of this country that there is no such thing as profitable bee-keeping. ‘This is erroneous, and the sooner it is set right the better for everybody. Bee-keeping is without doubt very profitable if you follow the rule—Keep your stocks strong. During the past year we were induced, by advertisements seen in one of our monthly periodicals, to purchase two small pamphlets upon apiculture: one was entitled Keep Bees, Keep Bees, the French bistop’s advice to his poor clergy; The A.B.C. Guide, or Cottager’s Manual, showing how by proper management ten or twelve stock-hives will return the owner an annual profit of 50/. This consisted prin- cipally of extracts from other publications. I should, however, like to know whether any one has made 5o0/. in any one year from the old sulphuring system. The other pamphlet was entitled 70/. a@ Year; or How I make it by my Bees. This book informed the reader how to work his apiary; it was upon the nadir system, or we must purchase a lot of American cheese-boxes, and, when the hives show symptoms of swarming, place the cheese- boxes beneath them, feed liberally with sugar, and at the end of the season we should have a golden honey-harvest. I don’t think our aristocracy, who like to see a little pure honey in the comb on their breakfast-table, will thank us for syrup cased up in wax. However, I merely mention these books, which have no doubt misled many persons, to warn my readers against following such popular guides: they will only end in disappointment. I trust my readers will pardon this digression. Now to my subject—Keep your stocks strong. First, I give a GOLDEN RULES. 189 little of my experience to prove the correctness of the golden rule. I had four stocks of bees which I worked to prove the rule; three contained perhaps 15,000 bees in each hive; the other or fourth stock was very strong, and perhaps would contain 40,000, if correctly counted. The result in the autumn confirmed my rule; the strong colony stored a third more honey than all the other three stocks; all the summer they worked most industriously, while the weak stocks appeared careless, or to have no heart for labour. It is a very easy matter to keep your stocks alive and prosperous when the sun shines, or during the summer months, but it is quite different in the winter; then your stocks die away sometimes, and you are scarcely able to tell why. One thing should not be overlooked: If your stocks are strong in the autumn, and have sufficient food to supply them during the whole winter, with a strong vigorous queen at their head, you will have little cause to fear; they will winter well, and come out next spring pre- pared for another season’s labours. Write out the following and affix it in your apiary, at all events do not let it escape your memory:—“A strong colony will consume much less food during winter than a weak one.” ‘This may seem paradoxical, but it is the experience of all the bee-keepers with whom we have conversed, especially of those who are thoroughly ac- quainted with the habits and economy of the insects. A weak stock is continually moving about in the hive, and do what they will they cannot keep up the temperature except by consuming a large quantity of honey; on the other hand, strong colonies cluster closer together in large masses, and seldom move about; they can thus keep up an even temperature without eating so much food. On this plea it is wiser to keep strong stocks of bees than feeble ones. Igo BEE-FARMING. All apiarians rejoice when they can secure early swarms. ‘The old saw says:— A swarm of bees in May Is worth a load of hay, You may reasonably hope for early swarms only when you keep strong stocks, not otherwise. We trust we have now said sufficient, not alone to convince the practical apiarian, but to induce all our readers who scan the above remarks to keep strong stocks, for then they may expect the apiary to be profitable as well as instructive. BEE FARMER’S CALENDAR. Work FoR JANUARY. No real work is needful during this the first month of the year; but there are one or two points worthy of attention, and, if we love our bees, nothing will be thought too much trouble. We fear there are many so-called bee- keepers who are very careless, and by carelessness alone they allow many of their stocks to die during this and the following two or three months, Ventilation. Owing to this being overlooked, in the majority of cases, many colonies become diseased and perish. A free current of air should be allowed to run through the entire hive; a good plan is to elevate the top-board about one-eighth of an inch; by this means the air in the hive is kept dry; but when a wooden hive is tightly closed it becomes saturated with moisture; we once lost a most valuable stock from this cause. If the bees which venture on the alighting board at the entrance void a yellow substance, it is a sign they have dysentery ; no time must be lost in looking after the stock, if they are to be saved from utter loss. Mice are very fond of the shelter afforded by straw BEE-FARMER’S CALENDAR. 1gl hives; they creep in unawares, and, finding a warm coin- fortable home, with a rich pantry, they are very loth to leave such a pleasant domicile; but oust them out without the least compunction, as they work sad havoc amongst the combs. Birds are on the look-out for solitary bees flying abroad during sunny days; however, we do not think they do much damage, the few bees they gobble up will not be so very great a loss. “The only bee-enemy which we dislike is the little tomtit; in straw hives he does a great deal of mischief. In bar-frame hives, neither mice nor birds ever give much trouble. Take care the entrance is made small, then you need pay no more attention, except it be to shade the entrance if snow be on the ground. Never entirely close up the mouth of the hive, as we have known many thoughtless bee-keepers do in hard weather. Bees require fresh air as much as wedo. It is not cold that kills them, damp is more to be dreaded. Look up any old hives, repaint them on the outside, and clean them in every nook and corner. If you purpose increasing your stocks during the coming summer, prepare your hives in time; do not leave them to be sought when the swarms are flying abroad. We have invariably found ‘it better to purchase them than to make them ourselves, -when they can be bought at all reasonably. Work For FEBRUARY. Winter being almost gone, we are apt to imagine the ‘stocks still left alive require no more care or attention. A greater fallacy cannot well be conceived. Now our work must begin in right good earnest. Lose no time in overhauling your stocks. Having ‘blown a little smoke amongst them, lift the hive bodily 152 BEE-FARMING. from the bottom board, if they are in skeps, and brush off all the dead bees; in fact, carefully clean it from all dirt, &c. which might hinder or impede them in their work. They are just now enlivened with every gleam of sunshine, and anxious to be abroad, therefore remove every obstacle. This month, above all others, is rife with disease. By removing the bottom board dysentery, &c. is easily detected and by timely warning the stock may be saved. If the hive appears at all damp, lift it up above the bottom board, supporting it about a quarter of an inch all round by thin wedges from about 30 a.m. to 3 p.m. By no means leave the stock thus exposed to night-air; if any snow should fall, especially now, after the bees have commenced their spring flight, close up the entrance for a few hours until tne glare has passed away. Remember more stocks die from sheer want of food after March has come in than at any other period; there- fore begin to feed every stock in the apiary very cautiously. ‘This will have a twofold advantage; by feeding them during any warm or dry day the queen will commence depositing brood, thus your stocks will probably throw off very early swarms. We have tested this; we fed three small stocks, commencing the last week in February, and gave each stock about two pounds and a-half of syrup each fortnight, until the second week in April; these stocks threw off each three fine swarms the following summer; but two other hives left unfed only swarmed once, the second week in July; thus feeding proved very profitable. Another wise thing is to place a shallow dish a little distance from the bee-shed filled with barley-flour, We tind our bees will take up a considerable quantity to the hives during mild sunny days; this will be another strong inducement for the queen to begin laying her eggs, BEE-FARMER’S CALENDAR 193 for it is doubtless used instead of pollen to feed the young brood. Very much depends upon early breeding, the stocks soon become strong, throwing off fine swarms, and are in readiness to avail themselves of the honey harvest when it comes. Work For Marcu. Bearing in mind the grand rule, “ Keep your stocks strong,” early in this month, examine each hive carefully, for we can only expect those hives which contain a strong and healthy stock to be profitable. Look well to the entrance of the hive; if the bees are observed to void a yellowish excrement you have cause to suspect dysentery. “This disease is brought on either from dampness or improper and sour food. We have always found the remedy is cleanliness and feeding with good new honey. : If the apizry is composed of straw skeps, give to each stock a clean floor board; if this is impossible the sooner the old boards are cleansed the better. 1in bar-frame hives gently lift up the upper part on a fine warm day and brush all the dead bees, with other dirt, from the bottom board. Bees attend closely to all sanitary matters; in the working season, their dead are speedily carried forth; but in the winter this cannot be done owing to their close confine- ment; therefore, it is well to aid them inthis matter; they will afterwards appreciate and repay the kind forethought. If they have not commenced soon after the month of March has set in to carry pollen to the hives when the weather is favourable, something is wrong, and the sooner the stock is examined the better. Perhaps they are a queenless colony; if so, unite them to some other stock; the hive with its valuable comb will be reserved for a 9) 194 BEE-FARMING. swarm. If the greater part of the month is cold and frosty, with occasional slight snow-storms, and with scarcely a crocus visible until the third week, we cannot expect to see any pollen carried in. It will then be found : useful to continue to place barley-meal within reach; the “bees will use it instead of pollen. If any stock is deficient in food, which may be ascer- ' tained by feeling the weight of the hive, give them a small quantity of newly-made syrup each warm afternoon; this will stimulate, and do the colony good; breeding will also go on at a greater rate ; but care should be exercised not to smear any syrup or honey on the hive or floor-board, it will entice robbers, and most likely produce fighting. We have used most successfully the best barley-sugar; as this is not stored in the cells, it is easy to ascertain when food is scarce. The winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis) and various species of spring crocus yield the chief supply of pollen during this month. Close the entrance if snow lies on the ground. Hundreds of bees perish from being enticed out by the glare of the sun and snow combined. Work For APRIL. Do not forget to encourage your weak stocks by rather liberal feeding every warm evening. You will soon learn when they have sufficient food, for when honey can be gathered your sugar will be left untouched. By neglect- ing to feed in this month I have, when I began bee-keeping, lost many large stocks. They appeared to be very healthy and lively up to April, when all at once they died of actual starvation. Nothing causes the kind bee-keeper so much sadness in his bee pursuits as this, because the thought will constantly arise in his mind, “I might have saved the poor things 47 had not been careless,” BEE-FARMER’S CALENDAR. 195 Recollect, this is the most dangerous month in the year. Beas active as your bees, A little attention and care bestowed upon them now will be amply repaid by your industrious subjects. Floor, or bottom boards, if not already attended to, should at once be scrupulously cleansed; if it is not attended to now, on some nice sunny afternoon, it is pro- bable you will never do it. Cut away all the little bits of comb which the bees last season fastened to the floor- board ; they are only in the way, and will cause the inmates much annoyance and inconvenience in the busy season now rapidly approaching. I give all the straw skeps in my apiary either a new board, or, at all events, one which was well washed in the summer and laid by until the next spring to sweeten, so that it is equal to a new one. If you have no new ones at hand be sure you scrape the old ones with an old knife, and make them as clean as your own dinner-table. Do not for one moment think it useless to do so, a waste of time, labour, &c. Try the difference—clean one hive-board well, and leave the other uncared for—then another year you will remember our advice. W ater.— Observe your bees flying and humming lazily about the water-butts, pump-trough, and the little pools of water about your premises; when they alight watch them eagerly drinking, then flying off to their homes with joy. Bees are all water-drinkers, so every tectotaller should be a bee-keeper. Perhaps in April and May water is more needed than in any other month during the whole year. A friend has a square tin vessel, about three inches deep, placed opposite the stands, in which, when nearly filled with water, he places a quantity of moss; the bees seem to appreciate this contrivance, for they have no fear of death by drowning when running over the moss fronds. T have seen thousands of my neighbours’ bees drowned in o2 196 BEE-FARMING. a water or rain tub reared against his house. The water being low in the tub the bees have been unable to make their escape. Such vessels are veritable death-traps. My bees seldorn leave the garden if water is placed conve- niently for them. It is surprising how soon they learn where to go for the supply of water for their young brood and cell-building. Another matter should be attended to this month, although it does not exactly come within the bee~master’s scope, yet if he studies the welfare of his stocks he will keep a sharp look out for Queen [Vasps, which now begin to put in an appearance. Remember each queen wasp commences and sustains a new colony; so every queen destroyed in April in reality destroys a whole nest, or what would be a nest later in the season. It is not uncommon for one queen to rear a nest of fifty thousand. These thieves can soon eat your best honey, not to mention the immense number of working bees which they murder in the fields. Let war to the bitter end be at once and for ever declared against wasps. Look cut for Robbers and Thieves, We dread the light- fingered gentry about our houses and homes, but hive- robbers are far worse to deal with. We have just men- tioned a thief who is dressed in yellow livery, but the foes which bees evidently dread most are bees from a neigh- bouring hive, often on the same stand, where several hives are placed close together. Every warm afternoon, if you can spare a few minutes, walk gently round your stocks, and note the entrance of each hive; you will easily detect friend from foe. The thief is buzzing about; when it alights at the mouth of the hive it first peeps in to see if the coast is clear, then, with a quickness not observed in the inmates, he darts into the hive, but often, and always if the stock is strong, as quickly darts out again, pursued by several bees. If robbing is actively going on, the BEE-FARMER’S CALENDAR. 197 sooner the hive is removed to a new stand the better. Sometimes it is well to remove the hive to a new locality, unknown to the robbers; it is only by this means that the stock can be saved. If it has only just commenced, enable the bees to defend their own by narrowing the en- trance, so that only two bees can pass in and out at one time. I have always found this the best remedy; and in several instances I have known those stocks which have been sadly weakened by robbers increase and become most valuable, simply by narrowing the entrance and feeding liberally. Work For May. If any month calls for attention in the apiary it is the present one; the practised bee-farmer will keep a constant watch for drones, and if they appear early you may natu- rally expect early swarms. A swarm of bees in May Is worth a load of hay. If the month should unfortunately be wet, or easterly winds prevail, swarming will be kept back. Queen wasps should be looked for the early part of this month; they are on the wing abundantly in some parts of the country, The late Rev. W. C. Cotton, author of My Bee- Book, offered one season to the boys in his large parish school sixpence each for all the queen wasps that were brought to the vicarage during this month; the result was much larger than he expected, and the cost proportionately great, so that he never offered the reward again. We see with much satisfaction our stocks carrying in a large supply of pollen during this month; this is a good sign of their being in a vigorous condition, and that the hives are filled with brood. If no pollen is brought in, the sooner they are inspected for the cause the better. 198 BEE-FARMING. Many bee-keepers still cling to the bell-glasses or supers on the top of the hives, and by this means secure sufficient pure honey for their own tables. This prevents swarming, and we believe no system of management which stops the production of swarms can be successful. Still, many per- sons have confidence in it, and for their sakes we just notice, that if you intend to place supers in the hive it should be done towards the close of the present month, If you have none but straw-hives, cut a round opening at the top of the skep not less than three inches in diameter, over this affix the bell-glass, which should have a small piece of old comb at the top, by way of a guide-comb; the bees will the more readily take to it if the guide-comb is present. Also, by all means keep up the temperature in the super, by placing any old clothing over it. Weak stocks may still require feeding, especially if the month be wet and cold. We have known many stocks to die in May from starvation, but it has been in skep- hives, where their condition was not known; with very slight attention it can scarcely take place when bar-frame hives are used. Sometimes it may be desirable to drive the bees from a worthless hive to a better receptacle; this should be done now, and the sooner the better. If any hives show signs of swarming keep a strict watch over them; the bee-farmer’s hives throw off swarms very early, but the only perceptible signs are clusterings at the entrance for several days. Allow the first swarm to leave, but it is better to prevent any more swarming if you seek for a good honey harvest. Work FoR JUNE. This is the bee-farmer’s busy month if a large apiary is under his management and care. He will be kept occu- BEE-FARMER’S CALENDAR. 199 pied, hiving swarms, attending to recent swarms in new hives, and in using the honey-extractor. Tt has become the fashion in recent years, both in this country and America, to produce artificial swarms. It is generally advised to business-men, who are away from home all day, therefore are unable to look after natural swarming. It may answer and prove successful in some instances, but we confess it has not done so in our apiary. We prefer natural swarming, both for pleasure and profit. Many readers will no doubt consult our pages for several things with which we do not agree; for them we give the best description we have seen of artificial swarming, by Mr. Payne. ‘The present is a good time for obtaining artificial swarms, and where any form of the bar-hives is used the process is simple, and may be thus effected. From ten to twelve o’clock on a bright morning remove the boards from the top of the parent hive (first puffing a little smoke underneath to make them peaceable), select a bar the comb in which contains both eggs and brood, and if a royal cell all the better, but this is not important; place the bar with comb in some convenient place, so that it is neither bruised nor separated from the bar; then turn up the parent hive, after having fastened down the top, and place the hive intended for the new swarm upon it, observing that the junction is perfect; then by a con- tinuous gentle tapping upon the parent hive for a few minutes a portion of the bees will have ascended into the hive. Remove the parent hive 60 or 100 yards, placing it upon a fresh floor-board, and place the new hive exactly in the place of the old one, and upon the same floor-board ; and as quickly as possible introduce the bar of comb, filled with eggs and brood, into its centre; replace the top, and endeavour to have the exterior of the hive as little altered in appearance as possible; it will then be found that the few bees driven into the new hive with the number returning 200 BEE-FARMING. to it that were out at work, with some that may come from the parent hive, will altogether make a fair-sized swarm ; the parent hive will, in all probability, give another swarm ia about fourteen days.” Those of our readers who are desirous just now to start new colonies in bar-hives may be looking for advice about placing early swarms into them. Always hive the swarm into a straw-skep as being the most convenient for the purpose, as well as being most easily managed. Placing the frame hive on a table convenient or close by the newly hived swarm, and taking off the top board, shake out the swarm from the skep on the bars, and suddenly, before many of them are on the wing, throw a cloth over them for a few minutes until they have gone down beneath the bar-frames, then gently slide the top board over them. We have found the bees take better to these hives when a small quantity of old comb is fastened along the top of the bar; this may readily be effected by means of melted wax run along the bars, and the old comb placed against it before it has time to cool. If the sun shines full on the hives they should be shaded during the day. Work For JULY. Wherever supers have been used, whether they be bell- glasses or boxes, they must be removed towards the close of this month. After a wet May it is possible that many late swarms may issue this month; in every case of second and third swarms, let them the same day be returned to the parent hive. It is a very simple matter to return the swarm; after they are hived, if the old or parent hive should happen to be a skep-hive, spread a tablecloth on the ground opposite the stand, remove the old hive and place it on the BEE FARMER'S CALENDAR. 201 cloth, supported by a stick about half an inch above the cloth, then knock out the swarm opposite the entrance, they will be received joyfully, and very rarely swarm out a second time, for the cause of it, the young queen, will be speedily carried forth dead. Hives which are suffered to swarm too often become so weakened that they seldom do much good that season, whilst second and third swarms, more correctly called casts, are useless as separate stocks. Shading being even more valuable this month than in June, let it not be neglected. In straw hives it is not perhaps so needful as in wood hives; we merely place a white cloth on the top of the hive for two or three hours daily in sultry weather. In the bee-farmer’s hives, each end bar should be in- spected at least once each week during the whole of this month, In old stocks in active work good returns of honey may be looked for. Keep the entrance to the hives clean and allow no obstacle that may in any way prevent free ingress and egress; the prosperity of the colony depends much upon this. Towards the close of the month, or early in August, your hives may be taken to the heather, if such should be found, about five miles away from their old stand; they will thus glean a second harvest. We have known them to come home with as much as sixty pounds in each hive, and this too after having gathered heavy stores earlier in the season from the clover-felds. Work For AucusT. Those of my readers who are well up in the manage-- ment of their stocks will not need to be told to seek amongst the cottagers in their neighbourhood for con- 202 BEE-FARMING. demned stocks. For my part, I have been most successful in the apiaries which are the pride of many of our farmer’s wives. In nearly every instance they manage their stocks on the old-fashioned method in small straw skeps, and, if not seen in time, they invariably destroy them over the brimstone-pit. They are, however, very thankful to any one who will save them the trouble of destroying them, or of driving the bees instead. The author of The Manual of Bee-keeping states: ‘“ Driven-out bees may often be bought in rural districts at about 15. per pound, and are well worth the money to the advanced apiarian.”” I have hitherto, by a little courtesy and tact, had no difficulty in securing more condemned stocks than I have been able to find room for just for the trouble of driving them. It would be considered an insult to offer to pay for them in the North of England; they are only too grateful to be saved the trouble, and think this abundant recompense for the bees. Nay, in many instances, I have been asked how much they must pay for my labour in coming to take them. I take with me empty skeps, &c. on an old perambulator, which will hold eight or ten stocks when tied on, returning home just in the cool of the evening. Every bee-farmer whose stocks are weak should strengthen them with driven stocks, and then feed them up liberally before the winter sets in. Every second swarm or cast should be inspected, for these are often worthless as separate colonies until increased with condemned stocks. Looked at even in this light, driven bees are exceedingly valuable. Many apiarians believe it is impossible to place condemned stocks in empty hives to make them into good colonies. I say, once for all, “try it’?; nothing can be done without trying. It is very easy to say it can’t be done, but this should never be said without adding, “I will not take the trouble to try.”? Some of my best and most profitable stocks have been formed solely out of con- BEE-FARMER’S CALENDAR. 203 demned stocks, placed too in empty hives. It is, however, far better if you use the bar-frame hives to build up several bars by tying a little old comb in each bar; this gives them a good start; they lose very little time in fastening the comb to the bars and increasing it by making new comb if they are liberally fed with syrup. Look carefully over your stocks; if you do not observe them carrying in pollen they should be suspected. If the colony is queenless it will quickly be infested by thieves, and when robbing once commences it is more difficult to stop than many persons imagine. Not only so, the in- mates become dispirited, and allow it to become the resort of the bee-moth. . Also, it is well to use every precaution just now, when opening hives or making use of honey, to allow none to lie about; honey being scarce it will cause fighting and much trouble, which can easily be prevented by not giving any occasion for it. “Those hives in which the supers still remain had better be attended to. We should now advise all the supers to be at once removed; for, except in favour- able localities, very little more honey will be gathered. Work For SEPTEMBER. About this time complaints are made by practical gardeners of bees eating and destroying their peaches and apricots. It is well known to all careful bee-keepers that their stocks are now, in many instances, in a poor con- dition; therefore, we do not wonder at their attacking all kinds of ripe and mellow fruits. When the honey- harvest has been plentiful the bees never seek fruits. “The best way to keep your bees from thus hurting the gardener is to feed them at this time. They are now on the alert collecting the last remains 204 REE-FARMING. of the honey harvest from the numerous autumnal flowers, chiefly the Composite, but food is short. Unless they are now liberally fed many stocks will be lost; they should at least be carefully examined, or, what will be best, if you know the actual weight of the hives, weigh them, and, if you believe they do not contain 20 Ibs. of honey, they should be fed. Remember! it will be too late to do this in a few weeks, because, when paralysed with cold, they are unable to take in the food if they be ever so willing to do so. Make the entrance to the hives small, so that not more than three bees can pass and re-pass each other ;. this advice is needful just now ; you have a dreadful enemy to contend against in the shape of wasps, but they are powerless when your stocks are thus aided in their self-defence. Work FoR OcroBER, Work begins to be slack, except where the bee-keeper has neglected feeding, which must be done as early in this month as possible, or they will refuse to take in any food. Every hive intended for stocks next year, and which we are expecting to be profitable, should, without any loss of time, be put in a condition for wintering well. First attend well to the ventilation, and especially see that they are well sheltered from the rain, &c. Pan-mugs placed on the top of straw hives as a cover or screen from the weather may do for rough, unthinking bee-owners, but should never be adopted by those who love their bees; on the contrary, make good straw covers, or, if you can afford it, wood covers, which are the best. Break up weak stocks, and unite them with a stronger colony. In straw hives it is well to make a small hole through the centre of every comb, to enable the bees to pass in any direction with comfort, and without having to traverse BEE-FARMER’S CALENDAR. 208 round the edge of every comb when the thermometer is below zero. Guard against the entrance of the small field or har- vest mouse; where your stocks are seated on low stands a strong temptation is held out to them of snug winter quarters: make the entrance small, then they are easily kept out. I have known hives completely ruined by this enemy, who is certainly not dormant in the bee-hive, whatever he may be in the cornfield. Work For NovemsBeEr. If you suspect any stocks have not sufficient food in the hive for their winter consumption, the sooner it is given the better. In making the entrance small allow sufficient room to promote a thorough ventilation. If the hive is under shelter, so as to exclude rain or moisture in any form, then leave out the feeding~plug all the winter ; we need not fear cold air or frost; a far worse enemy is damp, which will cause dysentery, and decay of the combs, Some bee-farmers wrap a layer of hay-bands round all their hives during the winter months, which is doubtless beneficial, especially if a good ventilation be maintained. Straw hives do not require much attention in this respect. If you desire to remove your apiary to a more con- venient place it should be done now. Much has been written about the hives with the entrance facing towards the north; mine have generally been towards the sun- rising (east), thus receiving the benefit of his early beams. I cannot state how a northern aspect may suit them, having no experience, but I still hold the opinion that bees do far better if kept on single pedestals or stands. 206 BEE-FARMING. Bee-houses cannot be too strongly condemned; they are only a harbouring-place for vermin, and cause the death of many a valuable queen by causing her to mistake the entrance upon returning to the hive after her wedding flight. Work For DECEMBER. It is generally supposed that this is the holiday season of the bee-farmer, for in this month of all others he cannot have much to do in his apiary. If he can spare a holiday to visit his neighbours far or near who keep bees, it may be well spent in comparing notes about the management of their stocks. We fear it will be found the majority of bee-keepers are still wedded to the old straw-skep, followed by the brimstone pit in the autumn. If we can, however, enlighten their minds by showing them a better way, especially by holding out to their view a few golden coins as a result of their labours, it may help to make them excellent bee-farmers. It will be impossible to overstock this land of plenty, and why should we be compelled to go abroad for our chief supply of honey? The market never seems to be over- stocked with this commodity, and as good samples of honey may be found in English apiaries as ever came from the Continent, if not superior. Let us try to raise British bee-farming to the rank of a science and we need not fear any other country in the world outstripping us in the race, THE END. WESTMINSTER: NICHOLS AND SONS, 25, PARLIAMENT STREET, FARMING FOR PLEASURE AND PROFIT. By Anruur Rotanp. Edited by Witutam Aber. 8 vols., Large Crown 8vo, 5s. each. Dairy-Farming, Management of Cows, etc. Poultry-Keeping. Tree-Planting, for Ornamentation or Profit, suitable to every soil and situation. Stock-Keeping and Cattle-Rearing. The Drainage of Land, Irrigation, and Manures. Root-Growing, Hops, etc. Market-Garden Husbandry. The Management of Grass Lands, Laying down Grass, Artificial Grasses, etc. “This is another, and probably the last, of the series of agricultural handbooks, which are convenient in form, handy in price, and bring the information fairly up to date. The truthful illustrations of the various plants to be used, the preparation of the soil, the cultivation of the crop during its early stages, the means by which permanent fertility may be maintained—these are all matters which are clearly dealt with. The treatment of meadows, haymaking, &c., are very fully entered into, as also the cultivation of artificial grasses, fodder, crops. &c.”—Field. In Small Crown 8vo, 3s. THE PLEASURES AND PROFITS OF OUR LITTLE POULTRY FARM. By G. Hitt. “ A charming picture of rural life.” “This is not by any means a dry collection of statistics, garnished with frequent tables bristling with figures. On the contrary, it is a very pleasantly written record of the successful experiments in poultry-farming made by a gentleman who had settled down on a small property in the north-east part of Hampshire. There is an abundance of useful information for those who are interested in the keeping of poultry.” CHAPMAN AND HALL, Limtep. BRITISH DAIRY-FARMING. TO WHICH IS ADDED A Description of the Chief Continental Systems. By JAMES LONG. With numerous IJlustrations. Crown 8vo, 9s. SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. PALL MALL GAZETTE, “By far the most important part of Mr. Long’s valuable contribution to the literature of dairy- farming is that mentioned in the sub-title of the book,‘ A Description of the Chief Continental Systems.’ By this comparison we do not intend to disparage the chapters relating to British dairy-farming, which are full of useful facts, figures, hints, and illustrated descriptions of most approved dairy implements and appliances ; but a great deal of this is over old familiar ground, whereas in his chapters on Continental systems of dairying Mr. Long introduccs us to fresh fields and pastures new. It is true that Mr. Jenkins, secretary to the Royal Agricultural Society, has written many valuable descriptions of foreign dairying, especially of butter-making, and that Professor Sheldon, in his ‘ Dairy-Farming,’ has briefly described the methods of making a few of the most important of Continental cheeses; but Mr. Long has travelled in France, Switzerland, and Italy, with the special object of studying the manufacture of the cheeses for which these countries are famous all over the civilised world, and he has given such complete details in the book before us that it will be the fault of his agricultural readers if they do not make some of these fancy products of the dairy. Mr. Long, more or less minutely, describes the manufacture of Roquefort, Pont l'Evéque, Livarot, Mignot, Bondon, Brie, Coulommiers, Mont d'Or, and other fancy French cheeses; the Gorgonzola, Parmnesan, and Gruyére among Italian cheeses ; and the Swiss Emmenthaler, Gruytre, Spalen, Bellelay, and Vacherin ; not to mention many less known or inferior varieties made in these countries and others on the Continent. He has also a great deal to tell his readers about butter-making in France, Denmark, and other parts of Europe. His book is not a large one for his comprehensive subject ; but it is crammed with valuable information which every dairy-farmer would do well to study.” SCOTSMAN. “Mr. James Long, a writer of high authority on agricultural subjects, was one of the first to call the attention of British farmers to the expediency of developing a department of agricultural production which had for a long time been comparatively neglectcl—that, namely, of the dairy. Tn this substantial volume on ‘ British Dairy-Farming’ he has brought together a great mass of facts, comments, and suggestions on the same subject.... He describes the features of our present system of dairy-farming, with its different developments in different localities ; discusses its economic principles, and points out its merits and defects. He has chapters on the chemical composition and qualities of milk and cream, butter and cheese; on milk adulteration and analysis ; on butter-making and cliccse-making ; on dairy utensils and cheese-making utcnsils ; on the management of a dairy farm, and on ‘amateur cowkeeping.’ The last 150 pages of the volume have peculiar value ; they embody the results of Mr. Long’s personal observations and inquiries as to the methods of dairy-farming, butter and cheese-making, in France, Italy, Swit- zerland, Belgium, Holland, and Denmark. ‘The work is illustrated by numerous woodcuts and diagrams.” MARK LANE EXPRESS. « A new book on dairy-farming could scarcely have been issued at a more seasonable period than the present time, when that branch of agriculture is, for the first time, receiving the attention it deserves and requires; and Mr. James Long's * British Dairy-Farming,’ published by Messrs. Chapman & Hall,is likely to have a wide circulation. As 178 out of 491 pages are devoted to foreign systems of dairying, besides numerous references in the rest of the work, and as a book is always known by its short title, it is a pity that the more comprehensive title was not chosen, especially as the foreign portion of the work is by no means the least valuable. The collection of facts, including analyses, prices,and various other statistics in the chapters on milk, putter, and cheese, is very useful, and must have cost a great deal of labour. The illustrated description of dairy utensils and appliances, again, is very complete, and the details given about cream separators, to which Mr. Long has devoted special study, are worthy of careful attention, In our opinion, however, the most valuable portion of the work is that devoted to descriptions of Continental systems of dairying. ... The instructions as to the making of the most famous fancy cheeses of France, Italy, and Switzerland are especially worthy of study with a view to the manufacture of similar cheeses in this country. Very full details of the practices of the best makers of these cheeses, with numerous illustrations, and records of quantities and prices are supplied. Indeed, it is marvellous that so many trade secrets should have been divulged by the foreign dairy-farmers. The descriptions of butter-making in France and Denmark are also worthy of careful attention. On the whole, we sincerely congratulate Mr. Long upon the notable addition which he has made to the literature of dairy-farming. CHAPMAN AND HALL, Limirep. 1, Henrierra STREET, Covenr GArvew, W.C. APRIL, 1894. Catalogue of Hooks PUBLISHED BY CHAPMAN « HALL LIMITED. A separate Illustrated Catalogue is issued, containing Drawing Examples, Diagrams, Models, Instruments, ete.. 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