April 28, 1870. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



315 



leaves the queen twelve, twenty-foar, or thirty-six hours 

 according to weather, and places the cage on the frames of the 

 hive." 



Now all this being imparted to me under the seal of secrecy 

 I was not able to communicate to any one else, and to confess 

 the truth I was so firmly impressed with the idea that there must 

 be some mistake, and that queens would certainly not mate 

 whilst held in durance in this manner, that I did not take the 

 trouble to submit the matter to the test of actual experiment, 

 but, like Mr. ilicawber, waited for something farther to " turn 

 up." Contrary, however, to my expectations, something farther 

 has turned up, and I can no longer delay submitting the whole 

 to the apiarian readerB of " our Journal," in order that it may 

 be fully tested and reported upon by them. 



In January last a letter was published by a Mr. Moore, of 

 Ohio, in which he stated that he had succeeded in getting 

 queens fertilised by confining them with a few drones under a 

 wineglass or tumbler placed in the sun, also by confining them 

 in a lamp chimney with the upper end stopped by a cork, and 

 the lower end fitted into the feediog-hole on the top of the 

 hive, egress in this direction being prevented by means of wire 

 eloth. These plans he had tried very often and " succeeded 

 about half of the time." He had also tried Mrs. Tapper's 

 process, and was successful to a reasonable extent. 



Finally a letter from a Mr. Malone, of Garden Island, has 

 appeared in a recent number of The Toronto Globe, in which 

 he recapitulates the process pretty nearly as it has been already 

 described by my correspondent Mr. Thomas, and relates how 

 well he has succeeded with it. — A Devonshire Bee-keeper. 



NEW BOOK. 



The Handy Book of Bees. By A. Pettigrew. Blackwood and 



Sons, Edinburgh and London. 



[Second Notice.] 



We eomenow to the practical part (Part II ) of Mr. Pettigrew's 

 " Handy Book of Bees," where he is evidently in his element, 

 and in every page we can detect the master hand — sometimes a 

 little dariDg and self-opinionated, sometimes a little fanciful, 

 but always interesting and instructive. " The most important 

 chapter in the book," says Mr. Pettigrew him-elf, " is that on 

 hives." Here he hits English bee-keepers very hard, averring 

 that we are " apparently fifty years behind the day," and " have 

 yet to learn the A B C of profitable management." In what re- 

 spect? In one only ; "the secret of profit" lies in keeping 

 bees " in large hives." Our own experience goes along with 

 Mr. Pettigrew in this particular, and we are fully persuaded that 

 in nine cases out of ten in average good years the large hive 

 will be found far more profitable than the small one in the 

 hands of a really practical bee-keeper — by this we mean in 

 the hands of one whose object is honey and not amusement, or 

 mere experiment in the management of bees. 



As to the material of which hives should be made, our ex- 

 perience is decidedly adverse to the straw hive. Here we 

 differ from Mr. Pettigrew. Hives of wood we use exclusively, 

 and find them in eveiy way excellent. As to damp and rotten 

 combs in wooden hives, we have no knowledge of such, and are 

 persuaded that they are or ought to be unknown in a well- 

 managed apiary. Of " bar-and-frame " hives, whether of wood 

 or straw, we have no personal experience; but Mr. Pettigrew, 

 who does not mate use of them, admits that they are "very 

 useful to the student of bee-history." Also, most useful are 

 they in the multiplication of swarms, although certainly not 

 necessary to the profitable management of an apiary. 



Mr. Pettigrew gives his verdict in favour of the swarming 

 over the non-swarming system, probably because he knows 

 more about the former in the actual management of his apiary 

 We have tried both, and have always found the Utter the more 

 profitable; at the same time we should be sorry to give an 

 absolute verdict in favour of the one system over the other. 

 We doubt not that Mr. Pettigrew with his large hives makes 

 his apiary more profitable than most Eogli>h bee-keepers find 

 theirB to be on the non-swarming system ; and we are in- 

 clined to believe that the latter is hardly possible where very 

 large hives are u=ed. The vast crowds of bees thronging in 

 and out of such hives by one entrance (and only one entrance 

 should be allowed), must impede one another and incommode 

 the workers and the queen within ; at any rate Mr. Pettigrew's 

 chapter on this enhj-ct is well worth careful reading. The 

 same may be said of his chapter on artificial swarming, which 

 operation he performs, as we ourselves do, by the very simple 



process of driving. We agree with him that artificial swarm- 

 ing is indispensable to the perfect management of an apiary, 

 and perhaps no simpler plan can be devised than that recom- 

 mended by Mr. Pettigrew, although we ourselves adopt the 

 plan advocated, and we believe invented by Mr. Langstroth, an 

 American, which reduces tbe risk of failure to a minimum. 

 It consists simply in driving a strong stock (A), queen and all, 

 into an empty hive (a laige one it may be) which we place 

 exactly where the old hive stood. Then we shift another 

 Btrong stock (B) to a new stand at some distance, and substi- 

 tute in its place the deseited stock (this we may call C), out of 

 which the swarm was driven. As this last hive will rear arti- 

 ficial queens, we utilise these much in the way Mr. Pettigrew 

 recommends at page 132, and with their aid manufacture other 

 swarms ad libitum. We earnestly advise all bee-keepers to 

 learn the art of artificial swarming; with the aid of a little 

 smoke-fustian or common brown paper — it matters not which — 

 the operation may, after a little experience, be most safely and 

 easily performed. 



Having said this much on the salient points of Mr. Petti- 

 grew's book, without paitiality we cordially recommend it to 

 the bee-loving public, and wish him every success. — B. & W. 



BEE EPIDEMICS. 



In answer to "A Youno Beginner's" inquiry on bee epi- 

 demics in page 253. there are many causes why bees drop dead 

 around the hive: — 1st. sour honey ; 2nd, foreign honey which 

 has been fermented; 3rd, foreign honey which is mixed with 

 sugar and prepared with nil of vitriol to give it the appearance 

 of honey, of which there are great quantities sent to this 

 country; 4th, poisoned with loaf sugar, a practice I have sus- 

 pected for several years, but I have not been able to prove the 

 fact satisfactory until this wirjter. 



The following are the symptoms when the bees are affected 

 by sour and fermented honey : — The bees creep out of their 

 bive and drop down ; their bodies are swollen to a great size, 

 and under the body you may ptrceive a white appearance all 

 along the under side of the wing, and the smell from those that 

 discharge is very unpleasant. Candied and sour honey will 

 produce both dropsy and diarrhoea. Symptoms fri ra feeding 

 with loaf susar: — the bees will take 4 lbs. of syrnp in a day, 

 and deposit it in their cells without our perceiving there is any- 

 thing wrong, for you will find very few dead bei s, as those 

 affected fly away and never return. It is when they begin to 

 live upon the stores they have deposited that they will run out 

 of the hive and dance about as if they had been stung by 

 other bees, and others will fly right off, according to the 

 quantity taken. If you stand by your hives in the depth of 

 winter, you will find bees flying out which hare been poisoned 

 by sugar. They will keep wasting all winter, and it may be 

 some few left as late as sprirg. 



I have lost three good ?warms and one good stock from feed- 

 ing with loaf sugar, which ha« been the cause of my findingout 

 the source of the eril. Last September I had a good swarm 

 which I thought wanted about 4 lbs. of sugar to make it a 

 standard, so I boiled about 4 lbs. of syrup, and gave the bees 

 nearly 2 lbs. the first night, next morning I found a very few 

 dead bees ; not thinking anything about it, I gave them the 

 remainder next night. I went into the garden about 11 p.m., 

 I heard bees every few minutes fly away from the hive, so I 

 took away the syrup which was left, and next day I perceived the 

 bees were getting less, and finding three other st< cks were fetch- 

 ing it out, I drove the hive and cut all the syrup out ; but the 

 three stocks bed taken part of what had heen given, and all 

 three stocks have gradually died off in the manner described, as 

 I have watrhed them all the winter at different times, and have 

 seen bees fly out, some dropping and dancing about, and some 

 flying right off. The last died in March, leaving plenty of 

 honey. I should advise, in using loaf sugar, not to select the 

 strong-grained and dull-looking and that which b':s a bluish 

 white appearance. As there is something used in refining some 

 loaf sugar whi -h is injurious to bees, I have no doubt we have 

 lost many of our fayonritoa from feeding with sug.r — Fobh 

 Years' Experience, C. B. H. 



UNION OF A JACKDAW AND MAGPIE. 



At Lutterworth, where many wonderful things have happened 



before now, an admirer of these mischievous pets last year 



reared a Magpie, a neighbour some eight or ten houses higher 



