140 



JOTTRNAIi OF HOETICULTTJBE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



[ Anyust 18, ISBJ. 



to another colony ; but the bees becoming particularly 

 liTely, and the evening rather dark, it must be given up, 

 and they are placed on their own floor-board with their new 

 friends over them. 



Now for the honey. I thought there woiild be three 

 stories and hoped for four. There are a few bees walking 

 about, but it is all right. " The book "' tells me a few will 

 remain, which may be brushed out with a feather ; but the 

 more they are brushed the more bees come. The " eke " 

 must be taken off — a proceeding the bees did not agree to, 

 for they were creeping all over the place. At 10 o'clock p.m., 

 I gave it up for the night, and placed my fi-iends in a cool 

 greenhoxisc until morning. At 10 o'clock next morning I 

 found the house full of robber bees from all the hives. 

 As a last hope I placed the hive in a wheelbaiTow, and 

 had it wheeled about for an hour to deceive the robbers, 

 which proved effectual, as I now have the honey in a sieve, 

 and there it must remain two days, says my book ; but what 

 in the world wiU " Jonas Jackson " say about my future luct 

 after this ? 



I have now four hives of this year ; two I want to take, 

 and two I want to keej^, all very strong indeed. Would you 

 recommend another trial of chloroform, of course using a 

 fresh sample ^ Would Mr. Woodbury kindly give me the 

 distance between the glass of his nnicomb-hives 'i 



The frost of the 19th July cut several hundred acres of 

 potatoes down to the gi'ound. They are now making new 

 tops. — An Isle op Axholme Bee-keepek. 



LIGTIRIAN BEES IN SCOTLAND— FERTILE 

 WOEKEES. 



I HAVD been favoured by Mi-. Alex. Shearer with a copy 

 of r7te HadiUnglonsliire Courier, containing the following' in- 

 teresting article from his pen, proving tliat the Liguriana 

 ai'e asserting theh- wonted superiority. There can be little 

 doubt that it was the existence of fertile workers which 

 frustrated the attempts to rear a queen in the first of his 

 artificial swarms, especially as I have tliis season found 

 workers laying eggs in two instances in which royal cells 

 hi(id turned out abortive. — A Devonshike Bee-keepeb. 



" CtTLTUKE OF LiouKiAN Bees. — It is Dearly twelve months 

 since I communicated to the Courier my experience in the 

 axtificial swanning of the Ligurian bees. Perhaps it may 

 be interesting to your apiai'ian readers to give the results 

 of that trial, and my further exjierience. It will be re- 

 membered by those who take an interest in bee-manage- 

 ment that I made two artificial swaa-ms. The first one 

 turned out to be a faOirre, not owing to any defect in the 

 system, but because of the wet weather diu-ing the time the 

 (lueen required to make her 'matrimonial' fiights. It ended 

 in there being nothing laid but drone-brood; and notwith- 

 standing I supi:ilied her several times with bar-frames of 

 brood-comlj, that they might rear another queen which was 

 rea.Uy fit for her duties, she still reigned supreme, preventing 

 any other queen coming forward to take her place ; or rather, 

 if the doctrine of parthenogenesis be a fact— and there is in 

 this case sti-ong evidence that it is so — that there are bees 

 having all the appearance of workers, which have yet the 

 power of laying di-one eggs only. In all our searches for a 

 queen in this hive we never could find one (and it was 

 frequently done with the utmost care), which iu other cir- 

 cumstances we never failed in finding. But it appears those 

 bees which have the power of laying drone eggs wiU never 

 idlow any other queen to be reared. Such is the theory of 

 those who hold by this doctrine. For my own part, I for- 

 bear giving any conclusive opinion on the matter — I would 

 require more experience on the subject. I merely state the 

 fact as we found it in our case. No bees being bred, they 

 gradually died-off, and her neighbours began and robbed her 

 in Februai-y this year. The second one was more successful ; 

 she has survived the winter, and given oft" a top swarm, and 

 appears to be a hybrid between the Ligurian and common bee. 



" The old, or orig-iual Ligurian, began egg-laying in 

 January. On the 1.5th of June I made the first artificial 

 swarm. I made another on the 22nd, and one on the oOth 

 of June, and on the 10th of July she gave off a natural 

 swarm, larger than any two of the common ones, and on 

 the 16th a second — the latter was a small one, and the 



person who had them in charge put it Ixick the same even- 

 ing. I went the following day and found the queen had not 

 been killed, and, on examining the hive, found a beautiful 

 queen, and also eight queen-cells, all in difierent stages of 

 progress. I divided them, leaving the queen already hatched 

 in one, and put the other into another hive, along with half 

 of the bees, that they might hatch another queen for them- 

 selves, which they have done, at the same time cutting off 

 a jjiece of comb having a queen cell sealed up, and gave it 

 to a neighboiu-, who carried it nearly two miles in a box. 

 When he turned up one of his hives, which had given off a 

 top swai-m a few days before, he found the queen-cell still 

 unhatched. This he cut out, and inserted the Ligurian one 

 in its place, which was hatched by the 22nd, as on the 23rd 

 and 24th the bees in the hive manifested all those symp- 

 toms, so wen known to bee-keepers, of her majesty being on 

 one of her excursions to find the future king. The top 

 swarm (having of course the old queen) being in such a 

 prosj^erous state — laying numbers of young brood, I mad« 

 another ai'tificial one on the 22nd ; thus making foiu: arti- 

 ficial swarms and two natural ones from one hive, besides 

 taking upwards of 25 lbs. of honeycomb from the artificial 

 swarms, to give them more room for breeding, that ther« 

 might be abundance of young bees out to begin on th» 

 heather when it is ready. I gave also a bar-frame of drone- 

 brood to a friend, a bee-keeper in Edinburgh, whose Ligurian 

 queen had,/ailed in laying drone eggs (another very puzzling 

 circumstance in bee-keeping). Had I been disposed, and had J 

 hives to put them in, I could have easily, from the same hive* I 

 made almost any n\unber of swanns ; but I am satisfied 

 with the six in the meantuue. If all the Ligiunan queens 

 are like the one I have, then the common bee cannot b». 

 compared with them as breeders. An acquaintance in Edin- 

 burgh, who got one last year, informs me tliat his has thrown 

 off four swarms since May, and all strong. Mine would have 

 been much stronger had not a great number of bees died 

 in the spring by dysentery, caused, I imagine, by the stock 

 swarm being kept in a wooden box. The moisture arising 

 fr'om the bees not being absorbed by the wood, it collected 

 on the fioor-board in such quantities that in their cft'orts U> 

 get rid of it they took the disease. During the winter and 

 spring I shifted the comb four times into a dry wooden box, 

 and each time they unproved partially. At last I had a. 

 hive made on the same principle, in straw, by John Heriot, 

 Longyester, which has completely cured them. I will never 

 keep stock swarms again, during winter, in wood ; it may 

 do in summer, but certainly not in winter. 



Another proof of the superior breeding powers of th« 

 Ligurian bee : out of eight good hives of the common bee, 

 only two gave off a second swarm with me, all getting 

 the same treatment. In order to keep the Ligurians pure, 1 

 have all the six young swarms at Longyester, where then* 

 are no common bees within ne'.irly two mUes of them. I will 

 thus have a ftirther opportunity of testing their merits with 

 the common bee, and also the hybrid." 



HOW TO DESTROY WASPS' NESTS. 



I HAVE for years been more or less annoyed with wasps 

 about this season of the year — those, I mean, that majre 

 their nests in some hole in the ground — and I have at times 

 adopted various means to destroy theii' nests. I need not 

 here enter into any detail how I have in former years pro- 

 ceeded to take them; but latterly I have adopted the 

 following mode : — 



I procure some eoal-tai', a handfiil of fine sha^dngs, or 

 what is, perhaps, quite as good — a bit of an old mat, scale 

 it well in the coal-tar, take a long stick — a broom-handle 

 will do very well — and then in the evening about ten or eleven 

 o'clock, when the wasps are nearly all gone home, I proceed 

 to the nest and p'.ish the piece of old mat, now full of coal- 

 tar, as far into the hole towards their nest as I can, and thus 

 make them prisoners to die in their own castle. — G. Dawsox. 



[We h.ave found that an effectual mode is to put a little 

 spirit of turpentine into a mne-bottlo ; to thrust its neck 

 into the entrance of the nest ; place a little straw over, the 

 bottle, and burn it, so as rapidly to fill the nest with tur- 

 pentine vapom-. This is more prompt and less cruel, we 

 think, th.an our correspondent's plan. — Eds.] 



