August 14, 1866. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



135 



maiden one from the first of these ; but maiden second and 

 third swarms are ontirely new to me. So far as I can judge, 

 and I endeavour to observe as accurately as I can, what in this 

 respect seems exceptional in the case of common bees, is 

 normal in tbo case of Ligurians. 



I may observe, in passing, that I had kept the black species 

 for many years, and last season my hives yielded me about 

 5 cwt. of honey. I have a gardener who can hive the bees and 

 attend to the apiary during my absence, but, as a rule, they are 

 under my sole management, and I mostly manage to be at 

 home in the busy soason. I like to work as well as to observe ; 

 bnt, alas ! " The rector's bees," as my poor people say, " gene- 

 rally swarm on a Sabbath," and twice on the same Sunday (im- 

 mediately before and after morning service), have I experienced 

 what I should call, on other days, the pleasurable excitement 

 of hiving two large swarms. However, I have never lost a 

 single swarm from the unsabbatical habits of my little busy 

 workers, and, with the exercise of a little watchfulness, hope I 

 never shall. Some of my neighbours are less fortunate, for 

 twice during the last mouth have my services been interrupted, 

 and my congregation perturbed, by the intrusion of a swarm of 

 bees just before morning prayer. Fortunately, however, beyond 

 the droning which was very distinctly sustained during the 

 whole service, and a nervous movement occasionally amongst 

 tfie occupants of one or two seats near the window, through 

 which the imprisoned bees were vainly struggling to escape, 

 when some stray intruders threatened too dangerous a proximity, 

 onr quiet village worship was conducted the same as usual. 

 These swarms effected their entrance into the roof of the north 

 aisle through a small opening, which could only have been 

 discovered by a previous reconnoitre. I am convinced by this, 

 and several other analogous facts which have come under my 

 observation during the last three or four years, that swarming 

 is nothing more than a general muster of emigrants previous 

 to their departure in one compact phalanx, to a new habitation 

 fixed upon, and made ready, when necessary, at least some 

 days before their leaving the old hive. 



One remark on the letter of your correspondent from Kil- 

 cbvre. There is something so unusual in the size of his third 

 swarm, which came out on the 8th of June, that I am inclined 

 to ask him whether he is quite sure that no considerable 

 portion of this returned to the parent hive during the process 

 of swarming ? This, with me, has not unfrequently happened, 

 both with second and third swarms, and on two occasions this 

 summer I have had the latter leave their hive and return to it 

 no fewer than three times in one day. 



I daresay many of your readers are aware that after-swarms 

 are sometimes, perhaps more frequently than not, headed by 

 three or four queens. With my Ligurians this has been almost 

 invariably the case this summer, and the knowledge of this 

 fact has enabled me to capture several queens, and to place 

 them at the head of swarms of the purity of which I might 

 have been in some doubt. Sometimes I have had three or 

 lour clusters enclosing as many queens, and in this case 

 nothing is easier than to treat them as the heads of distinct 

 establishments, and hive them separately. As a rule, how- 

 ever, there is but one cluster, and around this an experienced 

 eye will detect, often — for instance, on the leaves of the tree on 

 which the swarm may have alighted — thirty or forty bees con- 

 gregated together', indisposed, apparently, to increase their 

 numbers, and yet disinclined to separate and join the main 

 body. Careful examination of these little nuclei will almost 

 invariably disclose a queen, and nothing is easier than, with 

 the aid of a wine-glass and a piece of stiff cardboard, to 

 capture her and her body-guard. It requires very little dex- 

 terity to accomplish this feat, and in this simple manner I one 

 morning secured three queens. One of these, of remarkable 

 size and beauty, I utilised in this way, keeping her and about 

 a dozen of her companions on the red currant leaf on which 

 they settled, for three or four days in a wine-glass with a piece 

 of honeycomb, until the opportunity arrived. 



At last this was presented by the departure of a third swarm, 

 the largest I ever saw, from a hive in a rather exposed situ- 

 ation. The morning was windy and occasionally showery, and 

 altogether most unpropitious. The bees no sooner took wing 

 than they were scattered on the ground and trees around, on 

 an area of some three or four hundred square yards. The 

 queen, as I expected, did not accompany them, and now was 

 the time for my experiment. I waited until the scattered bees 

 began to grow impatient and unsettled, and some few of them 

 attempted to take flight homewards. I placed my imprisoned 

 queen and her companions on a kind of extemporised stand 



made of small branches of currant tree, in the upper part of a 

 common straw hive ; held it immediately over some trees on 

 which the greater portion of the bees had alighted, and, one by 

 one, shook these sharply so as to induce the bees to take wing. 

 They did so, and in rising at once discovered tho queen. Then 

 arose the call-hum which the anxious apiarian under such cir- 

 cumstances is delighted to hear, and tho whole swarm rose up, 

 ouo by one, acknowledging the sovereignty of their alien 

 queen. I was determined to increase their numbers as I knew 

 that the hive was populous, aud the whole of the bees that could 

 well bo spared had not come out. So as soon as tho swarm 

 had quietly settled in its new abode, I removed tho old stock 

 from the stand and replaced it with the new swarm, taking 

 the former into a room lighted with only ono small window 

 which was closed ; on gently tapping the hive, still attached to 

 its bottom board, the bees became irate, and immediately 

 rushed out of the hive to the narrow light. Repeating this 

 operation at intervals of two or three minutes, and opening 

 the window to set its bewildered occupants at liberty before 

 resuming the tapping process, I managed to collect in the new 

 hive one of the largest swarms I ever possessed, the liberated 

 bees at once returning to the old familiar spot. I kept the 

 new hive where I had placed it, and removed the other to a 

 station at a considerable distance. Both hives are doing well, 

 and with their present teeming population bid fair to make 

 first-rate stocks. 



I must conclude this discursive paper with an account of a 

 calamity which happened to one of my heaviest hives last 

 Sunday morning (July 29th). Just as I had entered my dress- 

 ing-room, word was sent up to me by my gardener that one of 

 my hives had fallen over in consequence of the ground being 

 saturated with rain, and that the combs were all broken, and 

 the honey and bees mixed together in one homogeneous 

 mass ? What was to be done ? And all this ou a Sunday 

 morning too ! I remembered that one of my hives had been 

 placed near a new wall, erected in the dry weather, and that the 

 earth had not been well rammed around the foundations. One 

 of the legs of my stand had sunk in this, and the " centre of 

 gravity " soon found its way over " the base." To save the 

 stock was impossible, and to approach it, dangerous. And 

 now came the question, How can I take the honey? The 

 [ thought struck me in a moment, that the only immediately 

 available plan was to pick up the hive and plunge it and tho 

 whole of its contents into a vessel of water, deep enough to 

 cover all, and to leave things in statu quo until my clerical 

 duties were completed. The idea proved eminently practical, 

 and after breaking up the combs and washing them in the 

 water, the debris of these and their constructors were separated 

 from the syrup by means of a strainer, leaving me to ascertain 

 the value of this by means of a saccharometer. It happened 

 fortunately, that we were just on the point of commencing our 

 annual brewing of elder-flower wine ; the required quantities of 

 sugar and water were duly added, and the wine is now made 

 anil on the point of being stored away in the barrel for winter 

 use. — William Law, Marston Trussel Rectory. 



Is my communication at page 115, there is a mistake in the 

 date of the first swarming from the two stocks, which, if un- 

 corrected, would lead to the erroneous notion that the queens of 

 two united swarms could remain peaceably together for more 

 than a week. Both the swarms alluded to took place on the 

 7th of June (not 1st), their union to tho original Ligurian 

 stock being effected that night, and the huge swarm coming out 

 again on the 9th, at 11 a.m., so that these two queens were in 

 the same hive only thirty-six hours. It was, doubtless, their 

 proximity to one another becoming known then that occasioned 

 the second issue. 



I can also fully bear my testimony as to the greater fecun- 

 dity of the Ligurian queen to that of the common bee. The 

 bees of the only Ligurian stock I possess still (8th of August), 

 keep up their numbers, and maintain their activity to a much 

 greater extent than any of the best of my other stocks, and 

 during the last three weeks of very indifferent weather have 

 worked vigorously, although I am afraid to little purpose, so 

 far as honey -collecting is concerned ; but the number of foragers 

 returning with pellets of farina on their legs is still most re- 

 markable. 



My advice to all owners of hives this year is. Bo cautious in 

 depriving them of honey, for the season has been scarcely an 

 average, or you will lose them during the ensuing winter. — 

 A Blaceheath'an. 



