November 28, 18CS. ] 



JOUKNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



455 



dents say what tlioy tliink of tlie matter, aiul wo may then find 

 out a remedy? — A. W. 

 fWe shall bo glad of information ou Ihcso points. — Eds. ] 



TWO "DEVONSHIRE BEE-KEEl'EllS."— AN OLD 

 APIARIAN SOCIETY. 

 Wk extract the following sketcli referring to two " worthies 

 of Devon," from an article entitled " Sixty Years' Changes," 

 which recently appeared in " All the Year Kouud." Wo have 

 little doubt that we are correct in attributing the article itself 

 to the pen of Sir John Bowring, late Her Majesty's Plenipo- 

 tentiary-Extraordinary in China, who, after many years of 

 official travel and adventure ou the outakirts, and oven beyond 

 the confines, of civilisation, has at length settled down to the 

 enjoyment of his retiring pension, and as much of rest and 

 leisure as his active and untiring disposition will admit of, in the 

 vicinity of hi-s native city Exeter, and in the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of uur valued contributor Mr. Woodbury, whom our 

 apiarian readers will have little difficulty in recognising in the 

 bee-keeper whose fearless and dexterous manipulations of his 

 qbedicnt Uttlc subjects appear to have been but recently witnessed 

 by the septuagenai-iau chronicler of " Sixty Years' Changes." 



Speaking of the town of Moretonliampstead. usually abbre- 

 viated to Moreton (Moor-town), situated on the borders of 

 Dartmoor, and some twelve miles west of Exeter, Sir John 

 says, " The Baptist congregation was under the care of a gentle 

 Welshman, mimed Jacob Isaacs. His father may have been 

 Isaac Jacobs, for shiftings and transpositions of Christian 

 names and surnames were then, and may still be. a Cambrian 

 usage ; but he was not without his renoM-n. He had written a 

 book called The Apiarian, and was veiy fond of a quiet 

 joke, declaring that he was one of the most ancient of monarchs, 

 being king of the Hiviti-^, though their .issociatious with the 

 patriarch Jacob were not of a very creditable character. On 

 graud occasions a cupboard was opened for his guests, and the 

 produw of the hive introduced — honey, mead, metheglin — and 

 he carefully explained the essential differences between the 

 two drinks, \yliich I believe are absolutely the same, the one 

 being the Saxon, the other the Welsh name. However, he 

 insisted that the bee furnished the classical ambrosia and the 

 nectar of the gods, and lUat neither gourmand nor gourmet 

 eould have tasted anything superior to either. Yet, strange to 

 say, though so much of his life and his thoughts were devoted 

 to his bees, they exhibited no affection, no partiaUty, but much 

 ill-will towards him. Instead of a protector and a friend, they 

 deemed him an intruder and a foe ; and when he approached 

 his hives he always covered his hands with gloves and his face 

 with a veil, and did not hesitate to call his subjects unjust and 

 ungrateful. Have bees no more discernment ? Have they 

 their preferences and their prejudices ? For I have lately seen 

 a bee-master open his hives, take out every separate comb, lay 

 them on the ground, hunt out the queen, and, having dis- 

 covered her amidst the bustle and the buzz of thousands, 

 restore the combs to the hive, and again close it, unstung and 

 unmolested by any of the community." 



Under correction of Sir John Bowring we may state that the 

 simame of the " gentle Welshman " was not Isaacs but Isaac, 

 whilst his book, which was lirst published in IT'JO, and reached 

 a second edition in 1803, was entitled " The General Apiarian," 

 being dedicated to the Western Apiarian Society, of which the 

 author himself was the Secretary and master spirit. 



This Society, which appears to have been the lirst of the kind 

 which existed in England, was established at Exeter in 1797, 

 and consisted of between forty and fifty members, who sub- 

 scribed their annual guinea or half guinea each, met twice — 

 namely, in the spring and autumn of each year, and offered 

 prizes for the birgest quantity of honey and wax taken without 

 destroying the bees, as well as rewards at their discretion for 

 any useful invention or discovery relBting to the apiary. These 

 meetings seem to have been held regularly for about a dozen 

 years, whilst sn accoimt of the Society's transactions was 

 first puhUshed m 1800, and continued annually, being sold, we 

 believe, for 2d. These " Transactions," of which so far as we 

 know, only one cipy is now extant, are well worth reading, and 

 in them may be lound some very interesting contributions and 

 tpisodes in the task to which the Society, under the guidance 

 _ot Us enthusiastic Secretary, seems to have sedulously applied 

 itseh_\-iz., the improvement of apiculture, and investigation of 

 many yiints whidi at that time remained obscure in the natural 

 history oi the hoiey bee. 



Among them wo find a communication from Bonner the 

 Scottish apiarian, to which was awarded " tlie premium of the 

 tliird rate" for "several methods of ascertaining wliother a 

 hive has a queen or not." These methods arc — First, To watch 

 if the bees carry loads on their thighs. Second, To turn up tha, 

 hive, blow a little smoke among the combs, and sec if tliere bo 

 any brood or young bees in the cells. If upon rubbing the 

 covers off a few of the sealed cells whitish fresh maggots are 

 found, it may be relied on the hive lias a queen. Third, If 

 bees kill drones in autumn, it is certain the bees have a queen. 

 Fourth, To drive the bees into an empty hive and search among 

 them for the queen. On the contrary, it may be suspected that 

 bees have no queen — First, If a hive liave drones when others 

 in its neighbourhood have none. Second, When a hive in 

 autumn has no young, while others around it have them. 

 Third, If the bees in a hive carry no loads in autumn while the 

 neighbouring hives are busily employed. 



In the " Transactions " of 1804 is printed a translation of 

 Huber's first three letters, the entire work l>aviug been pub- 

 lished at Geneva in 1792. For these contributions, which ex- 

 cited no little attention at the time, the Society were indebted 

 to Mr. Henry Allnutt, of Great Marlow, Bucks, who, however, 

 accompanied them with a full description of his own theory 

 regarding the production of queen bees, which be believed to 

 proceed from mature workers, which at a proper age and state 

 were immured in royal cells, whence in due course they emerged 

 perfect queens ! It is not a little curious that in the spring of 

 180G this fanciful theory seemed to receive confirmation, from 

 Mr. Isaac believing that he had found in a hive forsaken by 

 the bees " three royal cells, with common bees sealed in them." 

 This appearing to him (as well it might) " a strange circum- 

 stance," he presented an account of it to the Apiarian Society, 

 who, being equally impressed with the novelty of the occur- 

 rance, caused an advertisement to be inserted in several public 

 prints, with a view to obtain an elucidation of it, when Mr. 

 Allnutt again wrote a letter of some length, applying the oc- 

 currence in support of his own peculiar views. Upon this Mr. 

 Isaac was directed by the Society to investigate the point, whic)> 

 he accordingly proceeded to do, by means of a unicomb hive t 

 rather primitive construction, which he possessed, and which 

 he quaintly styles " The Discoverer." Full details of the in- 

 vestigation are given, and the result was, as was to have been 

 expected, tolerably conclusive as to the fact that "the young 

 queen bee is produced from an egg laid by a queen." Notwith- 

 standing all this, the redoubtable Mr. Allnutt rejoined, and 

 stoutly upheld the correctnesss of his theory. This produced 

 a second investigation, conducted with the aid of two "dis- 

 coverers," and the results were so conclusive, that Mr. All- 

 nutt succumbed to the inexorable logic of facts and attempted 

 no further reply. 



LIGURLVNISING AN Al'LiRY. 



Would you inform me whether, when a virgin queen leaves 

 her hive for a wedding flight, she is attended by drones from 

 her own hive, and it she, being a Ligurian, mates with a Ligu- 

 rian drone rather than with a black drone ; or, in other words, 

 whether she would mate with a black drone only in the absence 

 of a Ligurian drone ? My reason for making the inquiry is, 

 that at present I have only black bees, and am desirous of con- 

 verting all my hives into hives of Ligurians, making the black 

 bees instrumental in expediting the change, and I wish to 

 estimate the amount of risk, as nearly as I can, of keeping both 

 kinds of bees so long as may be necessary for carrying out the 

 object I have in view. Would it be advisable to cut the drone- 

 cells out of the combs in the hives of black bees early in the 

 spring? I think if I can succeed in establishing tbe Ligurians 

 without a cross I may probably afterwards be enabled to keep 

 them pure, as I am not aware that bees are kept elsewhere in 

 my neighbourhood. — M. S. 



[We very much doubt whether a virgin queen is ever "at- 

 tended " during her wedding flights by the drones of her own 

 or any other hive. So far as oiu- observationi extend, the meet- 

 ing seems quite left to chance, and neither Italian nor common 

 queens appear to manifest the slightest preference for drones 

 from their own hives, or even of their own colour. The best 

 mode of Ligurianising an apiary is, in our opinion, to be con- 

 tent the first season with putting young It.alian queens at the 

 head of all young stocks, destroying neither black drones nor 

 di-one-brood, nor taking any trouble about them. All these 

 queens will, for reasons wliich viC need not enter into here, 



