APPENDIX. Ill 



thit any of our stocks of bees at this season. The concentrated heal,* further husbanded 

 by the very solid materials of the hive, fosters, even in the cold damp Polish spring, (when 

 the snow hills begin to thaw,) an early development of brood. As the population increases, 

 a greater quantity of honey is cleared away, and more colls emptied for the queen's con- 

 venience. Downwards and sideways, silently but steadily expands the population, until 

 the spring is fully advanced, at which time, the bees of Poland are in a ar more forward 

 slate than ours ; which are too often miserably reduoed in numbers before they begin to 

 breed. From this time, their progress is rapid indeed ; what oares the queen of such a col- 

 ony when the honey season approaches ? The spoils of the year, rifled from a thousand 

 different flowers, are first stored high up in the hive, against the coming winter, while, as 

 the cells fill, the mother bee is only driven to a lower story ; for there is plenty of room in 

 the four or five-foot-deep palace, both for her own incommoded laying of eggs, and the un- 

 interrupted storing of honey. The judicious excision of comb by the careful bee master 

 in the early spring is rather an advantage than a hindrance to her ; for the bees work 

 beautiful fresh combs, along the edge of which she is generally to be found, depositing her 

 eggs in the cells often before they have attained their completion, and certainly before the 

 bees have felt the want or inclination to anticipate her, by converting them into honey 

 stores. Thus June passes away, but brings her no anxiety, as does the unhappy English, 

 queen bee ; it only leaves her half way down her spacious dwelling. July and August 

 come, and still there is no necessary intermission to her labors, unless, indeed, as is very 

 probable, the population of the hive has so greatly increased, that she thinks it more com- 

 fortable to migrate ; in which case, off goes the swarm, (as early perhaps as mid-June,) 

 "so powerful that it resembles a little cloud in the air." In the meanwhile, a younger 

 and more vigorous queen succeeds to the vacant sovereignty, who, with more comfort than 

 her predecessor, at last, owing to the diminished heat and the less pressing demand for 

 honey room, resumes the task of breeding, and continues it until the autumnal cold gradu- 

 ally relaxes her maternal cares, and drives her up among the combs. 



The English bee master will, I am aware, object with me to the Polish system of bee- 

 keeping, that it does not provide for any collection of a purer kind of honey. This objec- 

 tion is a most solid and weighty one, as, whatever the Pole may get in quantity of honey, 

 he certainly loses in quality j as Gelieu observes, these hives "have this disadvantage, 

 that capes, (or super hives,) cannot so easily be fitted to them, which facilitate the col- 

 lecting the finest honey." But all I contend for is this, that we should meet this system 

 half-way, by adopting large hives on the single method, where, especially according to my 

 plan, the hive is kept principally for breeding or swarming purposes, and not so much to 

 make a honey profit of it. And I am persuaded we should thus get in general much more 

 powerful swarms for our spoliation hives, and by consequence, a much larger harvest of 

 honey. 



(C— Page 29.) 



BoNNia, (to whom, as a practical, experimental, and soundly-reasoning apiarian, I am 

 disposed to pay very great deference,) has the following observations on the winter man- 

 agement of bees : — 



"When the frost is severe, or when the snow is lying on the ground, it will be necessary 



* Even Gelieu, notwithstanding his eulogium of flat, broad hives, seems to have been 

 fully alive to this important feature in the Polish bee domicile. Thus he says, " it is per- 

 haps for this reason that the bees thrive well in conical or sugar- loaf-shaped hives, which 

 are common in some countries." 



