Deoember 24, 1874. ] 



JOURNAL OP HORTIODLTDBE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



579 



one time it used to be entered in the catalo^ea at from £2 to £5 ; 

 now it is entered oftener at from £20 to £r>0, and a single bird 

 has been claimed at one of the former of these last sums. One 

 of the most elegant heaa at the Kilmarnock Show was a Mealy, 

 but she, because of an old custom, had to be left out in the cold. 

 The largest and one of the best Pouters at Aberdeen last year 

 was a Mealy ; he was bred near Edinburgh, and belonged to a 

 family of fine Blues. 



After seeing the Mealy at the Crystal Palace, no wonder that 

 "Wiltshire Rector" said, "there ought to be a class for 

 Mealies;" so say we, the great majority of the fancy, and so it 

 is Likely to be all over.— James Hoie. 



EXTENSIVE BEE-KEEPING. 



Bee-keeping will ere long be replaced by bee-farming; young 

 and enthusiastic apiarists are fast taking the places of the repre- 

 sentatives of apiculture as practised in ancient times. The 

 little badly-made straw skep so suggestive of brimstone is 



doomed, and its place will be filled with Ah I that's the 



qnefition ; who will answer it ? Mr. Pettigrew boldly predicts a 

 great future for the hive bearing his name. Writers of the 

 opposite school as boldly assert that the bar-frame will be the 

 hive of the future. 



One question of prime importance to be answered is, What is 

 the best material, wood or straw ? I believe straw to be better 

 than wood for general use for this reason, that it requires more 

 time and trouble to keep a wooden hive free from damp ; and 

 the majority of bee-keepers, having other business to attend to, 

 can only give their leisure moments to their bees. I have never 

 seen any dampness in a straw hive. 1 think the same cannot 

 be said of the wooden one, with only the same attention paid 

 to it. If you eke a skep with wood, the eke will be damp when 

 the straw is quite dry. If the quilt absorbs all the moisture in 

 a wooden hive, then one great objection is removed. 



Supposing it be admitted that straw is the better material, 

 then would arise another question : Is the Pettigrew or the bar- 

 frame the better hive ? If the former, then the bee-keeper has 

 no difficulty in the selection, he has only to choose according to 

 the size of the swarm a 16, 18, or ZOinch hive. If the bar-frame 

 be voted Al, there is more difficulty in the selection, for there 

 are Sherrington's, Woodbury's, Abbott's, Cheshire's, and many 

 others, most of which I presume could be made in straw. 



One objection often made to the skep is, that the bees waste 

 much time in propolising : this may be true of the old-fashioned 

 skep, badly made and loosely put together; but it is not true of 

 the Pettigrew hive of Scotch make, well made, and tightly sewn 

 with cane. In hives of this class, so far as my observation goes, 

 there is only a small quantity of propolis used. 



Another objection is, that the skep is " wasteful and mur- 

 derous," which I suppose implies that the bees have to be 

 smothered before the honey can be taken. That belief is fast 

 dying out, as it is an easy matter to drive the bees, unite them 

 to others, or sugar-feed them. 



Another objection is, that you cannot see what is going on 

 inside. A little fastian smoke will enable the bee-master to 

 look his bees in the face, and after a little practice will be able 

 to ascertain the state of the hive. I know you cannot see all 

 the brood beds nor the eggs, but a little observation will enable 

 the amateurto judge whether the hive is in a prosperous condition 

 or not ; if a fertile worker or a drone-breeding queen is in the 

 hive. This may be ascertained either from the crown hole or 

 by turning it up, as the elongated cells in the worker comb may 

 be seen a long way down the hive. There cannot from the con- 

 struction of the hive be that minute inspection to which the bar- 

 frame owes its popularity. 



Another objection is, that the skep being of fixed size you 

 cannot contract it or give the extra space sometimes required. 

 If the hive be suited to the size of the swarm, and the bees 

 afterwards require more room, the eke or the super will give it ; 

 but suppose the weather be unfavourable and little honey pro- 

 curable you cannot contract the hive, then I would feed liber- 

 ally as long as necessary. 



Now that the slinger is an established fact, another objection 

 is, that you cannot sling the honey and return the comb ; there 

 is consequently a loss of honey through the bees having to make 

 fresh comb for all the honey they gather. That may be true, 

 but is it all profit ? I think it is admitted both by the advo- 

 cates of the bar-frame and the skep, that honey just gathered is 

 not honey of the right quality. According to one theory a certain 

 time must be allowed for evaporation ; according to the other 

 theory the bees must re-swallow it, and again deposit it in the 

 cells before it can be honey proper. If with the aid of the 

 slinger the honey be extracted the day it is gathered, it must (if 

 either of the above theories be correct), be of inferior quality. 

 And again, what becomes of the unsealed grubs ? Do they go for- 

 ward into the honey? They are "juicy " no doubt, " and would 

 help to weigh," as a writer in another Journal remarks, when 

 depreciatingthe hand-pressure practised by the proprietors of the 

 objectionable skep. I for one shall be glad, very glad, of any 



invention that will get the honey out of the combs quickly at 

 the right time, for to me honey-taking is the most disagreeable 

 part of bee-keeping. I would rather swarm twenty hives than 

 take the honey from one. A short time ago I was very pleased to 

 hear that one of the slingers was at work a few miles from here, 

 I went to see it. It cleared the cells of clover honey, but it was 

 powerless to remove heather honey, and alas ! all my doomed 

 hives had been to the moors. 



Another objection to the skep is, that when there comes a 

 glut of honey the brood cells are filled and breeding is stopped. 

 I think the remedy is easy. Give more room above or below, for 

 the bees would rather stow their sweets anywhere than in the 

 centre of the hive. 



And now, my brethren of the bar-frames,! am not endeavour- 

 ing to disparage the hives you recommend. I know but little of 

 them practically. I have only one; I intend, if all be well, to 

 have another or two next season, and by careful observation to 

 test their merits. It is with very great pleasure that I read of 

 the scientific experiments of some of our great bee-masters ; yet 

 I should be afraid that the complicated hives which yield such 

 great results under their skilful manipulation and practised 

 management, would, if placed in the bands of very many bee- 

 keepers, bring disappointment and loss. 



It is too much the fashion to hoist one's own flag, at the same 

 time endeavouring to trail our opponents' in the dust. Let there 

 be a fair conflict of opinions without personalities, and then the 

 truth will out. — J. Olive, Hartington, Derbyshire. 



THE SENSES OF BEES. 



It is rather astonishing that any naturalist should doubt the 

 existence of any of the five senses in bees, which they and many 

 other creatures possess. Francis Huber himself rather doubted 

 that bees possess the sense of hearing. I knew a minister of 

 the gospel and student of nature who maintained that bees are 

 blind. An English baronet and M.P. has recently delivered a 

 very good lecture to the members of a natural history society on 

 the habits of bees and ants. This lecture has been pretty 

 widely published, and contains the results of some very interest- 

 ing experiments which he has made to test the truth of what 

 some writers have advanced touching the senses and capacities 

 of bees. So far as his experiments go, although they are not 

 conclusive (and this he admits), bees do not deserve the good 

 character which is so often given them. They lack affection 

 for one another, and their devotion to their queen has been over- 

 coloured. They are minus sympathy for suffering companions ; 

 have no appreciation of colour, no powers of communicating 

 ideas to each other ; and some are more stupid than the rest. 

 These are a few of the convictions obtained by the lecturer from 

 the experiments he made last summer. It is to be hoped that 

 he will repeat his experiments next season, and institute others 

 of a like nature, for bees have many traits of character not yet 

 explained or understood ; and there are many secrets in their 

 history difficult to penetrate. 



In this letter I propose to take a mere glance at the five 

 senses of bees — viz., sight, touch, hearing, taste, and smelling. 



1, Sight. — That bees can see distant objects is proved by the 

 fact that they often fly in a straight line to them. That they see 

 near objects may be observed in their going in and out of their 

 hives, and winding their way through a thicket of trees without 

 touching a twig or a leaf. If bees be taken into a room during 

 the day they fly to the light ; and if taken into a dark room and 

 shaken on the floor they will travel towards a lighted candle 

 within eyesight of them. I once saw half of a large swarm or 

 stock of bees run along the ground many yards after the moon. 

 A cartload of hives were placed in my garden late one night. 

 One hive was on the point of suffocation ; it was placed on the 

 ground and its door opened. Unfortunately the moon was in 

 front of the hive, and as the bees gushed out of the hive in a 

 continual stream they all ran in the direction of the moon. 

 As soon as I discovered the mistake I turned the back of the 

 hive to the moon, and stopped the numerous pilgrims on their 

 march by placing a large door between them and the attrac- 

 tive satellite. The hive was placed in their midst, the noise of 

 which brought them all home. 



If two bees be carried in a room, and one of them find a way 

 of escape more readily than the other, we should charitably 

 conclude that the escape is owing more to an accident of good 

 luck than to an evidence of greater intelligence. 



2, Touch. — What sense but touch enables bees in the darkness 

 of their hives and the darkness of night to lay the foundations 

 of their combs at proper distances from one another, to erect 

 cells and combs of exquisite form and beauty with the smallest 

 possible amount of wax ? By the sense of touch eggs are set and 

 tended, food is mixed and administered to young bees in portions 

 suited to their age and wants. Is it not by their sense of touch 

 that bees often recognise their queen, and convey ideas or im- 

 pressions to one another ? Is it by sound or touch that a whole 

 swarm is made aware, all but instantaneously, that its queen is 

 lost ? And while the bees are wild with grief, uttering loud 



