October 6, 1870. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



277 



hot water at cleansing time, and the result will be, if in accord- 

 ance with my experience, very satisfactory. — J. M. S. 



[That little gentleman, the Canary bug, is naturally of a 

 retiring disposition, and will retreat into any crack, however 

 small. If there be any crevice, even if almost imperceptible, 

 it will Boon be tenanted when the peats make their appearance. 

 It is quite nnnecessary to make traps for them. Any which 

 might explore the hollow perch would form but a very small 

 part of the regiments quartered in every available locality ; and 

 accommodation, however kindly intended, would not be by any 

 means an effectual check upon them. I would feel disposed to 

 cut off every retreat rather than to find furnished lodgings for 

 them. Fresh air, plenty of ventilation, clean nest-boxes, and 

 constant changes of nest, will do more to prevent their appear- 

 ance than any other treatment. — W. A. B.] 



THE CONTESTS OF QUEENS. 



This is a subject which ha3 been ably and fully discussed by 

 Huber, but in making experiments to verify his statements 

 the same results have not always followed. In introducing a 

 fertile queen to a hive presided over by another fertile queen, 

 he mentions that both the stranger and the reigning queens 

 were immediately enclosed by the bees, and that the queens 

 were virtually forced to decide by a single combat between 

 themselves to which of them the throne should belong. Now, 

 when introducing a queen to a hive in the circumstances men- 

 tipned, and without any strange bees accompanying them, I 

 have never seen either the reigning queen encased, or the 

 question of empire decided by a fight between the two sovereigns. 

 The stranger queen has been invariably strangled by the bees 

 of the hive to which she was intruded. 



It is different when the subjects of a stranger queen are also 

 introduced with her. Eoth queens are then encased, and a 

 combat may, perhaps, take place between them, although I 

 have never seen one. There are many apiarians who have 

 never seen a deadly struggle between two queens. The late 

 Dr. Dunbar was very anxious to witness a royal duel, but 

 although he watched for one for ye ars, he never had the good 

 fortune to be a spectator of the conflict. Yet anyone who 

 chooses may with very little trouble obtain a sight of queens 

 in mortal embrace. Whilst admitting that the mother bee 

 may and does occasionally put juvenile rivals to death when 

 coming or about to emanate from their cradles, I imagine 

 that fighting proper only take3 place between virgins. As I 

 have occasionally exhibited their encounters to friends, a de- 

 scription of the process followed may not be unacceptable to 

 some readers of the Journal. 



Daring the swarming season young queens are always plenti- 

 ful, and two or three can often be found in a hive shortly after 

 the issue of the second cast. Take two of these queens and 

 with a hundred or two of bees accompanying each, put these 

 miniature swarms in separate small boxes. Then towards dusk, 

 when there is no danger of the bees taking wing, dislodge the 

 two hives upon a large table near the centre, and about I foot 

 apart from each other. The two clusters so dislodged break up, 

 and their spreading circles are soon merged in each other. If 

 the two queens are watched, it will be seen that they are com- 

 paratively placid so long as their presence is unknown to each 

 other, but the moment the track or trail of one is perceived 

 by her rival, the wings of the discoverer are raised, her pace is 

 quickened as if in search of something, and it may be she will 

 halt in her course and utter the piping sound heard previous 

 to the migration of an after-cast. In a little while the queens 

 meet, and if the opportunity is favourable a death thrust is 

 given, generally by the stronger making a side embrace and 

 curving her sting under the abdomen of the weaker. The dis- 

 abled queen is then treated as a dying bee, dragged to the edge 

 of the table, and thrown over. 



About a month ago I had two young queens in my glass 

 nnicomb, the one dark and the other bright-coloured. The dark 

 was slender-made, and the younger of the two. I happened to 

 observe the first meeting of these princesses. There was first 

 a sudden halt, then measured looks, then a rush by the dark 

 one on to the top of the bright-coloured, the head of the upper 

 being towards the extremity of the under. But the embrace 

 lasted only a second or two, for the dark-coloured queen im- 

 mediately quitted her hold and rushed in perturbation over the 

 comb. 



The fear awakened never left her, the slightest pressure of 

 the crowd made her move precipitately. The light-coloured, on 



the contrary, seemed quite at ease, and never once pursued her 

 rival, but merely give a scowl at her whenever she approached 

 too near. I watched the proceedings a whole day and saw the 

 queens often meet, but the moment their antenna touched, the 

 dark-coloured fled apparently in great fear. The bees, how- 

 ever, contrary to Huber's experience, manifested no desire to 

 make the two queens fight, they never once enclosed them or 

 drove them together, neither did they display the least agi- 

 tation. Ultimately, when darkness set in, the dark-coloured, 

 as I expected, was slain by the light-coloured. " Coming events 

 had cast their shadows before." — R. S. 



MAIDSTONE AND MID-KENT NATURAL 

 HISTORY SOCIETY. 



At a recent meeting of this Society, the Rev. Walter Mitchell 

 Vice-President of the Philosophical Society of Great Britain, 

 gave an address upon the " Geometrical Structure of the Hive 

 Bee's Cell." He said he had adopted the above title, as there 

 were 250 different species of bees in this country, not one of 

 which possessed the geometrical accomplishment and very 

 peculiar construction adopted by the hive bee. This we called 

 the domesticated bee, because it always followed in the steps of 

 civilisation, or rather preceded them, for in North America the 

 red Indian knew immediately the hive bee was established in 

 the forest that it would be shortly followed by civilised man. 

 The bee's cell was the most marvellous thing in creation, as 

 far as our wisdom was concerned, in interpreting the works of 

 the Creator, for those marvellous cells were made of a substance 

 which it was extremely difficult for the bee to procure, and 

 out of this substance it manufactured its houses, its streets, 

 and its city. This city had three different classes of in- 

 habitants — the queen bee, a few hundred males or drones, and 

 several thousand neuters or working bees. He then pointed 

 out that a bee on a given excursion fixed on a particular flower 

 when it was collecting pollen dust, such as a wild rose or a lily, 

 and visited those flowers only. The other bees collected honey 

 for mixing with the pollen, and for the winter supply, which is 

 put in the cells and sealed up. There was no creature whose 

 habits the ancients were so fond of investigating as that of the 

 bee — Virgil had written a great deal about bees— but none of 

 them could tell from whence the bees obtained their wax. 

 Some supposed that it was pollen, but on modern chemists 

 burning it, they found that while pollen gave off an ash, wax 

 gave none. This problem was, however, solved by John Hunter, 

 the celebrated naturalist, who, on dissecting a bee, found that 

 in the abdomen there were certain small bags containing a 

 white substance, which, on burning it in a candle, proved to be 

 wax, and it was, therefore, an animal secretion. The bee, 

 therefore, had a chemical manufactory. He then described 

 how the bees, during the summer months, gorged themselves 

 with honey that this secretion might be produced. 



In the construction of its cells from this substance the bea 

 showed marvellous geometrical skill. Not oniy had the bee, 

 led by its dbine instinct, to gather honey and store it for the 

 winter, when it knew it could get no food out of doors, but it 

 exercised great economy in the use of that precious substance 

 out of which it constructed its cells. The cells consisted of a 

 great number of hexagons, or six-sided figures. The wasp, 

 which had been a paper-maker since the creation of the world, 

 made his paper out of wood, but he placed his comb, not verti- 

 cally but horizontally. He made hexagonal cells, but he only 

 made his houses on one side of the street — not back to back, 

 as the bee did, and he simply covered in the bottom of his 

 cell with a flat piece of paper. He displayed in this a certain 

 amount of economy, but not the greatest amount of economy. 

 The bees' cell, on the contrary, was terminated with lozenge- 

 shaped bodies— like the diamond panes of a window — which, 

 when they put their cells together, formed the bottom of a 

 house, on the other side of the street. 



The lecturer then described how the great French naturalist, 

 Reaumur, by the aid of an eminent mathematician, discovered 

 that the measurement of these cells by the differential calculus 

 was exactly 109° 28', and that they gave the greatest possible 

 internal space with the greatest economy of material. The 

 lecturer said, therefore, he concluded that we had not yet dis- 

 covered the marvellous mechanism by which the bee produced 

 this wonderful arrangement ; and, with regard to the theory of 

 natural selection, suggested by Mr. Darwin, he pointed out that 

 the bee could not derive its instinct from its parents, for the 

 working bees were neuters. The bees were wonderful archi- 



