July 33, 1888. ] 



JOURNAL OP HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



dared not venture to do wronp!, for onoe lie broke bia bridle and 

 prepared to gallop off, but Keeper seized him by tbe niwe 

 (rather too eevere a punishmout), and there held him till his 

 inaater oame up. Many a cat did ho kill, and such-liko vermin. 

 At length he (;rew very lean, and manj^y, and heavy-eyed, and 

 ceased to enjoy life ; then leaner, more mangy, and more 

 L«avy-eyed, until ho died. And as he had lived honoured, so 

 be died "lamented. There was a formal burial, and thtn a tomb- 

 stone was erected, but no more. We could never apree as to a 

 fit epitaph, after the " Here lies Keeper." We could not find 

 words, fit as we thought, to record his merits. So month after 

 month passed, the stone remained blank, then year after year, 

 and it is blank still, for I saw it a few weeks ago, and the stone 

 looked bine and clean, and blank as ever, though more than 

 thirty years have flown since old Keeper was laid beneath. The 

 tomb looked as fresh as the old dog is in the memory of the 

 two tli»', are left, who knew him, his master and — Wiltshike 

 Beotor. 



(To be contin-ued.) 



INVASION OF BEES. 



I hAte a hive of bees, from which, as I took a glass of honey 

 from them rather late last season, I fed them well all the 

 winter, and until the end of March. Early in May I found 

 they worked very little, and seemed to be fighting, some dead 

 bees being on the ground under the bee-stand. So they have 

 gone on working little, and with more and more dead bees on 

 the ground, till I think there must be very few left. Being 

 but a tvro in bee-keeping, I should like to know the reason of 

 this. I had given up my bee-keeping in despair (this being my 

 only time), when this morning a great sound of bees was heard 

 in the air ; my man rattled some tins, and threw up earth at 

 a Bwarin which appeared in the garden, apparently looking for 

 somewhere to settle. He expected them to go to a pear tree 

 near them ; they began, however, to enter the hive until they all 

 settled within it, and they have been working all day, and at 

 present appear as much at home in it as if they had been there 

 a year. Is not the above a somewhat unusual occurrence ? — C. R. 



[There i? little doubt that the queen died during the winter 

 and that the colony gradually dwindled away, until about May 

 or .June none were left. Those which afterwards appeared to 

 inhabit the hive did not really belong to it, but were merely 

 scontsfrom other stocks, and any fighting which took place was 

 doubtless between these and the remnants of the aborigines, or 

 between the invaders themselves if they came, as is most 

 probable, from more than one hive. What followed is common 

 enongh, swarms being very prone to look out for and occupy 

 luves which are ready furnished with combs.] 



BEES IN A SODA CASK. 



Aocor.Di^JO to your request, I send you an account of the 

 oltimate result of the swarm which was domiciled iu a soda 

 cask, as reported in your columns August 22nd, 18C7. 



The owner at first purposed placing them over the brimstone 

 pit, as the easiest method of dealing with them, but I said I 

 hoped he would not be guilty of such wholesale murder, and 

 oflered to go over and drive them for him if he would give me 

 the bees. He seemed to think if I could drive them he could 

 manage to do it himself ; " Very well, do so, only remember you 

 will have such a job as you never had before." It seemed he 

 had some acquaintance with a person in the neighbourhood, said 

 to b -' wise in bee lore, and this party promised his assistcnoe ; 

 " he had driven dt'Zens of hives, and could manage it in an 

 hour," &o. I inquired how this "beeman" proposed to conduct 

 the operation, and I was informed " a hole was to be dug in 

 the ground to receive an empty cask, and that then the full one 

 was to be placed npon the top, and the bees were to be driven 

 down into the empty one." Of course I had a good laugh at 

 tliem, and it was finally arranged that I should go over and drive 

 them for him about the end of July. However, what with the 

 advice and persuasions of one wiseacre and another, he allowed 

 this adept to commence operations on the 25th June, iu my 

 absence, and the result was even worse than I should have 

 anticipated. He tried, and tried again, and was at lust obliged 

 to beat an ignominious retreat, and leave his work unfinished, 

 and the owner found ho knew no more about driving bees than 

 he did himself. So he was obliged to try, but could not succeed. 

 Determined not to be beaten, he employed a lad a whole day to 

 beat the sides of the cask incessantly, but with no other result 

 ihan that the combs were loosened, and sUd up and down when 



the cask was moved, and then didn't the enraged inhabitant* 

 •give chase and repay with cumponnd interunt the indigaitied 

 they had been sutTering for two or three days previously. 



Then they sent to know if I would come immediatoly and 

 help them. This I could not do, anil as the bets would not 

 take to thS new cask they g"t tin m at last into a large straw 

 hive, after having sacrificed thousands of bees and the whole of 

 the eggs and larva; in the brood combs, which must have 

 amnunred to 20,000 or 30,000, and they got, what (hink you, for 

 their honey harvest?— about 8 or Olbs. of very indifferent honey. 

 Arid I was afraid when I saw the swarm the other day they 

 wonld not prosper, and had doubts from their movements the 

 queen was not in the hive, as they hud been in it five days and 

 there was only a bit of comb ahont the size of a threepenny- 

 piece ; BO to satisfy all parties, I got a sheet and dashed them 

 all out, and searched them over until I found her majesty waa 

 safe ; at the same time I told him if he diu not commence feed- 

 ing at once he would lose them altogether, for there seems to 

 be a great scarcity of honey this season about this ceifihbourhood 

 although some bee-keepers have done better than others. 



I have had very bad success this season, having lost so many 

 queens one way or other, thus keeping all my stocks weak in 

 numbers, those with queens being so often called upon t» 

 contribute brood combs to save the others from beoommg 



extinct. , . ,t j 



I lost a fine Liguriin queen the first week in May. ana 

 always fancied a goodly company of bees (accompanied her. 

 And judge of my vexation at hearing only two da^s ago that a 

 swarm of Ligurians had possession of a tree some two or two 

 and a half miles away, and had been there for weeks to the 

 knowledge of certain parties who had been trying to hive them, 

 but could not get the queen. I sent a man to see whereabouts 

 they were, and had the mortification to learn that they had 

 been so harassed by men and boys (some of whom got pretty 

 well stung over it),' that they had dec.im(ied entirely, and gone 

 no one seemed to know where. — J. K. J., IIu.ll. 



BEE GLASSES. 



It is with much pleasure I accede to your esteemed contri- 

 butor, " B. & W.'s " request for further information as to tha 

 style of bee glass figured at page 415 of No. 375. 



Like him I had almost discarded glasses from my apiary, 

 finding, as a rule, bees would readily store 3 lbs. in wood 

 against 1, after the utmost care, in the best description of 

 gfasses offered bv Messrs. Neighbour & Sms ; but those em- 

 ployed by Mr. Mitchell, of Ahington, being the design of no 

 mere theorist, but the ingenious result of very many ycMs' 

 practical experience and efforts to produce a filass " all bnt 

 perfect," offer such facilities for the storing of honey in thi» 

 material, as will induce me to give them a prominent place m 

 my apiary for the time to come. 



But, first of all, to take np the faults and suggestions, by 

 way of improvement, of your correspondent, I may remark, 

 the rim forms portion of the lid or top, and consequently 

 already rests upon the loJy of the glass, and not within it, as 

 he supposes. Then, again, the concave or saucer-like form ol 

 the upper portion of the stalk serves the purposes of bearing 

 the glass and retaining any slight leakage. Of course, when 

 set upon the table to be broken up, the lower cncnlar aperture 

 would require to be securely stopped, and by the above arrange- 

 ment the stopper is kept out of view— indeed, when photo- 

 graphed there was a thick knitted wine rubber doubled up 

 beneath the body of the glass, quite nnseen in the sketch. 



Your correspondent's last and best idea of snbstitutinc a 

 wooden top suggested itself the first glance I had of the glass. 

 The comparatively small portion stored in the upper portionor 

 lid is a capital feature of the plan, and it occurred to me thaf 

 by temporarily removing the lid, and in lieu setting on a thm 

 board with a number of good deep pieees of empty ^ide 

 comb, storing wonld go on about as rapidly as in wood tiU its 

 completion, when I proposed with a thin-bladed knife or thread 

 to sever the attachments to the board, remove it, and replace 

 the lid. The bees would at once gather np to lick up the loose 

 honey, and finding the vacuum above thtm, speedilv work np 

 the combs; and heie, I mav remark, y.iur correspondent's 

 fears, however legitimate with regard to loaded combs gmng 

 way of their own weight in common glasses, overlooks the fact 

 that this is an impossibility in the new glass, as when com- 

 pleted they are self-supported from the narrower bate, indepen- 

 dent altogether of upper attachments to either ginss or '"■ood— 

 another happy thought. My plan I duly submitted to Mr. 



