AprU 80, 1874. ] 



JOURNAL OF HOBTIGDLTDEE AND COTTAGE GAEDENER. 



357 



places luoBfc exposed to wear, it mats itself more and more into 

 a felt-like substance. This discovery is one of the most remark- 

 able of the age. 



Now for some figares. The estimate has been made that in 

 France alone enough feathers are allowed to go to waste each 

 year to make from 7,000,000 to 8,000,000 square metres of cloth ! 

 In other words, as much is lost in France in feathers as is paid 

 for cotton ! This being true of France, how much more is it 

 true of the United States ? A girl of eight or ten years can see 

 from this how valuable every feather — every one — is, and her 

 chance for mouey-making, for, if I mistake not, the price paid 

 for down is higher in America than in France, and it finds buyers 

 everywhere. Experiences result in facts, and here is one : The 

 feathers that three-fourths of the country people throw away 

 amount in value to more than twenty cents for each ordinary 

 hen ! In fact, a hen's wardrobe weighs usually from 52 to 

 53 grammes, and sometimes weighs as high as 64. "Don't 

 despise the little things." F'eathers mean fortune. — Mary A. E. 

 Wageb, Paris. — (American Paper.) 



THE QUEEN BEE AND DIFFERING DOCTORS. 



Mr. Lowb has written a letter professedly to prevent, if pos- 

 sible, inexperienced bee-keepers from being led astray by my 

 views and teaching. I am not in the habit of reviewing my re- 

 viewers, or noticing many of the misrepresentations of my 

 meaning and views that appear so frequently in this Journal, but 

 it now appears desirable that I should say a few words in the 

 interests of truth, and therefore for the benefit of bee-keepers, 

 for I have a growing disinclination to notice, or pester others 

 by noticing, the remarks of captious people. I shall confine my 

 remarks to Mr. Lowe. 



He says, " The queen bee does not arrive at maturity in four- 

 teen days, but on the sixteenth ; and the worker is not twenty- 

 one days in the cell, but it comes forth a perfect bee on the 

 twentieth day." This is exactly like mine — mere assertion. 

 He gives no facts to prove that the assertion is correct. Our 

 mode of artificial swarming has caused me to notice the times 

 of setting and hatching young queens. In nine cases out of ten 

 eggs are not in royal cells when the first swarms are taken from 

 our hives. Shortly after the swarms have been removed the 

 bees left in the old hives commence to search for their queens, 

 and, failing to find them, begin to set eggs in royal cells, or 

 otherwise make royal cells around some worker eggs. Hundreds 

 if not thousands of times have we seen eggs in royal cells that 

 were not there when the queens and swarms were removed. 

 The eggs had been in worker cells and removed by the bees to 

 royal cells. This fact upsets the position Mr. Lowe has taken 

 in asserting that " the bees do not transfer eggs from worker 

 cells to roysil cells, as is alleged by Mr. Pettigrew." If Mr. Lowe 

 will visit me in a month or two I will show him scores of empty 

 queen cells as soon as the queens have been taken from them 

 and their hives, and three days later I will show him the same 

 cells occupied by brood being reared into queens. To use his 

 own words, " it is to me a mystery " that he has not witnessed 

 this many times. 



When I see eggs in a royal cell I say they will come to per- 

 fection in fourteen days, and on going to the hive on the 

 fifteenth day it is found that the queens are ripe and piping for 

 second swarms to go. Sometimes I am one day too late, and 

 find that the queens have come to perfection in thirteen days 

 from the time of setting, and sometimes they are hardly ready ; 

 but in nine cases out of ten the young queens come to perfection 

 in fourteen days from the time of setting. There may be a dif- 

 ference in the age of the eggs when set. I have known a dif- 

 ference of two days in the hatching of hen eggs, though twenty- 

 one days is the usual time for them. 



Mr. Lowe says that working bees are only twenty days in 

 being hatched; whereas I say twenty-one. Now for proof. 

 The readers of this Journal know that I have again and again 

 advised them to turn the bees out of hives on the twenty-first 

 day after the swarms have been removed from them. We do so 

 in many cases every year, and what do we find ? We find if we 

 do it on the twentieth day after swarming all the workers are 

 not hatched, and that those unhatched leave their cells after all 

 the bees have been removed. This I have seen again and again 

 — scores of times ; therefore, I prefer my own and others' state- 

 ment of days to Mr. Lowe's twenty days. In 1870 the late Mr. 

 Woodbury found some young bees hatched on the eighteenth 

 day, but doubtless these were abnormal. 



Mr. Lowe wants to know about the trustworthy experiments 

 indicating four thousand and six thousand eggs per day from 

 single queens. These experiments were made by several re- 

 spectable bee-keepers on the Continent and in America, were 

 stated in the Congress of American bee-keepers two years ago, 

 recorded in the American *' Bee Journal," and thence epitomised 

 in The Joukn.il of Hobtiodltore. 



One point more noticed by Mr. Lowe. He says that " queens 

 are never allowed to do battle, and one of the queens is always 

 destroyed by the bees." My words were, "In most instances the 



bees destroy one of them." It distresses me to have to tell Mr. 

 Lowe that the terms he uses are too strong. Queens have met 

 when swarms have been united, and royal battles have taken 

 place. In one of these royal battles which took place in my 

 native village, the queens, in deadly conflict, rolled out of the 

 hive and fought it out on the ground. One was killed and the 

 other wounded. 



I was witness to another royal battle in which the two quennB 

 were torn asunder before fatal consequences took place. The 

 late Major Munn, of Dover, got twenty-four queens from Mr. 

 Thomas Addey, of Epworth, Lincolnshire, wherewith to illus- 

 trate a lecture he delivered last autumn. Several royal battles 

 took place in the presence of his audience, according to the re- 

 port of a Kentish newspaper which was sent to me. 



I have now gone over the salient points of Mr. Lowe's letter, 

 which has not altered my views in the least. He means well, 

 and he is an able man. His letters are always thoughtful and 

 intelligent. If he will kindly produce the evidence of facts in 

 support of his views, he will do something in reality to prevent 

 what he fears — -viz., my foundering amid my inexperienced crew 

 in mid ocean. The evidence of one poor stammering witness is 

 entitled to and receives more attention from a jury of English- 

 men than the eloquence, coupled with assumptions and pre- 

 sumptions, of the mightiest barrister. The readers of 'The 

 JouKNAL OF Horticulture and the bee-keepers of England 

 want information, and this information is most welcome when 

 given in simple form. My sole aim is to impart what I know 

 without the use of a name or a personality. If I fail in my 

 effort, or give offence to anybody, I grieve over it. Traders are 

 highly offended at me for recommending hives not in their 

 trade; but the readers of this Journal most heartily approve of 

 those who think and act for themselves, and recommend the 

 safe roads and sound bridges that have borne them well along 

 for fifty years. — A. Pettigrew. 



A PLEA FOR WEAKER STOCKS. 



At this season of the year many bee-keepers are in perplexity 

 about some of their hives, which seem to be far behind others 

 in point of numbers. Is it best to join two or more of these, or 

 to take any trouble to save them as distinct stocks ? Of course 

 it may be quite useless to attempt to save some hives, as when 

 no pollen is being gathered. We should not trouble in this case 

 even to join the bees to another hive, unless they happened to 

 be very strong in numbers. In this case it would be worth 

 while to fumigate the bees with fustian or brown paper, drive 

 them out, hunt for and kill the queen, if any, and, after well 

 sprinkling the bees with honey or sugar syrup, to join them to 

 the nearest stock, right or left, after sprinkling the latter also in 

 the same way. We should do this towards evening when no 

 marauding bees are about. By morning all would be right again. 

 Hives so treated become very profitable. 



But what about other hives, which are evidently active and 

 pollen-gathering, but still weaker than one would like to see 

 them ? There are many such cases, as where hives over- 

 swarmed themselves the year before, or swarmed late, or such, 

 as late swarms and casts, that have survived the winter. Now, 

 my own experience has led me to take particular care of these 

 enfeebled stocks, and to treat them generously with moderate 

 but continuous spring feeding, covering them up with warm 

 coats of drugget ; and for this reason, that it is often these stocks 

 that turn out the most profitable in the coming summer, yielding 

 the largest weight of honey, or at least furnishing themselves 

 abundantly for another year. This may seem an utter paradox 

 and yet be an undeniable fact. 



The explanation is quite simple, and is as follows : — In many 

 years it is almost impossible to prevent the stronger stocks from 

 swarming, and they will do this to excess, choosing, too, the 

 time of ali others when honey is most abundant, and when it 

 might be stored to the greatest advantage. Both swarms and 

 stock suffer from these hive-revolutiots. 'The former nse-up the 

 honey in making comb, often almost as fast as they collect it; 

 while the latter simply consume the honey that was left by the 

 first swarm — the more of it in proportion to their swarming. 

 It is true, if the season happens to be favourable for the secre- 

 tion of honey later on, when these stocks or swarms have re- 

 covered themselves, they will collect a great deal of honey and 

 do very well ; but what if it should happen to turn out other- 

 wise ? In this case the more backward hives will often be found 

 to have stored a considerable surplus during the good weeks of 

 plenty, while the others find themselves next to paupers at the 

 close of the honey season. I have known many such instances 

 in my long experience ; nor was last year an exceptional season 

 in this respect ; indeed, about ns, the most honey was got cer- 

 tainly from the less strong hives. In my own case I think I 

 never had suoh splendid stocks, so crowded with bees ; but as 

 these would swarm again and again, do what I could to prevent 

 them, they simply did nothing towards filling my honey jars ; 

 on the contrary, I have had to feed them from September till the 

 present time, and such has been my experience oftentimes in 



