Xovemter IS, 1873. 1 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTUEE AND COTTAGE GABDENEK. 



387 



of the super is at the bottom or lowest part, and that therefore 

 ■when the combs reach the glass they will not slip down. Supers 

 ■with tapering sides hold the combs secure, and fast as the key- 

 stones in arches of masonry. The intelligeut reader may be 

 ready to ask if all kinds of supers (wood, straw, and glass) would 

 not be better with tapering sides and moveable licis ? Perhaps 

 they would, but in the case of wood and straw supers the ad- 

 vantage would be very immaterial, for these are better than 

 glass for supering, and more eligible in every respect, save show 

 and appearance. Neatly-made straw supers to hold from 10 lbs. 

 to 20 lbs. of honeycomb are what I prefer. They are more easily 

 managed, as well ai more profitable, in my hands than either 

 wood or glass ones. 



In these letters I have hitherto confined myself to the question 

 of simple supering — that is to say, placing supers on hives that 

 are fall of bees and ready to fill them ; but where profit is not 

 considered, and supers of comb are specially sought, extra effort 

 is made and special means adopted to obtain them. I have 

 had glass and other supers filled on empty hives by swarms. 

 " Without any combs in the hives on which the supers were 

 filled ? " Tes. It has been done again and again with swarms 

 having pregnant laying queens. With such queens I wish the 

 reader to understand that it requires some dexterity and practice 

 to accomplish such feats, but ■with queens that are not pregnant 

 they are more easily done. Most bee-keepers know something 

 about piping queens : these have just come to maturity, and are 

 making well-known sounds which may be heard in all hives for 

 three days before second swarms leave them. These queens 

 are unimpregnated, and will not go out to meet the drones for 

 a few days ; anfl even after they have been out on that errand, 

 they generally do not commence to lay for a short time. The 

 bee-master knowing this, and wishing to have a super filled, has 

 only to drive all the bees out of the hive as soon as the piping 

 commences into one quite empty, fix a few pieces of empty 

 white comb in a super as already described, and then place it 

 over this empty hive. lu less than ten minutes' time the hees 

 •will be in the super and speedily commence work. If the weather 

 be fine, and honey be in the flower, a moderate-sized super 

 ■will be filled before the queen begins to lay. If the weather be 

 unfavourable for out-door work we have the old hive, whence 

 the bees were driven, to fall hack upon. By placing this hive 

 underneath the swarm, the bees will speedily carry all the honey 

 in it up into the super. Nothing but pure honey is carried aloft. 

 Let me here tell the reader that when I have any honey triinted 

 by farina or other impurity, I give to it swarms, thus filling 

 supers ; and sure enough they leave all impurities behind them 

 in filling supers except honeydew, which is not honey at all, and 

 therefore cannot be cleansed. With some empty white combs 

 fixed in a snper it is an easy matter to induce a swarm to fill it, 

 and even to filter-out every impurity from honey that is not fit 

 for the use of man. Not a speck of honey need be lost. In the 

 .autumn, when the baud of the bee-keoper cannot get all the 

 honey from the combs, he has only to let bees come after him 

 to cleanse the refuse and gather up the fragments. 



In my last letter I promised to come to the filling of crystal 

 palaces in unfavourable seasons. The common sense of the 

 reader will convince him that if bees cannot obtain honey enough 

 out-doors to fill such palaces they should get it in-doors, for 

 such palaces cannot be filled without honey. At the Manchester 

 Exhibition it was my intention to appear with twenty large 

 supers, but the season was unfavourable. Had it been favour- 

 able the supers would have been filled without artificial help. 

 The International could not wait for a favourable honey year, 

 hence I had to resort to artificial means to get my palaces filled. 

 An old and profitable practice of ours is to turn all the bees out 

 of the heavy stock hives three weeks after their first swarms 

 leave them. They arc then without brood. The bees are driven 

 into empty hives to shift for themselves, and the honey is taken 

 from the stock hives for sale. Very well : Instead of taking the 

 honey and jarring it up for sale in the usual way, it is a very 

 easy matter to let the bees filling the super or crystal palace 

 have access to the combs of these stocks, from which tliey take 

 all the honey and carry it into their own hive and super. By 

 placing the hive with honey ucdemeath the supered hive, the 

 bees will sling every particle of honey out of it and aloft without 

 the nso of the American slinger. If the combs thus emptied of 

 honey be not more than twelve months old they should be used 

 again by having swarms put in to refill them. 



In diacussiug the art of supering in these letters I have not 

 looked at it from a profitable point of view. My aim has been 

 simply to show how bee-keepers may succeed in filling supers — 

 filling them speedily and under adverse circumstances. I have 

 not yet gone over all the ground I intended to go over, hut as 

 some of your readers may have difiicultiea which I have not 

 anticipated I shall be glad if they state them to the Editors, so 

 that they may be noticed when I come to treat of how supers are 

 cut off hives and the bees driven out of them. — A. Pethokew. 



Mb. T. C. Bubkell's Coloubed Bobeiko Chickens, which 

 won the cap for the best pen o{ Colonred Dorkings, in addition 



to Prince Leopold's cup for the best pen of Dorkings in the 

 Oxford Show, were claimed at the catalogue price, =H20. 



HIVES. 



" Eacli. like a bee, raises his shiveriDg wing, 

 Employs his claws, auJ points his angry sting." 



For a considerable time past I have beeu iu the habit of 

 reading -^^-ith min^^led feelings ot pleasure and pain the articles 

 and correspondence in the " bee corner " of your interesting 

 Journal — pleasure at the information therein to be gained, and 

 at seting the amount of interest evinced in our little favourites 

 by so many intelligent writers; and pain at observing a pro- 

 pensity to "sting" on the part of some of your correspondents 

 quite equal to that of either the Ligurian or English bee, so far 

 as my experience of either species extends. I have often felt a 

 disposition to thrust iu my pen amongst them, even as a peace- 

 maker; but having before my eyes a wholesome dread of the 

 fate which usually befalls an intermeddler in domestic quarrels 

 — namely, an immediate uniou on the part of both iielligerents 

 to belabour the interloper, I concluded that the safest side to 

 take in the quarrel was the outside ; for, after all, I am disposed 

 to believe that the quarrels, if such they may be desiguated, 

 among.st our brethren of the bee fraternity, may be very well 

 compared to those of the nature I have referred to, and that all 

 lovers of bees must be lovers of each other in the end. I trust, 

 therefore, that if I ask for a " corner " in your " corner" on the 

 present occasion I shall be permitted, when I have said my say, 

 to retire again to my own *' corner " scatheless. My object ia 

 coming out of it just now is to offer a few remarks on the 

 method of filling crystal palaces as described by my friend Mr. 

 Pettigrew ; and I desire to say in setting out, that, he of all 

 others is the last with whom I should wish to be found in anta- 

 gonism, having during the past four or five years spent many 

 pleasant and profitable hours in his society and that of his bees. 

 So much by way of preface, and now to my subject. 



If the object be simply to till a large glass with honeycombs 

 anyhow, then the wholesale method of cramming it described 

 by Mr. Pettigrew will, undoubtedly, produce the desired result; 

 but if the intention is to get the bees to fill a crystal palace, 

 such as was exhibited by me at the International Exhibition 

 lately held here, I question very much if it can be done in the 

 manner indicated. Indeed, if a crystal palace is to be com- 

 menced by half or even quarter filling it with empty combs, if 

 more empty combs are to be packed into the middle of it at its 

 *' widest part," and if a third batch of combs are to be sus- 

 pended from a board at the top, it is open to question whether 

 it can be legitimately called a " super," filled upon a hive by 

 the bees of that hive, however numerous, or however assisted 

 (of which more anon), and I am certain that the result attained 

 in my crystal palace — namely, beauty of construction, cannot 

 be arrived at ; for I hold that we have as much right to have 

 regard to the beauty and build of the combs in producing a 

 crystal palace, as to the size and weight of the super or purity 

 of its contents. In this opinion I am fortified by the Kev. J. \V. ' 

 Cotton, who purchased my crystal palace *' at first eight," for 

 ^10, as that gentleman, evidently believing with the poet that 

 ** a thing of beauty is a joy for ever," bought it, not for the 

 purpose of making present use of its contents, but with a view 

 of having it hermetically sealed and placed as an ornament in 

 his entrance-hall; and has further avowed his intention of 

 having it photographed, and introducing a woodcut of it iu 

 the next edition of his Bee-Book. 



My crystal palace is 10 inches in diameter at bottom, the 

 same at the opening of the lid, and IG at the widest part or bulb, 

 and, inchuling the lid, which is dome-shaped and to the top of 

 which the combs reach, stands 22 inches high, and yet the combs 

 are so perpendicular and so straight and regularly-formed longi- 

 tudinally that one can see right through the passages from front 

 to back as easily as through the most regularly-formed combs in 

 a bar-frame hive. Add to this that, with the exception of a 

 very email portion of the outside, they are sealed throughout, 

 and some idea may be formed of its beauty as a super, on 

 tlie whole. As it has caused some sensation, and as those who 

 have not seen it would naturally conclude that it was "put 

 together " in the manner described by Mr. Pettigrew, I deem it 

 but duo to its present owner, to myself, and, though last not 

 least, to the bees in the hive upon which it was built, to declare 

 that it is, throughout, the work of the latter, aided by a liltie 

 niLchanical ingenuity on my part in enabling them to keep the 

 combs straight and regular; for in this latter respect I claim 

 that its greatest beauty consists. 



In 'Mv. Pettigrew's description of the modus operandi of filling 

 crystal palaces there are, however, one or two idens of mine 

 rather imperfectly rendered. Those ideas were suggested tome 

 while the crystal palace was in course of erection by what at 

 first had all the appearance of misfortune, I'Ut which in the 

 end turned out to bo helps, and served to prove, if further proof 

 were needed, the truth of the adage that "necessity is the 

 parent of invention." But having already occui)ied so much of^ 



