394 



JOUENAL OF HORTICULTUEE AND COTTAGE GABDENEE. 



[ June 1, 1871. 



busy than usual this year. I cannot get mine to live, they 

 zoill die." 



" I have only three left, and they are of no value. I have 

 had forty. There is something more injurious at work, how- 

 ever, than low temperature. I fancy these birds' constitutions 

 have been weakened by generations of unnatural habits, and I 

 want to find a substitute for the insect-food upon which, I 

 believe, the young of all seed-eating birds are fed. Egg is not 

 all that is required. Mine are treated to a variety of food — 

 lettuce one day, groundsel the next, or chickweed and dande- 

 lion heads ; groats and rough oatmeal are placed within reach ; 

 mawseed is given in small quantities. They have choice of 

 food, good water, and the closest attention, but they will not 

 grow but remain a few days half-fledged, and then go to their 

 brothers and sisters who are in the happy hunting grounds." 



" My wife is an indefatigable attendant, and many tears 

 have been shed over the extremely ugly remains of the produce 



of Nos. , Crystal Palace." So writes a correspondent. 



The most general complaint is, " My hens will not feed." I 

 do not mean that it is a complaint peculiar to this, but to all 

 seasons. It is the difiiculty of difficulties, the trouble which 

 above all other troubles most deeply concerns breeders. It is 

 an extraordinary thing, however, that it is generally the best 

 birds which die — that is, if we are to believe all we are told. I 

 should think there are more evenly-marked Canaries and clean 

 Males than any other class, which die in their infancy. It is 

 astonishing how many some men lose in a season — whole 

 nests of them. But such die very young ! 



The untimely death of young Canaries through the neglect 

 of their mother who in this case is, I am sorry to say, the 

 parent guilty of neglect, and the sin of throwing her children 

 on the parish, is a loss which can only be averted by keeping a 

 number of nurses whose abilities, remember, can only be 

 tested by experience. A character from her last place is not a 

 criterion of any hen's merits or demerits as a mother, nor is 

 what she did or did not last year any guarantee for this. Last 

 season she may have been so callous and deaf to every call of 

 maternal duty as to starve or smother every nest, while this 

 year she may be a model nurse. The fact is simply this, that 

 nobody can by any mode of treatment whatever insure that 

 any one hen shall put as much as a single morsel into the 

 gaping mouths of her progeny, or that she will do other than 

 q'uietly settle herself down on them and deliberately smother 

 them. I am quite prepared to find that some will reply, " I 

 feed on so and so, and I do so and so, and I never had this 

 great mortality." That may be, but your turn will come when 

 all the so and so you can devise will not save them, and your 

 morning duty will be to throw out your dead birds, your after- 

 noon duty ditto, and your evening duty the same as that of 

 the morning and afternoon. 



On the other hand, when a hen, or better still, both cock 

 and hen feed properly, all goes on as prosperously as if the 

 birds were in their natural wild state. The young birds, never 

 naked, lie in the nest covered with down, and curled-up like 

 hairy caterpillars ; they grow amazingly and develope feathers 

 rapidly, their first downy dress still fluttering about at the 

 tips of the more matured feathers instead of being rubbed ofi', 

 as is the case with half-starved and half-clad unfortunates. 

 They look strong and fat and lusty, and their crops are always 

 so full that it seems almost a labour for them to lift up their 

 heads for the food with which their parents never seem tired 

 of cramming them. 



To bring about this most desirable state of aSiirs, nurses — a 

 number of nurses — too many rather than too few must be kept. 

 How to get them is the question. They can only be had by 

 putting-up as many common hens as room can be found for, 

 in the hope that among them there may be some which wiU 

 attend to their duties properly. The eggs and young birds of 

 such must be thrown away, and those of more valuable ones 

 substituted : hence the policy of getting them as common and 

 worthless as possible that there may be no inducement to rear 

 their young, and no hesitation in destroying them. If you do 

 not like to be guilty of the crime of infanticide, place the com- 

 mon ones under the more aristocratic mother and give them a 

 chance. It will do her good to try and perform her maternal 

 duties, and it may be that the disinclination to feed will dis- 

 appear and both nests be saved. Something may be done by 

 giving frequent supplies of fresh food, and (I think I have said 

 this before), in the absence of a better mother, by doing the 

 best you can to feed the neglected birds yourself with yolk of 

 hard-boiled egg. Moisten it more or less according to their 

 age, making it for very young birds almost creamy ; take a 



little on the end of a blunt-pointed piece of stick, give a chirp, 

 something between a squeak and a kiss, and touch one of the 

 little fellows on the side of the beak, when he will open his 

 mouth and continue so to do as quickly as you can fill his 

 little hatchway, till he lays down his head a satisfied cormo- 

 rant, Q.E.F. 



The shoals and quicksands of infancy passed, and the young 

 birds out of danger, by which I me»n so far feathered that they 

 are not dependant upon the hen for warmth, the cock will 

 take care they are not neglected for the future. The hen will 

 by this time, most probab'y, want to go to nest again ; supply 

 her with a second box and nesting material, or she wiU strip 

 the young ones. When she lays remove the cock and the 

 young birds into another cage, where they will keep him going 

 till they can feed themselves. As soon as you see them help 

 ing themselves from the egg box, decrease the supply of soft 

 food, and give canary seed rough-ground in a cofiee-mill. — 

 W. A. Blakston. 



PKOPAGATION OF LIGUEIANS. 

 HiTisa a good strong stock of Ligurian bees, I wish yon 

 would kindly inform me the best way to proceed in order to 

 make a few artificial swarms. I have some good strong stocks- 

 of black bees, can I use them for the purpose ? and at the same 

 time can I raise a few artificial queens to unite with my black 

 swarms ? Having bought the bees and bee furniture of an old 

 apiarian, there are many things included that I do not under- 

 stand ; for instance, two nucleus boxes quite new. Can yon 

 tell me for what purpose they are intended, and how to use 

 them ? The books I have seen do not give me any information 

 about them, and if you know of one that would do so I Bhonld 

 be glad to procure it. — G. B. C. 



[We presume that your colony of Ligurians is in a hive 

 having moveable frames, and that you are acquainted with the 

 method of removing and examining these frames. We also- 

 presume that your stock is headed by a really pure Ligurian 

 queen, otherwise all your labour in endeavouring to propagate 

 Ligurians will be thrown away. 



As you desire to make your stocks of common bees available, 

 you had better at once, if not already domiciled in frame hives, 

 proceed to transfer the combs and bees of some of them into 

 such hives, similar in every respect to that you have in use. 

 We also presume that you know how to " drive " bees. If not, 

 you can procure "Bee-keeping for the Many," which can be 

 obtained from this office for five stamps, and which will give 

 you sufficient information on that head. 



Having driven out the bees of a hive, carefully cut out the 

 combs, fit them "into the frames, and support them therein 

 by strips of wood 3-8ths of an inch wide and l-16th thick, 

 tacked at the top and bottom, two on each side of every comb, 

 and by zinc clips passing over the top of the bar. Thick 

 combs must be pared down, but take care that the cells on 

 either side are left of equal length, and that the ' partition 

 wall ' is in the centre of each bar. Crooked combs should be 

 set straight, and if not sufficiently pliable to permit of this 

 being done, may be slightly warmed before the fire. If the 

 Woodbury hive is used it will be found convenient to remove 

 the projecting rib from the bars, and the bees will attach the 

 combs to them with greater facility if their under surfaces be 

 coated with melted wax. Having completed the job, and ar- 

 ranged the combs in the same order in their new apartment as 

 that which they occupied in their old one, deepen the hive by 

 the addition, on the top, of another, from which the frames 

 and crown and floor-boards have been removed, set it on the 

 old stand, and knock out the cluster of bees into the upper 

 hive on the top of the frames of the lower one, putting on the 

 crown with the utmost celerity. Next morning take away the 

 inserted hive, and the day after that remove the supports from 

 all the combs which the bees have fixed. Stocks of bees with 

 combs not less than a year old should be selected for this 

 operation, which must in no case be attempted with swarms of 

 the current year, as their combs are too soft to sustain the 

 weight of their contents without crushing when their natural 

 supports have been removed." 



While these transferred stocks are recovering themselves, 

 and making good the deficiencies in their combs, &c., you may 

 proceed with the necessary manipulations towards obtaining 

 young queens from your one Ligurian colony. You will per- 

 ceive that in the following directions we also reply to your 

 query respecting (he use of nucleus boxes. 



Your stock hive, A, being sufficiently populous for the pur- 



