March 14, )86fi. ] 



JOUENAL OF HOETICULTURE AND COTTAG-E GARDEJTEE. 



S21 



GOLD AND SELVEE PHEASAJSTTS. 

 We shall feel obliged if our readers and contributors will 

 inform us when the earliest Golden and SUver Pheasant's 

 eggs are laid. It wiU also be giving much real pleasure if 

 they will note the advent of our birds of passage and our 

 warblers. Many of us who, perforce, are obliged to live in 

 town or towns, have our reminiscences. AVe recollect the 

 note; we know the spot where we used to see the first 

 Swallow ; to hear the first Nightingale ; and the " Mai du 

 pays," is sufficiently strong upon us, to enable us to enter 

 fully into the feelings of the emigrants in Australia, who 

 made room for each other round the door of a house in 

 Melbourne where the first Skylark was to be heard. 



DOE EABBITS NEGLEGTES'G THEIE YOUNG. 

 I KEEP a variety of doe rabbits, and after they had many 

 young ones, all of which lived and did well, I was greatly 

 surprised to find that the next time they had litters the 

 young ones were scattered all over the hutches and left to 

 die. As this was done by all of them I concluded that it was 

 owing to the way in which they were fed, and so it proved. 

 I think if " J. N." (your correspondent) feeds them in the 

 following manner he will not be disappointed: — Oats and 

 bran twice a-day. a little more than they can eat at the 

 time, and cabbage leaves. Offer the does water, and when 

 they have young ones give in addition a spoonful of fine 

 middlings mixed with pea chaif and water. — S. B. 



SWARMING VEESTTS STOEIFYING. 



When your correspondent "J. E. B." in jSTo. 192, com- 

 municated his experience " that hives permitted to swarm, 

 if forward, wiU yield a larger harvest of honey than they 

 would do if kept on the conservative principle," I expressed 

 in No. 196, the opinion that either the worn-out condition of 

 the queens of his storified hives, or something radically 

 wrong with their management, had induced this invidious 

 comparison. 



Subsequently (in No. 200) " J. E. B." was good enough 

 to favour us with the history and mode of treatment 

 adopted with his three storified hives A, B, and C, at the 

 same time quoting Dzierzon in support of his opinion. If 

 the system of management of your correspondent be a 

 counterpart of that recommended by his celebrated conti- 

 nental authority, I, too, must subscribe to the doctrine that 

 the subdivision of hives augments the honey harvest in such 

 circumstances. 



I have no wish to unduly criticise the manipulations of 

 any of the brotherhood, the object of "our Journal" beino-, 

 as I understand it, that each correspondent is at fuU liberty 

 for the general good, to detail his system and experiences, be 

 they successes or reverses, and, indeed, so far has this been 

 cajried out in "our comer" as to elicit a favourable com- 

 parison with our neighbours of tfie poultry and floral depart- 

 ments. "J. E. B.," however, expresses a wish "for any 

 information," and I subjoin the following remarks, with the 

 sincere hope that they may assist him " to obtain a better 

 result for the future." 



First, then, as to queens, your correspondent seems qnite 

 alive to the importance of having young and vigorous ones 

 at the head of his stocks, and they do not seem to have 

 been much at fault. I may here remark that I quite agree 

 with "A Lanaekshiee Bee-keepee" that queens of non- 

 swarming colonies are oftener changed than is generally 

 supposed. I had an opportunity of seeing in a strong 

 stonfied stock of a friend last summer twelve months the 

 queen, whose tattered wings and decrepid condition bespoke 

 extreme old age, yet notwithstanding this the stock did 

 remarkably well last season — a proof that this venerable 

 monarch had been supplanted by a youthful rival. 



The grand error of your correspondent, and one which is, 

 I am afraid, too common in localities where the storifying 

 system is neither practised nor understood, is a too limited 

 breeding space. Even authorities are prone to fall into a 

 like error. I pointed out before in one of the early Numbers 

 of your new series in illustration of this, the absurd dis- 

 proportion of Nutf s celebrated collateral hive, the central 

 box, or " Pavilion of Nature " as he styled it, so circum- 



scribed as "11 or 12 inches square by 9 or 10 deep," and 

 yet the population hatched out in this puny affair was 

 expected to fill with pure honey two end boxes of similar 

 size besides three bell glasses. Are the many complaints 

 of want of success with this hive to be wondered at ? No 

 ventilation in such circumstances could prevent either brood 

 in the end boxes or the escape of swarms. By the wav, 

 with a good lengthy low entrance and fair shelter from the 

 hot sunshine during the working season bees are themselves 

 the best ventilators. 



Need we go further for a second example than the ad- 

 vertising columns of " our Journal ? " The familiar illus- 

 tration of Messrs. Neighbour's shallow straw, so called 

 "cottage hive," with its three bell-glasses, to the eye of the 

 practical storifyer is nothing more than a lady's pretty toy. 

 Is it right, nay more, humane, to cramp, and conse- 

 quently impair, the energies of a good queen within the 

 limits of a single box, keeping her wandering in despair 

 over the combs, in vain seeking in her circumscribed 

 breeding space vacant cells to unburden herself of her 

 eggs ? Can it be wondered at that she should, under such 

 circumstances, quit the hive with a swarm in disgust, even 

 although her condition be such as to cause her to drop to 

 the ground a short distance from her hive, or, more generally, 

 contrary to her instincts, ascend into the super and there 

 deposit her eggs ? 



It must be apparent to the bee-keeper desirous of keeping 

 his bees on the non-swarming principle, that he must afibrd 

 them breeding space equal at least to what they would have 

 received in fresh hives had they swarmed, and it would be 

 manifestly unjust to draw a comparison of the fi-uits of the 

 labours of a population hatched out in the area of one bos 

 with that of say three others. 



But to return to "J. E. B.'s" case. His first-mentioned 

 hive A, he tells us, " was located in a 14i-inch Woodbury 

 frame hive " . . . " Supered in May with a box 13 inches 

 by 7. When this super " was two-thirds filled, slipped 

 in a,fr-ame or eke ; and when the hive became crowded a 

 second frame, exactly like the first, that is 3 inches deep, 

 was introduced as before, both between the super and the 

 stock." "In spite of the ample accommodation thus afforded, 

 assisted by ventilation, the hive threw out a swarm on the 

 ISth June." ..." The bees ultimately nearly filled 

 the top box with fine honey, and carried their combs down 

 into the inserted frames, but the total yield of honey did 

 not exceed 82 lbs." 



The cause of the escape of the swarm, and the short 

 yield of honey fi-om this stock, is solely attributable to over- 

 enlarged super and limited breeding space. To aid in 

 avoiding brood 4 inches is deep enough for a fall width 

 super, unless the space can be given gradually as in Mr. 

 Fox's most ingenious "adjuster-hive," but still that hive 

 and the plan of eking supers are open to the objection of 

 less or more unfUled comb, completed work being always 

 most desirable, whether the comb be for the apiarian's own 

 table or the market. Had your correspondent placed his 

 frames on ekes, beneath the stock instead of the super, with 

 a still further enlargement of breeding space as required, 

 the result would in all probability have been the retention 

 of the swarm, and from the vastly increased body of reapers 

 a very different honey harvest. 



The management of the second mentioned hive B was 

 somewhat similar. It was located in a still less bos, llf 

 by 9, and supered also too extensively "with a box the 

 same size as the stock '."..." The bees were very 

 slow in availing themselves of the room afforded them," for 

 the very good reason they did not then and there require it, 

 and, as was to be expected, " sent out a swarm." .... 

 " Two shallow boxes were successively introduced between 

 the stock and the super, and towards the middle of July 

 the hive was also nadired." I may hint that placing an 

 empty box between a stock hive and an aU-but-filled super 

 is considered bad practice by the storifyer, as he thereby 

 runs the risk of the bees rifling it of its contents, possibly 

 with the idea that it is then beyond their control, a second 

 super is always better placed above the filling one. 



The third hive C had an inferior queen, and yielded 30 lbs. 

 of honey, its management is not stated. 



I quite agree with your correspondent that in a district, 

 such as his own, where swarms are early, the yield must con- 



