August 10, 1S64. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



141 



is falling. There is, of course, a, well-known and sufficient 

 reason for the multitude of male tees in summer, and that 

 is that queens may run no unnecessary risk by unavailing 

 matrimonial excursions, as their loss at that time would 

 entail destruction on the entire community. Neither does 

 the queen exercise ' queenly prerogative and dignity ' by 

 selecting her husband. She launches into the air unat- 

 tended, and there mates sometimes with a drone from a 

 hive a mile or two distant from her own. 



" Bees are never nursed by other bees. They are strict 

 utilitarians, and totally devoid of sympathy. ' Those who 

 cannot work shall not eat' is a law applied with stem im- 

 partiality alike to the disabled worker and useless drone. 

 He, therefore, who would teach or learn a lesson in charity 

 must look elsewhere. 



" With regard to the hive described and recommended in 

 the Times of the 4th inst., it is simply one on the ' nadir,' 

 or 'nether' principle, a principle which has often been tried, 

 and as often found wanting; and for this reason it is opposed 

 to the instinct of the animal itself — an instinct which prompts 

 it to place its honey above and its brood below. It may, 

 therefore, be safely asserted that any stock of bees which 

 is compelled to place honey in a ' nadir ' would collect 

 double or quadruple the quantity in a ' super.' 



" I feel I owe an apology to those gentlemen upon whose 

 letters I have commented thus freely. Their motives are 

 so unquestionably good that their errors would have passed 

 unnoticeA? by me had they sought publicity through any 

 other channel. As it is, I am very desirous of making it 

 known to our continental and American friends that their 

 letters do not convey an adequate idea of the amount of 

 knowledge of the subject possessed by British bee-masters. 

 Not only have we frame-hives second to none ever made for 

 ingenuity and convenience, as well as the necessary skill to 

 avail ourselves of the advantages they afford, but we are no 

 strangers to the superiority of the Italian race of honey bee 

 (Apis Ligustica), and are even now ransacking the world in 

 the search after other species, while we have repeated and 

 verified the experiments and investigations of Von Siebold, 

 which establish, beyond question, the truth of Dzierzon's 

 great discovery of parthenogenesis in the honey bee. — 

 T. W. Woodbury, Mount Eadford, Exeter, Aug. 6." 



"TO THE EDITOR OE THE 'TIMES.' 



"Sir, — Although we are informed on the authority of 

 ' A Bee-mastee,' that ' bees have not learnt to read the 

 Times,' we must not be surprised if it should be announced 

 by him in a future letter that his bees have added this 

 essential accomplishment to their innumerable moral virtues. 

 Pending their acquirements of this faculty however, and 

 the consequent irruption which is to bring me to my senses 

 (or to drive me out of them), permit me to suggest, that in 

 these days of railways and excursion trains, a trip into 

 Devonshire would entail little fatigue or expense on their 

 champion. I should myself be delighted to see him, and 

 should have little difficulty in proving to his satisfaction the 

 truth of every statement made in my letter of the 6th inst. 

 I am now writing in a room overlooking a garden containing 

 a score of inhabited hives with the queens of each of which 

 I am on visiting terms. As your correspondent among other 

 compliments is pleased to accuse me of ' crass ignorance,' 

 1 shall be happy to take him into this garden, and, after 

 describing the peculiarities and personal appearance of the 

 queen of each hive, to introduce him to every one in suc- 

 cession, and thus give him the opportunity of testing for 

 himself the correctness of my description. Can ' A Bee- 

 master ' do as much with his bees ? 



" It seems, also, that I am an * irritable old apiarian,' 

 whilst ' A Bee-master ' is ' really not irritated.' Of the 

 amount of ' irritation ' displayed on either side I leave your 

 readers to judge, and am happy to say that your corre- 

 spondent, who I am informed has a son as old as I am, is 

 somewhat at fault with regard to my age, though what this 

 lias to do with the question passes my ability to discover. 



_ " My bees are always well provided with food ; but even 

 his guess of poverty is as wide of the mark as the other. 

 Avarice is as common among bees as among ' old gentle- 

 men/ and the best provided stocks are often the most pre- 

 datory. 



" When ' A Bee-master ' pays me a visit we will try the 

 experiment with ' strong ale,' and in the meantime I will 

 lay in such a stock of sauce.s and other condiments as shall 

 render his meal, which is to consist of bees, beer, and feed- 

 ing-pan as digestible and as little disagreeable as possible, 

 " I may remark in the interim, that the presence of beer 

 in bee-food has long been dispensed with by the best modern 

 apiarians. 



" I do not, as I said before, go all lengths with Mr. Harbi- 

 son, nor am I a ' Red Republican,' or even an admirer of 

 Abraham Lincoln, but I am a conservative in polities, a 

 churchman in religion, and a loyal subject of Queen Victoria. 

 Nevertheless, I re-assert, that regicide by bees has frequently 

 come under my observation and is not unknown to others, 

 although I am, I believe, the first Englishman who has 

 recorded it in print. Those who know me are aware that I 

 am not given to exaggeration, and in this case I repeat, that 

 I have told merely the plain truth. Will 'A Bee-master' 

 kindly inform me in what respect he deems a conscientious 

 search after, and a keen appreciation of, the truth as regards 

 bees incompatible with the strictest orthodoxy both in 

 politics and religion ? I fancy if he will read through his 

 last communication calmly and dispassionately, he will come 

 to the conclusion that the ' machine for talking [or writing] 

 nonsense,' has been called into play on his side. 



" Sugar in order to be converted into barleysugar must 

 first be diluted with water, and in this state is available to 

 bees. Am I not correct, therefore, in stating that subse- 

 quent exposure to a heat of 300° is unnecessary ? When 

 ' A Bee-master ' visits Exeter, I shall be happy to show 

 him how to administer liquid food to bees without either 

 smearing their wings or clogging their feet. 



" But it appears I have not ' watched the habits of bees,' 

 ' or studied the results of the investigations of Huber.' This 

 is another random shot, and like the preceding ones it flies 

 under the mark. Huber (or rather his assistant, Francis 

 Burnens), was a keen and generally an accurate observer, 

 far in advance of the age in which he lived ; but he was not 

 invariably correct, and I have studied his investigations and 

 the habits of bees sufficiently to know when Huber is to be 

 relied on and wherein he was mistaken. The imputation of 

 'ignorance' on this point comes, moreover, with ludicrous 

 incongruity from a man who not only fails to recognise, but 

 absolutely derides as ' absurd ' Huber's ' explanation of two 

 thousand drones where there is only one queen, with, per- 

 haps, a couple of princesses,' an explanation which has been 

 deemed sufficient and satisfactory by every intelligent api- 

 arian from his time to the present day. 



"A swarm consisting only of five thousand bees has, it is 

 said, been kept through the winter by feeding, and has done 

 well in a magnificent honey season. May we venture to ask 

 for particulars ? How was the number of bees ascertained ? 

 Were they counted, or were they weighed? If counted, 

 what was then: exact number? If weighed, their precise 

 weight ? Were they hived in an empty or a combed hive ? 

 What did they cost in food ? I need hardly say that if 

 they cost as much in food as the purchase-money of a good 

 swarm, they really were not worth hiving. 



" With regard to the utter absence of sympathy in bees, 

 I have nothing to modify or retract. Allowing for the in- 

 fluence of imagination, ' A Bee-master,' doubtless, describes 

 what he has seen pretty correctly. He has erred only, as 

 many others have done before him, in ascribing the actions 

 of his bees to wrong motives. Had he witnessed the de- 

 nouement he would either have found the disabled worker left 

 to die by inches on the floor-board totally unheeded by her 

 sisters, or bundled neck and crop out of the hive shortly 

 afterwards. 



"Permit me in conclusion to say a few words to those 

 gentlemen who have written thanking me for exposing some 

 of the inaccuracies of your Tunbridge Wells correspondent, 

 whose effusions, as they very j ustly remark, are likely to 

 do far more harm than good. If it were desirable I could 

 of course more than double the list of his mistakes which I 

 have already noticed. But enough has been done. If the 

 Times ' Bee-master ' continues stedfast in the pursuit 

 which he appears to have taken up so ardently, he may in 

 time become worthy to bear the title he has somewhat pre- 

 maturely assumed. Whenever that period arrives we may 

 be very sure that he will look back upon his share in this 



