October 10, 1865. ] 



JOUBXAL OF HORTICULTUEE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



309 



Those hives which are meant to be kept fm- next year will 

 require to he woigherl, and if foiiml lesa tlmn 'M 11)S. — tlmt is, 

 the uoiiinion strftw-liivo and board— then they must bo fed at 

 onoo. Tliey would bo better at ;)5 11)S. ; still I find it a Rood 

 plan to feed in the autumn, as it sets the queen breeding in 

 .-ibout six days, and, consoiiuently, a tine lot of young bees are 

 in the hive all the winter, ready to eonnnence operations with 

 vigour in the spring. All the bees which liavo been worliing 

 this summer will be dead before spriui;; it is only bees which 

 are liatched in Seiitember and October which remain during 

 the winter. At times a few oM superannuated bees may be 

 found in the spring, but if they do not move off by their own 

 accord, they are soon expelled by their younger brethren. The 

 bees have no idea of a poor-law ; when they are iniablo to work 

 thoy are expelled without remorse from their home. 



In removing tops at this season, especially when the weather 

 is cold, it will bo foinid that the bees are in a dormant state, 

 and do not leave the combs. In that case it is a good plan, 

 after rcmo\-ing the top and turning it upside downi, to jilaco an 

 empty one of the same size on the toji of it, wrapping a cloth 

 round where they join, and carrying them into a warm room. 

 The heat will soon cause the bees to revive ; and after filling 

 themselves with honey, which they always do as soon as dis- 

 turbed, by striking gently the lower top, the one with the honey 

 and bees'in it, they run'up into the empty iiive, and it can be 

 carried out and put on the hive to which the bees belong, when 

 they will at onee join their comrades ; the empty top should 

 then be taken away, and the hole in the top closed carefully up 

 for the winter. 



In taking off tops at this season great care should be had 

 that no honey is spilt or left about the hives ; all should be 

 taken away at once, as the bees in the other hives soon .smell 

 it, and tliey then begin to rob their neighbours, if they are 

 allowed, and severe fights occur on these occasions. 



If it is observed that they have begun to rob one, by tlie 

 great commotion of the bees at the entrance, the door of the 

 attacked hive shotdd be shut, and the hive moved away into a 

 cool room or cellar for the day, and taken back to its place at 

 night ; or it may be kept for a day in the cellar if the weather 

 is warm, and put out the following night. If once bees begin 

 to rob a hive in an apiary they do not generally rest satisfied 

 with that one, but will begin on others if the weather allow 

 them ; so that they should be watched after they come from the 

 heather : and when feeding them, it shoidd bo done at night, 

 by placing the food in troughs within the hive, and removing 

 tiie empty ones in the morning. 



TREATMENT OF A DRONE-PRODUCING HIVE. 



Is your .Journal of March 7th of the present year you in- 

 sei'ted a communication from me asking advice in the case of a 

 hive producing di'ones in large numbers in the early jiart of 

 Februarj'. Your advice was to destroy the queen, to appro- 

 priate the honey, and to unite the bees to the nearest stock. 



Being vmwilliug to destroy a stock apparently one of the 

 strongest in my apiary, I allowed matters to remain i)i statu 

 quo, carefully watching proceedings. About the end of itfarch 

 the drones gradually disappeared, and the working bees as 

 gradmilly increased in numbers until, on the 25th of May, it 

 threw off a fine swarm, which I placed in a Stewarton hive ; 

 but feeling little confidence in the leader of this swarm, two 

 days afterwards I added to it another, placing imdenieath a 

 third box. On the 3rd of June, eight days after the hiving of 

 the first swarm, I placed a fourth box, as super, on the united 

 stocks, and which was taken off on the '2'2nd of June with a 

 •nett weight of 18 lbs. of the finest honeycomb I ever saw. The 

 remaining three boxes are well filled, and the population 

 numerous. After the issuing of the swann I placed a super 

 npon tlie old stock, which super has been well fiUed to the 

 weight of 12 lbs., and the stock with its new queen continues 

 in a most flourishing condition. This is a simple statement 

 of facts, on which I make no comment. Perhaps you or 

 some of yoiur learned apiarian correspondents may be able 

 to solve the mystery. — Li. Baynor, Kt'lvedoii Hatch Uectonj, 

 Brentuood. 



[Our advice would be correct under the circumstances in 

 probably ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. Yours just 

 hapiiened to be the hundredth case, and, therefore, we were 

 wrong. The key to the mvstery lies in the fact, which, however. 

 is but 1 ittle known, and has indeed been very seldom ob- 



served, that young impregnated queens will in certain rare 

 instances commence by laying either a batch of drone eggs, or 

 those of drones and workers intermingled in a most singular 

 maimer. This jjlienomonon ajijiearH to arise from some little 

 stiffness or want of jiower in the delicate and as yet unused 

 voluntary muscles of the siiormathcea. After the lapse of somo 

 time those seem generally to become capable of fidfiUiug their 

 functions, and worker eggs arc deposited in the usual way. A 

 case in point was relateil by Mr. Woodbury in page 350 of the 

 first volume of om- New Series.] 



AUTU:MNAL unions— moving IIRT2S. 



I Ofl-E yini my thanks for your prompt and valuable reply to 

 my inquiry as to autumnal unions, which appeared in your 

 Jounial of" August 8th. I lost not a day in putting to the test 

 of experience the advice you gave on the subject, and on the 

 same evening 1 uniteil two stocks, taking the contents of one 

 hive for myself, and the result was entirely satisfactory. In 

 the morning nil was, as stated in the " Bee-keeping for the 

 Many," jieace and harmony. I fancy the use of a little pep- 

 permint water with the syrup, as recommended by you, is 

 of great nse in causing the combined stocks to unite without 

 fighting. 



I have since operated successfully on several other stocks, 

 and am quite satisfied that this mode of uniting stocks is 

 deserving of general adoption. I have always chosen the dusk 

 of the evening, as soon as the bees are all quietly settled, for 

 the operation ; but I have not found that it could be effected 

 quite so rapidly as some of your contributors appear to have 

 done. A quarter of an hour's steady driunming I find none 

 too much to drive all up ; and it saves a great deal of trouble 

 afterwards to leave as few as possible to be got rid of separately. 

 I have found, also, that it is better to use something pretty 

 heavy to beat with (though, of course, not with too much force), 

 rather than a light stick or the hands, how smartly soever you 

 may rap. A croquet mallet answers admirably, the sliock goes 

 more completely through the body of the hive, and sends the 

 bees up much more effectually than anything lighter. 



On the subject of moving stocks short distances, I find it 

 advisable in the first place to commence by turning the hive 

 with the entrance in the opposite direction to that in which it 

 i.s desired to remove it, and when the bees have become ac- 

 customed to it, then day by day withdraw the hive a foot or so 

 at a time towards its intended resting place — making it, to use 

 a Hibemicism, advance backwards. The bees more rapidly 

 follow their home for a short distance in the line of their flight 

 to it, than they turn either to right or left in quest of it. — 

 U. S. C. 



QUEENS .\ND QUEEN CELLS BY 

 WHOLESALE. 



I All tempted to relate an occurrence of to-day, thinking it 

 may interest your bee-keeping readers. On the 4th inst., we 

 removed an Italian queen from a full colony and shipped her 

 to a customer, giving the stock a young fertile queen on tha 7th 

 inst. Being very much hurried we neglected to make a final 

 examination, but supposed the young queen was accepted. 

 This morning the colony threw a largo swarm. On opening 

 the hive the peculiar " piping '" of an imprisoned queen was 

 plainly heard, and an investigation resulted in the capture of 

 ton beautiful young Italians, all of whom had their full colour 

 and were able to fly ; but after cutting, the cap of their cells 

 had been resealed by the bees, and fed through an opening in 

 the lid, as so correctly described by Huber. The colony having 

 started queen cells as soon as their queen was removed, had 

 refused theyonng queen given them on the 7th, and an enumera- 

 tion of the cells showed that they had finished twenty-five, one 

 of which contained an immature drone swimming in " royal 

 jelly.'' (This attempting to convert drone eggs into queens is 

 by the way, a common occurrence). Several had been opened 

 and their inmates murdered ; others had hatched, and two we 

 cut out and placed in a box, leaving one in the hive. Onr next 

 onslaught was on the swarm which had clustered on a small 

 tree. We hived it, getting five more young queens which had 

 accompanied it, and on returning to the queen cells which we 

 had cut out, found one hatched and the other just hatching, 

 thus securing seventeen young queens and a queen cell for the 

 old hive ! I think this a" pretty good haul from '• a buckwheat 



