May 24, 1877. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



393 



Ton say the last deaths have taken place in the identical breed- 

 ing cage in which others have previonsly died. We advise yon 

 not to place any more birds in the cage until it has undergone a 

 thorough scmbbing with hot soap and soda suds, and afterwards 

 scalded with hot water. 



If No. 1 packet of seed be of the same kind as that used all 

 the winter upon which the birds fed and were kept in such good 

 health, it is natural to conclude that the cause of the deaths 

 must not be attributed to the seed, unless some of that seed 

 became impregn.ited with the acid used for cleaning the breed- 

 ing cage. — Geo. J. B.^knesby. 



CRUDE AND PERFECT HONEY. 



Mr. Pettigrew, in reply to my letter concerning the manner 

 and place in which bees discharge their burdens of honey when 

 returning from the field, has endorsed my remarks upon that 

 subject, and to my mind contradicted his previous statements. 

 He cannot but see a discrepancy in the following passages 

 quoted from his letters of March 22Qd and April 26th respec- 

 tively. It had been stated by "Renfrewshire Bee-keeper" 

 that bees carry the nectar from the tiowers right up, without 

 any intermediate resting place, to the super or uppermost 

 portion of the combs, and hurry off for more. This is all I 

 sought to prove in my former letter. Now for Mr. Pettigrew's 

 own words in reply to "Renfrewshire Bee-keeper," written 

 at the former dat). " This is not correct, for bees in rcturniag 

 from the fields first drop their pollen and honey in the cells in 

 the centre of their hives, sometimes in queen cells, and after- 

 wards convert it into honey, carry it alcft, and there store it 

 up." What does he say at the later date in reply to my letter ? 

 " Whether the crude honey goes into nadirs or supers by the 

 front or side entrances it is afterwards conrerted by the" bees 

 into honey proper." In the first statement Mr. Pettigrew dis- 

 tinctly says that the honey is not carried direct to supers, in 

 the second he allows that this is the case. As to the theory of 

 the conversion of crude honey into "honey proper," my remark's 

 wers neither pro nor contra. I have so far read nothing to 

 prove^ this theory, nor do I believe that anyone has collected 

 snfBcient data whereby to disprove it. "B. & W." has pointed 

 ont some discrepancies in the reproduction of " A Paper read 

 before the Missouri Valley Association," which doubtless many 

 readers besides myself had noticed, and I quite agree with bim 

 that " all these matters have to be carefully investigated before 

 we can form any definite conclusion as to the making of honey 

 by bees." 



Mr. Pettigrew asks, "Were the supers of 'P. H. P.' without 

 pollen in their cells?" Excepting in perhaps a dozen cells at 

 the base of the Lee's super, where the bees had connected 

 the combs of the super with those of the stock hive, there was 

 not a vestige of pollen in the seven supers. Mr. Pettigrew 

 asks, " What did the bees do with their pollen ?" They carried 

 what pollen was gathered during the copious flow of honey into 

 the stock hive. It was a rare occurrence to see a pollen-laden 

 bee pass through the super entrances. There was a glut of 

 honey when these supers were being filled. By far the greater 

 number of the workers brought home honey, and nothing but 

 honey, for many days. Do bees indiscriminately fill up their 

 cells with pollen and honey ? Cannot white comb filled with 

 pure honey be cut from the outer parts of skeps after a bountiful 

 harvest? Mr. Pettigrew has often said they can, and I can in 

 this matter endorse his statement. I could show him bar frame 

 hives now with four or five frames at the ends of each, filled 

 with the purest virgin comb and honey. Of these I daily unseal 

 a portion, and hope soon to see them disfigured (?) with brood 

 and pollen. I make these statements to show that bees do not 

 indiscriminately fill their combs with honey and pollen, and so 

 to my great advantage they stored honey, not honey and pollen, 

 in my supers. Had I followed Mr. Pettigrew's advice in this 

 case and allowed no bees to enter these supers excepting through 

 the hive, I should have had few supers filled. Tbe heat and 

 confusion engendered by thousands of bees attempting to crowd 

 backwards and forwards through a 3-inch hole at the top of a 

 straw skep must have rendered swarming a constant occurrence. 

 I say in this case, and thus is added another thread to the 

 already strong cord which must pull the straw skep down and 

 place the bar-frame hive on the floor board. Is there not always 

 danger of the queen mounting into supers and spoiling them 

 when a free entrance is ctTered her. as in the case of a hole in 

 the crown of a skep ? So arrange perforated zinc, wires, shts in 

 a board, that only workers can pass through, then so few bees 

 can enter the super at the time that in snltry weather they must 

 either be idle or swarm. On the other hand, give the bees a 

 roomy bar-frame hive, and when ripe for anpering a sheet of 

 zinc with 5-21th6-of-an-inch perforations, covering the whole of 

 the top of the hive, and they have snch free ingress and egress 

 to and from the super that the chances of swarming are reduced 

 to a minimum, and should bees attempt to enter with pollen it 

 it rubbed from their legs, while drones and queen are shut out. 

 Therefore I say that in the case in question I was right in my 



management. Supers over bar-frame hives were very differently 

 arranged. Mr. Pettigrew entirely ignores the point which my 

 last letter brought to his notice. The introduction or non- 

 introduction of pollen into supers was not the bone of conten- 

 tion. This I consider a " quibble," but he calls it " an important 

 question in the discussion." — P. H. P. 



THE STEWARTON HIVE. 



A Lapy Correspondent (" E. H.") writes that she has "just 

 obtained a Stewarton hive from Mr. James Allen, whose name 

 was given in your Journal. I am rather at a loss how to manage 

 it in some points and shall be glad of any hints. The bars are 

 some of them screwed down and some nailed fast, two on each 

 side. I suppose I cannot get these out either to put comb in or 

 to examine them at any time ? Are there any directions iJub- 

 lished for the management of the Stewarton hive ?" 



As doubtless some of your readers will, like this correspon- 

 dent, find considerable diificulty in understanding the working 

 of the Stewarton hive at first, I shall here notice the construc- 

 tion of the hive and the way in which it is managed by the 

 "Renfrewshire Beekeeper." The hive itself as it comes 

 from Stewarton appears to the eyes of those unacquainted with 

 it to be a very incomplete instrument, curious and difficult to 

 understand. There are three breeding boxes G inches deep each, 

 and two honey boxes 4 inches deep. All these put together 

 constitute the hive. All the boxes have cross bars at their tops. 

 Though octagonal in shape, the reader will form a pretty accu- 

 rate idea of the appearance of a Stewarton hive if he pile up a 

 lot of riddle rims, 14 inches wide, one on the other, till they are 

 ;I0 inches high. Having neither crown nor floor board it does 

 appear very incomplete, but really it is not so, although a floor 

 and a flight board must be found for it. A bundle of slides and 

 pegs are furnished and sent with every hive, which, properly 

 used, make the Stewarton complete and workable. The slides run 

 in grooves and fill the spaces between the bars. Its size is doubt- 

 less its best property and greatest recommendation, for a hive 

 of any shape containing between 4000 and .5000 cubic inches of 

 space is capable of doing much work. Its next best property 

 is this, that it can easily be enlarged by either nadirs or supers : 

 indeed the principle of the Stewarton hive is its capability of 

 enlargement at both top and bottom. What the common bar- 

 frame hive lacks in this particular the Stewarton possesses, 

 which gives it a very great advantage over the former. The 

 price of the hive at Stewarton is, I have been told, 25s. and 27s. 

 each, and the carriage to Manchester is 3s. per hive. A floor- 

 board here costs about 2s., so that a Stewarton complete costs 

 about 30s. A friend of mine asked Mr. Allen to make one for 

 him 16 inches wide, for which he paid 5s. extra. 



A Stewarton hive can easily be copied by any carpenter; 

 indeed cottagers may have cheap hives to bo managed on the 

 Stewarton principle by making them from empty grocers' boxes. 

 By knocking their bottoms out and fitting cross bars in them 

 after the manner of the Stewarton, hives of equal capacity and 

 power may be made for Is. or 2s. each. Any handy bee-keeper 

 may easily make square Stewartons from cheap boxes, and if 

 he can brty riddle rims as we can in Manchester at 6s. per dozen 

 he may make round Stewartons too. These things are men- 

 tioned here in the interest of working people. 



I now come to notice the mode of managing the Stewarton 

 which is practised and recommended by the " Renfrewshire 

 Bee-keeper, " who is a very high authority and an able manager 

 of the Stewarton system. In this Journal and elsewhere he has 

 explained pretty fully the improvements he has made in the 

 construction of the Stewarton and how he works the hive. I 

 will quote his explanation from Mr. Hunter's work, page 59. 



"The general mode of manipulating the Stewarton hive is to 

 lasb a couple of the breeding boxes together with cords. After 

 the bars of the boxes have been duly furnished with comb or 

 embossed wax sheet, run in the sliding door of the upper and 

 withdraw all the slides of the lower compartments, then close 

 the openings with the little pegs accompanying the boxes, thus 

 giving free communication between the two boxes and making 

 them one to all intents and purposes. The bees may then be 

 introduced— a prime swarm of course. Some eight or ten days 

 thcreiifier a second prime swarm, if procurable, is hived in the 

 third breeding box and at once set down close to the earlier ore, 

 and at dusk the last-named or first swarm in the two boxes is 

 placed on it. The lower of the two first boxes, now the central 

 one, has its door run in or closed, and the slides of the lowest 

 are removed and the pegs put in as before. Should the evening 

 prove chilly a whifl of traoke may be administered to both. 



"The morning light reveals usually nothing but the surplus 

 queen dead on the floorboard. The lowest box is then removed 

 and the entrance to the second again opened. Should any bees 

 be clustering in the lowest, the removal of it can be postponed 

 till the middle of the following day, when many workers will 

 be abroad. The object of removing the third box is to restrict 

 space, so that the combined swarms may all the sooner com- 

 plete comb-building below and be thankf nl to press up into the 



