12 
THE AUSTRALIAN BEEKEEPERS’ JOURNAL. 
and was at least a fortnight earlier than usual, 
giving promise of a large yield of nectar. In 
anticipation of this, I shifted nearly 200 
colonies towa-.'d the latter part of October to 
a spot about five miles from tlieir former 
location, where there were some thousands of 
acres of the richest clover you can imagine in 
full blossom It was, indeed, a glorious sight, 
one calculated to drive a beelreeper rapturous ; 
a vast extent of country covered with a thick 
white mantle of clover blossoms that could be 
plainly seen for many miles All that was now 
wanted to make it a conqiL'te paradise for bees 
was a general rise in the temperature and 
warm nights, but this nature persistently 
refused to give us, with the exception of an 
hour or two about mid-day, the weather kept 
remarkably cold, especially at night time. 
This, of course, prevented the secretion of 
nectar, and it was very tantalizing to see such 
a grand show of blossoms with scarcely a bee 
working on them. Day after day right through 
the month of November the same low tempera- 
ture was maintained, the bees gathering very 
little honey, barely enough for immediate use ; 
I at last began to think we should have no 
honey weather while the clover blossoms 
lasted, but early in December the temperature 
began to rise, and the neetar started to flow ; 
the bees were working like mad, and every 
preparation was made to keep them at it, ex- 
pecting to have to keep the extracted 
constantly going for a few weeks ; but, alas ! 
for human expectations, frosty nights set in 
just as the hives were getting tilled and ready 
for depriving, which cut off the flow, and 
right in the middle of December we were 
visited by a very severe frost which extended 
to nearly all parts of New Zealand, cutting 
down clover, potatoes, etc., and doing an 
immense amount of damage ; the blossoms and 
leaves of the clover were now of a dark rusty 
color, as though a fire had run over it. I now 
despaired of getting anything approaching an 
average crop of honey for the season ; as I cal- 
culated it would take at least three weeks for 
the clover to recover, and by that time the 
season for it would be drawing to a close. To 
add to our misfortune, hot, dry weather set in 
after Christmas and lasted till May ; vegeta 
tion was quickly burnt up, through the 
extraordinary weather we experienced, so you 
see that we have had an unusual and dis- 
appointing season. 
Our honey crop only amonted to about three 
tons, whereas I expected fifteen or more; I 
estimated the output for New Zealand from a 
number of reports received, to be about one- 
third of a crop or less, compared with the 
previous season. 
Foul brood is seriously militating against 
the success of apiculture in this colony. It 
is time some vigorous steps were taken to keep 
it down, and to stamp it out if possible. With 
this end in view I have addressed a letter to 
our Government now sitting in Wellington, 
asking for aid ; the letter will be published in 
next month’s Farmer. By the way, you 
mentioned to me one time about corrosive 
sublimate as a cure ; will you kindly publish it, 
for I do not remember seeing it mentioned 
before. Poor seasons and unusual attacks of 
disease appear to go hand in hand ; at all events, 
it has been the case here the past season, for foul 
brood has played sad havoc among the bees 
since this time last year. I hope, however, to 
get our Government interested in the mattter, 
and so give us that aid we so much need just 
now. 
I have written in haste, being anxious to be in 
time for the first number of your new volume, 
and our mail goes out to-day. I will give yon 
m ire general news in my next. -Tours in haste, 
J. Hopkins. 
Box 290, P.O., Auckland, N.Z. 
BALLING QUEENS. 
No. 36. I have on two occasions lately seen 
bees ball their own queens — their own 
mothers. 
Last autumn a stray swarm settled in my 
garden. It was a very small swarm, hut I 
hived it with a view of uniting it with one of 
my own stocks. I was examining it a few 
days afterwards, and I found the queen balled. 
I released her, and placed her in a cage, plug- 
ging up the mouth with a piece ot comb ; next 
day she was out of the cage, and all right. 
Two days ago I was looking at a rather 
weak colony, that I have been treating for 
foul-brood, when I saw a bunch of bees on a 
comb. I gently disturbed them with a stick, 
and when I got to the centre of the cluster, 
there was the queen, unmistakably balled. In 
this case I at once closed the hive, and on 
examining the hive to-day I found the queen 
all right on a comb. 
I have not been able to find anything beai‘- 
ing on this point in any of the bee books I 
have, and the only thing that I can see that 
refers to anything of the kind is in Boots’ 
Gleanings, for this year, page 26. 
Beferenee is there made to a page in a 
previous number, but as I have not got last 
year’s Gleanings, I cannot follow the matter 
up further. 
Will you let me know, through the medium 
of your journal, what is known about this 
matter. It has an important bearing on the 
introduction of queens, because if opening a 
hive will cause the bees to attack their own 
queen, will it not be much more likely to have 
that effect when the queen is comparatively 
strange ? —I am, &c., 
H. Lindsay Miller. 
Warrnambool, 24th May, 1887. 
[It is not an uncommon thing to find bees 
balling” their own queen, but that “ balling” 
is usually for a very different purpose from 
that of balling a strange queen. Bees ball 
