1893 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



773 



fed on a coarser and less perfectly digested 

 mixture of honey and pollen." 



In the above I have told what I think in the 

 matter, and given the " think " of several oth- 

 ers, who very nearly if not quite agree with 

 me; and I for one should be very much pleased 

 to hear from those v\ ho do not agree, but think 

 instead that the larval bee is fed on an animal 

 secretion. G. M. Doolittle. 



Borodino. N. Y. 



subject of apiculture from the time of Virgil's 

 Georgics up to the present time, etc.. goes on to 

 describe minutely the large bee-keepers' supply 



ENGLISH APICULTURE ILLUSTRATED. 



A GLIMPSE OF THE MANNER IN WHICH OUR 

 ENGLISH COUSINS MANAGE BEES; THEIR 

 HIVES AND GENERAL APPLIANCES; AN 

 INSIGHT INTO ONE OF THEIR LARG- 

 EST BEE-HIVE FACTORIES. 



By E. R. Root. 



The Hertfordshire Illustrated Review for 

 June, 1893, published in England, contains a 

 handsomely illustrated article entitled "A No- 

 ble Hertfordshire Industry." As this article 

 describes in a delightful manner English api- 

 culture, the manner in which bee-keepers in 

 that country manage bees, and as it was ac- 

 companied by some beautiful half-tone engrav- 

 ings, we at once solicited the privilege of pub- 

 lishing extracts from the article, and at the 

 same time asked for the loan of the plates, all 

 of which was freely granted. We thought this 



f)eep into English apiculture would be particu- 

 arly interesting to our American readers, as it 

 shows just how apiculture is carried on in good 

 old England. The author, Mr. Arthur Smith, 

 after giving the natural history of the bee, the 

 number of writers who had contributed to the 



FIG. 1.— HIVING A SWAJ;M UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 



FIG. 2.— DRIVING BEES OUT OF A STRAW SKEP. 



establishment of Mr. Thomas B. Blow, in Wel- 



wyn, Herts, England. But before giving what 

 he has to say regarding our friend, we wish to 

 call attention to some of the half-tone engrav- 

 ings from photographs furnished by Mr. Blow, 

 showing how the English bee-keeper hives his 

 swarms, how he "drives" them from one skep 

 to another, etc. It may be interesting to our 

 readers to know that Mr. W. B. Carr, a distin- 

 guished bee-keeper and one of the editors of 

 the British Bee Journal, is the gentleman 

 whose figure appears in these engravings. We 

 take special pleasure in introducing him here 

 right while he is at work among the bees. 



The first engraving to which we call atten- 

 tion, Fig. 1, is somewhat interesting— the more 

 so as almost everyone of our readers at one 

 time or other has had a similar experience. 



The next one. Fig. 2, represents an operation 

 that is much more common in England than 

 in this country— that of " driving bees "from 

 one skep or box into another. In England, 

 straw hives are much more common than in 

 this country. Indeed, in all our travels among 

 bee-keepers throughout the United States, we 

 have never yet seen a straw hive actually in 

 use. They are a rarity indeed, even when 

 empty. But the use of straw skeps in England 

 does not necessarily mean that the bee-keepers 

 of that country an; to that extent behind the 

 times. It simply means that those hives are 

 used because of their cheapness. If lumber 

 were as expensive here as it is in England, 

 many of our bee-keepers of moderate means 

 would probably be using straw hives. But the 

 English— at least the poorer classes— use these 



