January 10, 1865. ] 



JOUENAi OP HOETICULTUEE AND COTTAGE GABDENEE. 



41 



iU-fated hire can be explained by theiir newness and the 

 weight of honey which they contained ; besides, they only 

 approached the verge of the bottom bai-s, and consequently 

 ■were not fastened to them throughout. Had the combs 

 been lio-ht and aged the breakage might have been trifling. 

 Kow, Dr. Gumming, in one of his letters to^the Times, said, 

 "The Woodbury hive is no improvement." Had he wit- 

 nessed the mischief I have described and the complete 

 restoration which followed, I feel confident he would have 

 retracted his words, and admitted, however unwillingly, 

 that in the TToodbui-y hive only, at so inclement a season, 

 could the damage done have been repaired and the lives of 

 the bees saved. 



In less than a fortnight I had the satisfaction of seeing 

 the whole of the broken combs mended and fii-mly fastened 

 to their respective frames, and the hive again in almost as 

 flourishing a condition as it was before it met with the 

 accident. As the sUps of vrood were no longer neoessai-y 

 either to support or keep the combs in position, I brought 

 my hive once more into the house, took out the frames, and 

 removed the sUps. 



A hive which permits such operations possesses advan- 

 tages of no common order, and for experimental purposes 

 the Woodbury frame stands pre-eminent in the estimation 

 of very competent judges. Accidents to hives in winter are 

 much to be regretted, but they are sometimes unavoidable. 

 At that season of the year they ought, if possible, never to 

 be disturbed. When hybernating bees will remain quiescent 

 and almost motionless for several months ; but if put into 

 an active state they are obliged, whether the weather wiU 

 permit or not. to leave the hive and relieve their distended 

 abdomens. When this is the case in a temperature of 40° 

 or less, and there is a breeze at all, myriads depart never to 

 return. I have a great objection to feeding or disturbing 

 hives in any maimer from the beginning or middle of Oc- 

 tober till tlie beginning or middle of March. This remai-k, 

 however, only applies to the south of Scotland. In Devon- 

 shire, I fancy, the winter is comparatively short, and the 

 cold of Xorth Britain almost unknown. — B. S. 



A NEW CHAPTEE EN' THE XATUEAIi HISTOET 

 "OF THE BEE. 



BEE COMMOTIONS AND QXTEEST ENCASEMENTS. 



(Contimied from page 20.) 



Such were my opinions in 1859. I thought that super- 

 annuation, debility, and incapacity of the queen had much 

 to do with the phenomena of commotions. Several cases 

 occurring in my apiary shortly after, seemed to justify the 

 impressions then entertained. In these the circumstances 

 and condition of the hives were somewhat identical, and the 

 queens were all aged and declioing in strength. In all this 

 I thought I could recognise a uniform principle at work, 

 exhausted fertility and weakness in the queen. Moreover, it 

 was my practice in general, on any commotion being ex- 

 hibited in a hive, to examine it carefully, and in most in- 

 stances I found that the queens encasement was the origin 

 of all the turmoil and excitement among the bees. 



Such were my opinions as I have said in IS-5'J. Further 

 experience, however, and increased facilities of observation 

 from the possession of all sorts of hives — observatory, Huber, 

 unicomb, and frame-hives — opened up to me new aspects of 

 this interesting subject. I found that old queens were not 

 alone subjected to these strange encasements. Hives possess- 

 ing queens two years, and one year old, were not exempted 

 from being thrown into a state of confusion by their queens 

 being encased. Say, I found that queens only a few weeks 

 old were sometimes the ol">ject3 of similar treatment, and 

 had to pass through the same ordeal of a rig'orous captivity. 

 The whole questionnowappearedto me more mysterious and 

 unaccountable than ever. EaQing to construct any feasible or 

 consistent theory on this (juaBstio i-exctia, unable to reconcile 

 conflicting difficulties and explain facts as they presented 

 themselves, I now felt half inclined, I confess, to abandon the 

 subject in despair as inexplicable. Nevertheless, I continued 

 to note down and comment on all the subsequent cases 

 which occurred in my apiary np to the present time. Tney 

 were more than usually numerous in ISGl, 1862, and 1863. 



I reared a great number of artificial queens during these 

 years, and hence, especially during the inauspicious season 

 of 1862, several curious cases of youthfid princesses being- 

 encased presented themselves. At the risk of trespassing, 

 both upon the Editors' space and the reader's patience, it 

 may be, I must be permitted to record two or three of them. 

 They are exceedingly interesting to the naturalist, and j I 

 hope, also, to the practical apiarian. In connection with 

 this subject I may mention, that during these seasons I had 

 some very interesting cases of drone-breeding queens, both 

 among the old as well as the young ; and it was in the 

 autumn of 1862 that I sent a couple of queens in an abnor- 

 mal condition to Mr. Woodbury for microscopic examination 

 of their reproductive organs. The result was communicated 

 in No. 80, of this Journal, 7th October, 1862. I shall con- 

 fine myself here, however, strictly to the subject on hand. 

 I shaU select, therefore, two of the most recent oases which 

 occurred in 1863, inasmuch as other curious facts connected 

 with impregnation of the queen are elicited, independently 

 of the Cjuestion before us. 



Case 1.— On the 18th July, 1863, I dislodged the Ligurian 

 bees and C[ueen from an octagon fiame observatory, and in- 

 troduced in their room a swarm of black bees, minus the 

 queen, in order that they might rear for me some Ligurian 

 princesses. On the 31st, I proceeded to the apiai-y at 6 a.m., 

 but found that even then I was not too early for my purpose. 

 External evidence was not wanting in discovering to me that 

 the young queen was at large, and had already commenced 

 the work of destruction among her younger rivals. I lost no 

 time in proceeding to work. I drew up the frames one by 

 one until I found her royal highness busily engaged in the 

 very act of demolishing a rival ceU, being half imbedded in 

 a cavity neai its base nibbling away at it. The young pupa 

 was stiE alive. I cut out two other royal cells which were 

 untouched, and gave them to hive No. 6, first taking away 

 its own black queen. On the 1st of August (that is the 

 following morning), a young princess emerged from one of 

 these, and the other was broken np and destroyed. On the 

 loth, I examined the combs but found no eggs had yet been 

 laid. The drones in my apiary had now become very few, 

 and as I had seen the queen repeatedly out afterwards, I 

 knew she had not yet been impregnated. On the 28th, the 

 usual exteimal evidences of the queen's encasement mani- 

 fested themselves. I immediately opened-np the frames 

 and found it even so. I released her from " durance vile " 

 in a state pitiful to behold. She was, however, again 

 encased and kept prisoner for thirty-six hours. I again 

 released her, and I now found that her wings were much 

 torn and tattered, one was broken, and a leg was ofi'. On 

 examining the hive a few days afterwards, I was rejoiced to 

 find her again at liberty and receiving some attention from 

 the bees, but no eggs were yet laid. I examined the hive 

 again on the 12th of September, but the queen had not yet 

 deposited a single^ egg. I now half despaired of her ever 

 doing so. On the 23th of September, I examined the hive 

 once more and discovered the queen had at last become 

 fertile. I found a small patch of comb containing eggs 

 and grubs, and three or four cells sealed over ; but as these 

 were somewhat elongated, and thefr coverings more than 

 ordinaiily convex, I at once concluded that the' queen had 

 become a drone-breeder only. Beckoning the age of the 

 sealed larvse to be eight days, I found that the queen must 

 have begun to deposit eggs on the 17th of September, when 

 she would be exactly six weeks and five days old. On ex- 

 amining this hive shortly afterwards, I was agreeably dis- 

 appointed to find, that with the exception of a dozen or so of 

 drone brood, all the rest was that of workers. The popu- 

 lation of this hive having now become thin, and the majority 

 of the bees rather old for a good-keeping stock-ldve, I joined 

 a whole swarm of black |bees to it on the 11th of October, 

 and in the spring the queen became one of the most fertile 

 in my apiary. 



I have thus been tempted to digress a little fr-om my 

 subject in order to show (and it is not a solitary instance in 

 my experience), that Huber' s doctrine on this point — that a 

 queen whose impregnation is delayed beyond the twenty- 

 first day only lays drone eggs, is here thrown to the winds. 

 True, it might be argued that there is here no real evidence 

 that impregnation was delayed beyond the twenty-first day 

 of her life, though she had postponed ovipositing till the 



