APPENDIX. 100 



present day, including all the Btorifyers, (properly so called,) favor the use of small hlveu. 

 On the Continent, however, large hives are still in vogue | and if we want to gee the pro- 

 fitable management of bees on a large soale, it is thither wo must go — to the eastern coun- 

 tries of Europe more espeoially, where bee-keeping is as important a branch of rural econ- 

 omy as sheep-walking or grazing cattle is with us. 



The attention of English apiarians has lately been drawn to the bee practice of those 

 countries, by the work of a Pole, which issued from the press not a year ago. Mr. Dobio- 

 gost describes the hive of his oountry as being three and a half to five feet in. height^ 

 about eight inches in diameter at top, increasing 1 downwards gradually to twenty *non«s or 

 more at bottom, all inside measure ! This is indeed a large hive, which our skeptics will 

 attribute to the invention of gentlemen of the long bow, from their utter ignorance of api- 

 arian lore. It is a faot, however, that such are the dimensions of the hives commonly in 

 use in Poland ; and it is also a fact, that large as they are, they yet contrive to swarm with 

 as much regularity as the hives in use among us, while the parent stock remains vigorous 

 notwithstanding, for many years together. Mr. Dobiogost assures us that an apiary, con- 

 taining a hundred stocks of this size, will throw off about 150 swarms every spring, each of 

 such formidable power, that it resembles a small cloud, when hovering in the air. It seems 

 to us almost incredible, that hives of such dimensions should throw off any swarms at all. 

 In opposition to the general belief among us, the author seems to attribute this circumstance 

 to the fact, that, on the first establishment of these stocks, four times as many bees are put 

 into them as we are in the habit of hiving together. 



Such are the plain facts alleged by Mr. Dobiogost in respect to Polish practice ; now let 

 us look into the reasons of them. I find that Dr. Bevan scouts the idea altogether, that 

 strength in one year begets strength in another, at least in any reasonable proportion ; and 

 he has brought forward the result of some very interesting experiments in proof, which I 

 once thought conclusive. Indeed, I still think that he is quite right in the inference he 

 draws from them,* when speaking of English hives, and our general mode of bee man- 

 agement, seeing that he has, I think ; very satisfactorily proved that bee life does not extend 

 itself in general beyond six or seven months at the outside ; for, according to his showing, 

 every bee born before the middle of July perishes soon after, if not before, the middle of the 

 following January. T say, he is right, when speaking of our, that is, the small-hive sys- 

 tem of bee management, because, in such hives, be they single or storified, (observe, I do 

 not include nadiring,) the queen bee is seldom able to lay above a dozen eggs a-day, if so 

 many, in the height of the honey-gathering season, owing to the bees seizing every cell, as 

 soon as it becomes vacant by the exclusion of brood, as a reeeptaale for honey. This is the 

 history of the wide gap which most apiarians, from Huber downwards, have observed be- 

 tween the spring and autumn laying of the queen bee. It is not that she is unable or in- 

 disposed to lay, but that she has no room in which to put her eggs. Dr. Bevan tells us 

 that there are, two distinct layings of the queen ; one, which he calls the " great laying," 

 taking place in the spring ; and a second, a lesser one, in the autumn ; that is, in the month 

 of August, sooner or later, according to circumstances. In other words, he gives us to un- 

 derstand that there is an interval between the spring and autumn layings of the queen, in 

 which but comparatively few eggs are laid. If by this he means that there is a considera- 



* Namely, That however strong the population of a hive may be in one year, that 

 strength will in no wise influence the prosperity of the same stock the following season ; 

 because how many soever the swarms that may have been introduced into one and the 

 same hive in any particular year, they <! will all have paid the debt of nature before its 

 expiration." 



