July 6, 1876. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



19 



This life-saving contest strikes me as a most meritorious 

 scheme, and deserves strong support. At Portsmouth are 

 thousands of arms made on purpose by man to destroy man's 

 life ; and at Portsmouth the wiser dog showed his power and 

 desire of saving man's life. Surely such a contest on a large scale 

 might be carried on at various seaports and towns. Brighton 

 abounds with dogs, people, and money, why not have such a 

 contest there ? Kinking is too hot for summer, while the very 

 Bight of the dogs in the water is cooling, to say nothing of the 

 grand purpose for which the contest takeB place. Train Pigeons 

 by all means to carry our letters, if a day of terrible need should 

 come, but train dogs also to save our lives. The instinct is in the 

 noble animals, it only wants cultivating. — "Wiltshibe Reciob. 



TITLARK OK WOODLAKK. 



In answer to *' T. H. T." the Titlark, which is 5J inches in 

 length, is the smallest of the Lark tribes, being half an inch 

 shorter than the Woodlark, which more resembles the Skylark 

 in figure and appearance although less in size. The Titlark has 

 two bright bars upon the wings, the throat is pale and not 

 speckled, and above each eye there is a bright stripe. The beak 

 is very pointed, the upper mandible being dark brown, and the 

 lower one whitish ; the nails of the back toes are crooked, and 

 the tail narrow and rather forked. The Woodlark's beak is 

 black above and brown beneath, merging into flesh colour to- 

 wards the tip of it. The head feathers, which are longish, give 

 a broad appearance to the bird's head, and somewhat resemble 

 a crest when the bird is under excitement. Around the head 

 from eye to eye appears a whitish-grey mark, and the feathers 

 about the cheeks, throat, neck, and breaBt are whitish-yellow 

 with black-brown spots. The coverts of the wings dark brown, 

 with a pale reddish-brown margin. At the joint of the wing, 

 the shoulder, and the four first coverts there is a white spot. 

 Tail feathers broad, black-brown, the first and second with a 

 reddish-white conical spot, and a white tip ; the two middle 

 feathers entirely greyish-brown. 



Titlarks so change their places of resort that to gain a know- 

 ledge of the various kinds of food they pick up would puzzle 

 a Philadelphia lawyer. Their places of resort are woods that 

 abut upon arable land, with gardens and meadows adjacent 

 thereto ; places, also, where timber has been felled and rooted 

 up. In or about the beginning of autumn they visit fields 

 planted with cabbage and other vegetables ; somewhat later on 

 they resort to oat fields'. As we cannot, therefore, name " all 

 the things " they eat, we will state a few — for instance, gnats, 

 grasshoppers, flics, caterpillars, small butterflies, and when in 

 confinement, German paste, crushed hempseed, and uuflavoured 

 curds. It is better to frequently vary their food, for they are 

 somewhat delicately constituted, and if in confinement they are 

 not at once supplied with a nutritious diet, such as mealworms 

 and ants' eggs, they will quickly show Bigns of declining health. 

 When they are first taken it is somewhat difficult to treat and 

 accustom them to food. If anything will tempt them it will be 

 mealworms and ants' eggs. Do not give Canary seed to your 

 Titlarks. "We cannot help here recording the fact that at an 

 exhibition at Birmingham some two or three years back, the 

 only food a Thrush had in its food-trough was Canary seed ! and 

 we could not help fancying that the Thrush appeared much 

 puzzled whilst surveying the strange food supplied to him. — 

 George J. Babnesby. 



SYSTEMS OF MANAGEMENT.— No. 4. 



After adverting to swarming, nadiring, and eking, we now 

 come to supering. 



Supering is a mode of enlargement well understood by all 

 classes of apiarians, and when successfully done gives satisfac- 

 tion, for both the bee-farmer and the amateur feel enriched by 

 the possession of some well-filled supers. It is an ancient 

 practice, and was partially adopted long before my day. What 

 I mean by partial adoption is this, that those who used supers 

 tried other ways of enlarging hives, and wisely so, for supering 

 in many cases does not answer at all. All hives that admit of 

 enlargement by supers only are faulty and imperfect. 



1, Supering on the non-swarming principle consists in placing 

 supers on hives as soon as they are full of bees, and when the 

 supers^ are filled they are taken off and empty supers are put on 

 in their places. This Bystem is open to many objections, two of 

 which may be noted here — namely, the uncertainty of success 

 and the riBk of losing swarms. 



2, Supering on the swarming principle is resorted to in a great 

 variety of ways. Sometimes small supers are obtained from 

 hives before swarming — that is to say, as soon as the supers are 

 full they are taken off, and the hives are swarmed at once arti- 

 ficially. The swarms are put into 16-inch hives, which in fine 

 weather they fill in about three weeks or a month, when they 

 should be supered. The mother hives, too, may be ready to fill 

 supers by the end of three weeks from the time of swarming if no 



second swarms be taken from them. On both mother and swarm 

 hives supering may be continued till the end of the season with- 

 out much risk of losing swarmB. We have obtained 30 lbs. of 

 Buper honey from swarms put into 18-inch hives, which hives 

 hold and yield more honey than the 16-inch hives. In 1863 

 Mr. George Fox had two supers above 100 lbs. eaoh from two 

 non-swarmers, and one super of 90 lbs. from a swarm hived late 

 in June. Hives on which supers have been filled are too full of 

 honey for stocks, and yield, according to size, from 25 lbs. to 

 50 lbs. of run honey. We take, and advise others to take, the 

 honey from heavy hives. If stocks be wanted, the bees from 

 these hives could be driven into empty hives and fed with sugar 

 syrup. Both honey and better stocks are thus obtained. 



In all cases of supering, pieces of guide comb (white drone 

 comb) should be used to entice the bees to enter and commence 

 working at once. These pieces of guide comb should be cemented 

 to the crowns of the supers, and small wooden ladders about as 

 thick as a child's finger should be fixed between the crowns of 

 the hives and crowns of the supers to enable the bees to ascend 

 and begin at the top. 



It should be borne in mind by all apiarians that bees like to 

 swarm every year, and in hot seasons first swarms are prone to 

 send off virgin swarms ; it is therefore desirable to prevent hives 

 with supers on them from becoming too full of bees. In the 

 spring and early summer months bees multiply rapidly, and 

 may cluster at their doors before supers on their hives are quite 

 full. We never like to see bees clustering and wasting their 

 time on the outsides of their hives. By raising the hives 2 or 

 3 inches by ekes, clustering is prevented and more work is done 

 inside. When the season is nearly over and supers nearly filled 

 it may be desirable to avoid eking, that the bees may well fill 

 and finish their supers. 



LaBt autumn something was said in this Journal about the 

 American practice of supering with small boxes. Boxes con- 

 taining i or 5 lbs. only of comb are there more readily sold than 

 larger boxes ; and the Rev. Mr. Blyth suggested two years ago 

 the desirability of offering prizes for the greatest weight of 

 super honey from a hive under any system of management, 

 I then resolved to try what could be done this year in filling 

 supers from a stock hive and its swarms. I marked my largest 

 and best hive for this experiment, but, unfortunately, the queen 

 of this hive died in autumn or winter, and the whole affair came 

 to grief. This season, too, has been unusually unfavourable for 

 bees. Till the 17th of June bees have been unable to find food 

 enough for themselves here. On the 18th day of this month 

 the wind veered round to the south (from the north), and the 

 bees began to work in earnest. I weighed two of my hives on 

 Monday morning the 19th, and again on Tuesday night the 20th. 

 One hive gained 14 lbs. and the other 13 lbs. in the two days. 

 To-day the wind has been high, and a thunderstorm has stopped 

 outdoor work. In this contemplated experiment or effort to 

 fill a number of small boxes with honeycomb my plan is to 

 follow the usual mode of management till the end of the season. 

 For the sake of clearness let us take a strong stock to begin with. 

 The first swarm from it would be put into a 20-inch hive con- 

 taining about 5000 cubic inches of space ; and the second swarm 

 or cast would be put into an 18-inch hive containing upwards of 

 3500 cubic inches of space. At the end of three weeks from the 

 time of first swarming the bees would be turned out of the old 

 stock into another 18-inch hive. Thus we should have two or 

 three large swarms at work in large hives, and the parent hive 

 with its honey put aside till autumn. Swarms in large hives 

 capable of producing from 100 Iks. to 150 lbs. each would work 

 in a satisfactory manner as long as weather and store-room 

 would let them. "How, then, could you get supers 1" That is 

 the question and point we are coming to. In such swarm hives 

 we find at the end of every honey season large stores of honey, 

 and the great bulk of it stored in pure virgin comb. In taking 

 the honey from our hives in the autumn we put the discoloured 

 combs in earthenware or milk pan for running, and the pure 

 virgin honeycomb is placed on dishes and in clean empty hives. 

 Sometimes we have cat the discoloured combs from the centres 

 of the hives and sold the virgin comb in them in its natural 

 state ; but our usual mode is to empty every honey hive and put 

 aside the virgin honeycomb for Bale at Is. 6d. per lb., never leas 

 than Is. 3d. per lb., and we can sell it thus as readily and at as 

 high a price as in supers, but in supers it is more easily carried 

 and looks better. 



Now let us come to the projected experiment or supering 

 process. The bees, of course, are driven from the honey hives 

 into empty hives, and all the white pure combs, both fall and 

 empty, go to fill small boxes. The boxes with holes in their 

 bottoms would be filled as well as human hands could fill them 

 with the combs as they are taken from their hives, leaving room 

 enough between the combs for the bees to work, for the combs 

 thus placed would require refixing, repairing, and some cells re- 

 filling by workmen more clever than bee-masters. Supers thus 

 filled and retouched and completed are both seemly and saleable. 

 " But why use combs that are empty or partially filled in this 

 artificial process 1" Because it is desirable to use up every bit 



