October 38, 1SS9. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



353 



liave been exported during the last three or four years no les3 

 than one thousand sets of these boxes, and very many of them 

 have been sent to parties who had already possessed them, 

 and who are readers of "oar Journal." Are they then not 

 "intelligent" because they use the hive that Mr. Pettigrew 

 condemns? It also somewhat astonishes me that he should 

 -assert that " neither the shape nor material of a hive can im- 

 prove the quality of the honey." Did he not himself give in- 

 structions in this Journal as to the best shape and material for 

 a hive ? Doubtless, the shape and material have very much 

 to do with the quality and quantity of honey collected, but as 

 it belongs only to those advanced in the science, Mr. Pettigrew 

 has no use for this information, and I will not trouble him 

 with it. He says again — " I am not .... going to say one 

 word for or against the Slewarton hive." He would have done 

 as well to have "let sleeping dogs lie," since, if I may believe 

 my own eyes, he has already said a great deal too much. 



As respects feeding bees with sugar for the production of 

 supers, where such a thing exists by all means put it down ; 

 but it is in this, as in many other things, there are but few 

 rogues in comparison with the number of honest men, and I 

 am almost sure he is mistaken with regard to the three boxes 

 in question. At any rate, it would have been better if he had 

 expressed himself in a different manner. There is, indeed, as 

 will be seen, a singular coincidence between the boxes he 

 mentions and three which I myself saw. I happened to be in 

 Glasgow some time since, and in a shop there examined a 

 quantity of honeycomb, amongst which I was shown three 

 boxes that were to be sent to England. There was no more 

 sugar in these boxes than there is in my pen, but there was 

 certainly very fiue honey, and if these three boxes, and the 

 three spoken of by Mr. Pettigrew, are the same, he is beyond 

 doubt mi-itakcn, and ought to apologise, or to bring forward 

 proof that their contents really were sugar, which I am almost 

 certain they were not. It is very questionable whether feeding 

 bees is profitable, I am sure it is not. Sugar at " 2J <(. per lb. " 

 I will pass over, because such a weak statement can have little 

 effect on any one who reads it. He says that Glasgow merchants 

 and judges of bouey ought to taste it before purchasing. This 

 practice bee-keepers would never submit to, as it spoils the 

 whole appearance of a fine box. Besides, a good judge of honey 

 knows honey and comb without tasting. With boxes raised 

 under Mr. Pettigrew's plan, it matters not whether they be 

 broken into or not. Who would have thought that one who 

 leads " our Journal," would have laid any stress on such 

 words as "he told a friend who told me!" I think I see the 

 canning leer the Ayrshire man put ou when he told the 

 ignorant bodies that it was sugar and water. 



In a year like tliis it is impracticable, unprofitable, and im- 

 possible to raise supers with sugar — impracticable because the 

 make of the hives does not admit of feeding, unprofitable be- 

 cause if fo id is given in fine weather the bees cease collecting 

 from the fields, impossible because they will not take artificial 

 food when they cm get honey of their own gathering. I give 

 ■one case in point. I had a hive whose combs met with an acci- 

 dent about a week after swarming; I collected the honey in a 

 basin and gave it to another hive, but it refused it, and not 

 one would accept it until the honey-gathering ceased. 



^^ith regard to novices passing their opinion on honey, 

 almost all whom I meet belonging to Lanarkshire, if I show 

 them a first-class box of honey always maintain it is sugar; 

 again, I hive met them (men from the neighbourhood of Car- 

 luke), more than once opposite the vendors of honeycomb, and 

 wuenever a spurious article was present theymaintained it was 

 honey ; the rest they said was sugar. I had a visit last year 

 from some men of that place offering for sale honey and sugar 

 nicely comp mnded together. I showed them a box of honey- 

 comb pronounced the finest they had seen by those who had 

 judged most of the honey in Scotland. On seeing it, one 

 exclaimed. " What is it ?" 'while the other maintained that it 

 was sugar! Now I can assure the readers of this Jourual that 

 the hive from which this box was taken has stood for three 

 seasons without ever having sugar, and that during that time it 

 has given six s-,ii ers of fine comb, each 25 lbs., besides other 

 inferior comb, such as Mr. Pettigrew boasts so much of. I say, 

 therefore, to the roidera of " our Journal," Do not believe such 

 statements as ihi'. the Ayrshire shallow boxes are filled wiih 

 sugar and water Daal only with respectable people, of whom 

 there are miny, and yon will not be disappointed. 



As regards tljt> Glasgow merchants being judges of honey, 

 most of them know very little about it, and bow can they when 

 bav few of them even know bees when they see them? A 



practical man is the only competent judge. I will merely 

 instance the judgment of a Glasgow honey merchant. At the 

 Hamilton Horticultural Society's Show, in September last, 

 there were entered for competition seven boxes, and out of the 

 seven, only two in my opinion deserved a prize; but, strange 

 to say, the best box of nearly 30 lbs. of perfectly straight 

 worker comb, every way well finished and of a fine colour, was 

 awarded only the third prize, whilst the second best was passed 

 over entirely, and the first prize was awarded to a box of drone- 

 comb, not filled, of about 6 lbs. in weight, and the honey it 

 contained of a third-class quality, having been gathered from 

 the wild tansy — such is commonly a little bitter and tastes 

 strongly of pollen. The second prize was awarded to a much 

 inferior box of about the same weight, but it bad only two 

 pieces of coarse drone comb which constituted the box, the 

 honey being of the same character as the first and very watery. 

 So much for the judgment of Glasgow honey merchants, 

 which is, in fact, no better than that of the majority of the La- 

 narkshire bee-keepers, who, as I said before, whenever they see 

 a fiue box maintain that it is sugar ; but to give your readers a 

 better idea of how the honey was judged, I will relate the con- 

 versation that took place between the Judge and the owner of 

 what ought to have been the first-prize box. The JuJge, " la 

 this your whereabouts? Have you something in the show?" 

 " O yes, I have, I have a box of honey. You would likely see 

 it." "Yes," was the rejoinder, "Was it the large box?" 

 "Y'es," replied the owner. "Where have you placed it?" 

 "I think," answered the Judge, "it is third." "I think you 

 mu--t have made a very great mistake, as there is no com- 

 parison between the boxes," continued the owner. " Oh," re- 

 I plied the Judge, " it was in the dark, I could not see it." 

 i " And what were yon brought here for ? " exclaimed the owner. 

 ] "You a judge of honey ! " When the Judge again replied, " I 

 1 can sell wee boxes best; besides, I did not know it was yours." 

 "Nor had you any right to know whose they were," said the 

 owner. " And had you examined the large box you would 

 1 have seen that without cutting a single comb you could have 

 I made from it seven boxes superior to those you placed before 

 I it." Your readers can guess the rest. 



And, now, let me ask, if the Stewarton boxes contain sugar 



! and water, how comes it that there are so many unfinished 



I ones in the market? Were they filled with sugar the owners 



i would surely look a little more after their own interests, and 



not send out any empty comb, as it is well known that it 



takes much more to build comb than to fiuish it. — A 



L.iNARKSHmE Bee-keepek. 



Mb. Petiigeew makes some observations on the Ayrshire 

 bee-keepers that are quite amusing. Fancy a coterie met in 

 some quiet corner, with snuffbox circulating, and may be a 

 glass of toddy to keep up the fun, calculating to a nicety how 

 much sugar at Aid. a-pound is required to produce 1 lb. of 

 honey. That settled, the next thing is the large profit they 

 will have after the symp expedition over the border. Some 

 short time ago I tried to sell in Manchester pure honey, col- 

 lected in that locality. After trying all sorts of places, and 

 finding it quite unsaleable, I let a druggist have it at (id. per 

 pound, which he never paid. Honey from the north — how 

 produced I cannot tell — is saleable. That produced about 

 Manchester can scarcely be given away. — Ovee the Boeder. 



AN ACCOUNT OF A STOCK OF BEES. 



During the autumn of last year I bough.t a stock of black 

 bees in a common straw hive. After having put them on a 

 stand in my bee garden, I attempted to capture the black queen 

 liy fumigating the bees. Tue first lot of bees which fell on 

 the fl lorboard were carefully searched through for the black 

 queen, but without success. I then reserved the bees I had 

 taken from the stock, and again fumigated the stock, which 

 appeared to take all, or nearlv all, the bees from the hive. I 

 was quite satisfied I had suflioient bees to form a colony, to 

 whcu I at once added a Ligurian queen. 



Having sufSeient combs already fitted into the frames of one 

 of Petiitt's frame hives, I placed the old stock in another part 

 of my garden to take its chaijce. I then put the bees which I 

 had taken from the stock, with ft Ligurian qoeen at their head, 

 upon the stand formerly occupied by the old straw hive, and so 

 made a very good stock. You mny juilge of my surprise in the 

 spring of this year when I found tbe stock from which I had 

 drained nearly all the bees as strong and as good as any in 



