July 1!C, 1867. ] 



JOUBNAL OF HOBTICULTOBE AND COTTAGE GABDENEB. 



71 



VAGARIES OF BEES. 



H.IV1NC! a somewhat singular case in my apiary, I shall be 

 glad of your opinion aa to how it can be accounted for. My 

 stock at the commcucement of the season I will call in the 

 order in which they were :— Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10. 



No. i was very strong in February and March, but soon lost 

 its strength uniiccouutably, so that I determined to drive the 

 bees and unite them to a swarm on the lirst opportunity. 

 Nos. 7 and 10 swarmed June 'JCth, and I united them in the 

 evening, placing them in a Woodbury-hive, No. 6. (This is 

 now quite full of honey, and the bees have commenced building 

 in a Woodbury super.) On July 10th, No. 1 swarmed, and in 

 the evening I drove No. 4, sprinkled both lots, and united them 

 in No. 8. When I took out the comb from No. 4, I found the 

 queen quite alone (I have reason to believe that she was a 

 young queen raised lust year), and only about 150 or 200 cells 

 occupied with brood, part worker and part drone in worker 

 cells, with very few eggs, and they adhering to the aide instead 

 of the bottom of the cells. I intended to forward tho queen 

 to you but she was accidentally lost. Next morning (July 11th), 

 the bees in No. 8 left the hive and joined No. 7, which had 

 swarmed fifteen days previously, and had given no intimation 

 of casting, and I found the queen of No. 8 encased and dead. 

 About 2 P.M. the same day they rose again from No. 7, and I 

 hived them in a Woodbury, placing it where No. 4 was, and 

 they are doing well. 



Now comes the carious part of it. There are three or four 

 queens piping in No. 7 to-night (July 17tb), twenty-one days 

 after tho issue of the first awarm, and six days after the second. 

 My impression is, that the young queen must have been mature 

 at tho time of the first swarm, and that she must havebeen pre- 

 paring to Bwiirm at the time the strangers joined them, thou g 

 oven then it leaves no time for her impregnation, or between 

 that and commencing laying. Can you enlighten me or suggest 

 a more probable solution ?— Sheiiwooi> Foiiestee. 



[Wo think it most likely that the deserted queen found in 

 No. 4 waa a drone-breeder, and that what you supposed to be 

 worker-brood was really unsealed di'one-brood in worker-cells. 

 Could you have sent us tho queen, a post mortem examination 

 would at once have decided the point. The conjoined bees in 

 No. 8 appear to have been placed too near No. 7, and the re- 

 turning bees from the former having raised what the Germans 

 call the " swarm-tune," probably attracted stragglers from the 

 latter, and ibis immigration set on foot the regicidal attack 

 which resulted in the death of the queen of No. 8, and the 

 subsequent voluntary union which took place. The fact of 

 young queens piping twenty-one days after the issue of the 

 first swaim ia remarkable, but not altogether inexplicable. We 

 have kuown a queen hatched so late as the twentieth or twenty- 

 first day after the removal of the old one, and assuming Huber 

 to be, as we believe him to be, correct in his slatemeut that 

 young queens are often confined to their cells for some time 

 after they have arrived at maturity, the delay ia not so ex- 

 traordiuary as might at first sight appear. 



Wo i-hall lio gfad to receive an account of your attempt at 

 propagating Ligurians.j 



BEES IN BERTHSHIRE. 



TniB season in Scotland has been the most unpropitious and 

 disastrous to bees which has ever come under my notice. 

 The one halt of my apiary haa perished. Some colonies have 

 died of starvation, others of sheer diminution of numbers, 

 owing to the queen's not breeding, though having abundance 

 of stores. Tiio bees have iiterally been confined to their hives 

 (with the exce^>tilln of some weeks), from Si.ptember, 1800, to 

 Jime, 18G7, without being able to collect honey or farina. 

 Even yet tho season is unfavourable, and throughout the whole 

 of this district there are only two or three natural swarms. 



Two Ligurian queens, which were sent me by Mr. Woodbury, 

 having been put into strong hives last October, survived the 

 winter and began to breed beautifully marked bees in spring ; 

 but, like many of my black colonies, owing to the inclemency* 

 of the spring, they did not multiply very rapidly, and, indeed, 

 become stationary, or rather began to decline. I supplied them 

 with food, bat, looking into the interior of one of the hives one 

 frosty morning, I fouud the whole of the bees a benumbed and 

 inanimate moss. 1 immediately transferred the hive to a warm 

 room, and in the course of an hour or two they were all appa- 

 rently resuscitated and restored to Ufe and motion. I gave 



them a supply of syrup, which they greedily dercured. I sus- 

 pected, however, that in conaequenca of this disaster the hive 

 might ultimately succumb. They continued to work when the 

 days were fine, but they made little or no increase to their 

 numbers. When I examined them about a week ago their 

 numbers appeared to bo reduced to four hundred or five hun- 

 dred. The other Ligurian hive ia making progress, but is still 

 weak, having, perhaps, about two thousand bees. 



I have now to relate a rather unusual incident in connection 

 with the first Ligurian hive mentioned above, and a Ligurian 

 stock (not piue), given to me last year. The queen of this 

 latter hive breeds Ligurian bees of the most beautiful colour 

 and form, and also bees greyer in colour than the common 

 black bees. The stock, though having literally no stores left 

 in spring, bred rapidly, and drones made their appearance 

 about the middle of May. The bees of this stock were so 

 voracious that they would sip up any quantity of syrup. The 

 stock became very full of bees, and though there waa no ex- 

 pectation of a swarm, owing to the inclemency of the weather, 

 and they were so much under my eye that it was next to im- 

 possible they could have swarmed without being observed, 

 yet on Tuesday week (June 26th), I was astonished to find a 

 dead queen lying at the entrance of this hive with a few beea 

 around it. I was unable to decide whether old or young. I 

 sat down on a seat beside the hive, and in a short time I 

 heard the usual piping that precedes the second swarm. I 

 then put my ear close to the hive and heard distinctly the two 

 voices or aounds that are uaually heard — the tenor and bass. 

 On Wednesday the hive swarmed, and, to my astoniahment, 

 the awarm was no larger than an ordinary second or cast. I 

 turned up the stock and found it " choke full " of bees. When 

 the awarm had cluatered on the branch of the tree I noticed 

 that some other bees were joining it. In the course of a few 

 minutea I found that fighting had commenced, as a consider- 

 able number of pairs of bees in deadly conflict were falling 

 on the ground and perishing. I had the swarm hived in a 

 skep f ull ot,comb. On inverting it I found a queen encased. 

 I immediately took a spoon, and by means of it conveyed the 

 cluster into a small vessel, and having sprinkled the bees with 

 water I found a fine queen in the heart of it. She waa imme- 

 diately set at liberty, and was apparently uninjured. I put 

 her into a zinc cage, placing the cage in a stock whose queen 

 had recently died, and which was rearing young queens, in- 

 tending next morning to abstract the black young queen and 

 to substitute the Ligurian. To my disappointment, however, 

 next day I found her dead in the cage. 



On examining the weakest of the Ligurian hives to which I 

 have referred above, I found to my surprise the beea had all 

 left, queen and all. They had evidently deserted their hive 

 (as a hunger swarm), and joined the second swarm that came 

 off from the stock hive. It was no doubt their queen I found 

 encased, and which died, as I have described. 1 had to-day 

 (4th July), another case of an old queen deserting with about 

 three hundred bees (all the bees in the hive), and alighting on 

 the top of another stock. — J. L. 



FOUIi BROOD OR CHILLED BROOD? 



I BEG to submit a suggestion as to the cause of foul brood, 

 or, at any rale, one of the causes, and to preface a statement of 

 the circumstances on which my opinion has been founded. 



I commenced beekeeping operations this spring with eleven 

 stocks, of which ten were very strong, as may be surmised 

 when I say that in spite of every effort to prevent swarming I 

 have succeeded in only three cases, the remaining seven stocks 

 having sent out eleven swarms, of which four issued from an 

 equal number of black bee-hives, while seven have to be 

 credited to three Ligurian hives. The single exception to the 

 general prosperity was a Ligurian stock, which never appeared 

 last year to recover the sending out of a second swarm ou the 

 11th of June, which equalled any first swarm I ever saw, so 

 far aa numbers were concerned, and all through the winter 

 the weakness of the hive in question was the subject of fre- 

 quent observation. I should have suspected, indeed, the loss 

 of the queen, but that tho beea carried in pollen, and on the 

 IGth of June I removed the crown-board and lilted out all tie 

 ten Woodbury frames, carefully inspecting them one by one. 

 The combs I "found well stored with honey and brood ; but the 

 bees had evidently been driven by the unusual severity of the 

 weather to cluster together about the centre of the hive, so 

 that the outside ccmbs were bare, and these, irom the decaying 



