August 8, 1872. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGK GARDENER. 



123 



made was given to my first swarm which issued on June 4th, 

 and they now weigh 78 lbs. nett. The second is tenanted by a 

 swarm of black bees that were hived on June 17th. This weighs 

 to-day 84 lbs. nett. These hives have eight frames. I am trying 

 to ligurianise all my stock, and all my bar-frame hives are 

 headed with young queens raised from brood abstracted from 

 my first bar-frame hive, which is a ten-frame Woodbury. My 

 live of hybrids threw off four swarms, all of which are the 

 tenants of wooden hives, aud are all heavy owing to the assistance 

 they have received by the introduction of brood combs from 

 other hives. 



I have one Stewarton hive which I obtained from Messrs. 

 Craig, of Stewarton. I hived a swarm in one of the four boxes 

 on June 14th, and another in the second portion on the 15th ; 

 they united easily. I added a third box as a nadir and put on 

 the super, and to-day they contain 93 lbs. nett, both of the 

 upper boxes being filled with sealed honeycomb. My stock now 

 consists of twenty-three hives, all but one heavy with honey. 

 This one is queenless, and I fear will have to be broken up, I 

 have thrice introduced a queen, and in each case she has been 

 killed by the bees. I think of having one more try with an im- 

 ported Ligurian queen. 



The season has not been a good one, but the white clover has 

 heen very luxuriant for nearly a month, and to this fact doubt- 

 less I owe much of my success. 



One word for my favourites the Ligurians. Let any keeper of 

 the English black bee place a hive of Italians iu his apiary and 

 carefully compare them with his blacks, and he will find that 

 they are more prolific, more ready to resent an insult, and more 

 industrious than our English bees. They are greater robbers it 

 is true, but that arises from their superior pluck ; where they are 

 introduced black bees must go the wall. 



I have forgotten to instance how very disastrous the spring 

 was to the old-fashioned bee-keepers (not bee-masters) in this 

 neighbourhood. Out of three that I know, one lost twenty stocks 

 out of thirty-one, another fifteen out of twenty-three, and the 

 other three out of six ; whilst a fourth, who, although a labourer, 

 was open to conviction, by the use of the feeding-bottle success- 

 fully carried his six hives into the summer. — R. Symington, 

 Market Harborough. 



[We wish many of our readers would send us notes on their 

 apiaries. — Eds.] 



BEES NOT WORKING IN SUPEES. 



I have now kept bees for the last two years, and so far have 

 liad every success with them as regards fertility and supply of 

 lioney; but I have been much puzzled with supers and bee- 

 glasses, to neither of which can I get the bees to enter. In my 

 ISTeighbour's cottage hive there are three bell-glasses, and both 

 last year and this I set these glasses open for the bees to enter, 

 hut they have not done so. What am I to do ? — B. H. 



[As your bees have equalled your anticpations as to fertility 

 and consequent sufficiency of population, it is not easy to account 

 for their refusing to enter the supers. Have you not only ex- 

 cluded all light, but also kept the glasses warm by cloth or 

 flannel wrappings ? These are points often neglected, but they 

 are very important, particularly at the time of the bees com- 

 mencing work in the supers. 



It is not always necessary to attach guide combs, but it should 

 never, if possible, be neglected, as it may make a .difference of 

 many days in the time of the commencement of comb-building. 

 Eor glasses we usually make a sort of inverted cross, the arms 

 ceing a few inches from the bottom ; the end of the upright, 

 passes through the hole at the top of the hell-glass, and is sup- 

 ported by a wire or brad. Two pieces of clean worker comb are 

 selected, and are secured merely by thrusting the arms of the 

 cross through them, there being one comb on each arm pushed 

 up near the upright stick, and so suspended that their lower 

 parts shall almost, if not quite, touch the board on which the 

 glass stands. This induces the bees at once to ascend and 

 attach the combs to the bars, &c. Care must be taken that the 

 dip of the combs is in the proper direction. The combs need not 

 reach the top of the glass. 



Another plan is to have a thick piece of wood without arms 

 suspended in the same manner, to which four bits of comb are 

 attached in the form of rays or spokes of a wheel. In some re- 

 spects this is preferable to the first plan, but the fixing of the 

 guide combs is more troublesome. In this mode, also, the 

 oombs should reach very near the bottom of the glass. — Eds.] 



To Keep Eggs Through the Summer. — Ten gallons water, 

 five pints slaked lime, five pints coarse salt. Put this brine in 

 a good barrel, removing one head. Place the eggs in the brine, 

 most of them will settle to the bottom and arrange themselves 

 small end down; some will float on the surface, but small end 

 down as the others. Now place the head of the barrel which 

 you had taken out on the surface of the brine, for the purpose 

 of weighting down the eggs which float and also to protect the 

 lime in the mixture from becoming carbonised on the surface 



and falling in little grains and flakes, which cement themselves 

 to the eggs, giving them a rough and yellow appearance. Eggs 

 packed in this way will keep six months, and I do not know how 

 much longer. 



BEES IN A DILEMMA. 



I keep bees in the common straw hives. My first swarm was 

 in the first week in June. On the 21st July I noticed a great 

 disturbance amongst the bees of the first swarm, and the next 

 day there was quite a stream of honey running out of the mouth 

 of the hive. All the bees seemed to be out, and they were 

 clustered on a straw thatch with which the hive is covered. 

 They are very vindictive. The honey has stopped running, hut 

 the mouth of the hive is full of dead bees, and the others do not 

 return into the hive. We have had very hot weather here 

 lately. 



When the bees first swarmed I covered the hive with a bag to 

 protect it from the rain. About three weeks afterwards I had 

 the hag taken off and put on a straw thatch. I was surprised 

 to find a nest of ants under the bag on the top of the hive, and 

 I rubbed the hive with sulphur to expel them. — J. H. S. 



[We imagine that the entrance of your hive must somehow 

 have become so contracted (perhaps by the weight of the combs 

 pressing the whole structure down), that ingress and egress 

 became impossible for the bees : hence a great commotion 

 inside, and the weather being hot and the combs fresh, a collapse 

 of the honeycomb. Otherwise we must suppose that the mere 

 heat of the weather suddenly brought down a piece of honey 

 comb upon the doorway and choked it up ; then followed, 

 perhaps, the further catastrophe hinted at above, the dying 

 bees inside choking-up the entrance. Oue of the objections to 

 straw hives is the danger of this very mishap. If not very well 

 made — that is, if loosely put together, they are pressed down by 

 the increasing weight of the comb, and the entrances become 

 gradually closed. We have seen quite new hives with such 

 shallow entrance-ways that we could predict such an accident 

 as that which has befallen you. We would advise your examin- 

 ing the hive, cleaning-out the dead bees and corrupting brood 

 comb, and putting some late swarm into it. — Eds.] 



TAKING HONEY IN SUPEES. 



I have a swarm of bees hived on the 27th of May, have taken 

 in a super 6 lbs. of honey from them, and put in its place 

 another super, which is now quite full. Should I leave that on 

 or take it off, and if requisite feed in autumn aud early in 

 spring ? They are hived in a common straw hive (a large one), 

 and are a numeroiis colony. I may add, my bees this season 

 have done very well. I have taken 9 lbs. from some of them, 

 with plenty remaining for winterfeed. — A. T. K., New Hampton. 



[You are fortunate with your bees this year. By all means 

 appropriate the second super if the stock hive is pretty well 

 supplied, and make-up any deficiency by feeding in October. — 

 Eds.] 



OUE LETTEE BOX. 



Tong and Dudley Show. — "In Antwerps, J. Hawley is put as taking the 

 first prize; and in Owls, T. Annakin, both of which prizes I won. — George 

 Cues swell." 



Melton Mowbray, Cleveland, Sheepshed, and Great Horton 

 Shows. — We conclude they were local, as they were not advertised. 



Light Brahmas. — " I throw the gauntlet to anyone that can show that 

 the so-called Light Brahmas were ever Brahmas at all. There is another 

 breed of good birds that have got a name that does not belong to them, and 

 I will show who the usurpers are and the authors of the usurpation, but one 

 iron in the fire at once is enough for — John Evergreen." 



Chicken or Chickens? (An Old Sen). — "We believe chickens to be the 

 correct plural of chick. 



Bantams in Confined Space (TV. If.).— The run (24 feet by 6 feet) is 

 small for rearing chickens, unless you tax yourself to provide them with that 

 they lack by constant supplies of sand, grit, sods of growing grass, and such 

 things as they get when at liberty. Whydoyounot allowthem constant access 

 to the kitchen garden ? They neither can nor would do any harm. They are 

 not like Cochin, Dorking, or Brahma chickens. We cannot think hut even a 

 gardener would delight iu seeing the pretty little things umning across the 

 paths. We do not like your feeding. Discontinue the sharps and the wheat ; 

 both tend to make them crop-bound, especially the wheat. Feed on ground 

 oats slackly mixed with water morning and evening ; give some barley mid- 

 day either whole or crushed. While they are poorly substitute some bread 

 aud ale for the mid-day meal of corn. You do not state the age of the 

 chickens. We are prescribing as though they were nearly adults. If they 

 are young chickens you must feed accordingly on egg, curd, bread and milk, 

 and such like, and feed often. 



Sitting Swan become Blind (C. R.). — We have never heard of flyblows 

 being deposited in the eyes of living animals. The action of the lid alone is a 

 sufficient protection as long as any life remains, or at least sufficient strength 

 to open and close the eye. The Swan must have heen in articulo viortis 

 when the flies were at work. Maggots in the eye would soon cause death by 

 reaching the brain. In support of our opinion that the Swan was dead, we 

 may mention we have known one sitting on eggs and observed never to 

 move, or even leave the nest for a minute. Examination proved she had been 

 long dead, and the eggs were cold. So far as posture and appearance were 

 concerned, there was nothing to indicate she had ceased to live. We have 

 known the same in hen and Pheasant. The position is unaltered till the 

 rigidity of the muscles relaxes. We know no nick-names for Swans. They 



