SOUTHEUN CULTIVATOR. 
175 
sons, swarming — bees swarming! What a thrill of 
pleasure these two words smid to the bosom of the enthu- 
siastic bee-keeper. To approach your Apiary and hear 
the hum of thousands of bees as they come pouring Ifom 
the hive— to see them darting through the air, and hnally 
cluster on the branch around their loving queen— to watch 
them, like a living stream, running into the hive your 
.fostering care has otfered them, are but a few of the 
pleasing incidents connected with the issuing and hiving 
of a swarm of bees. Sometimes, in the course of your 
experience, you will find your swarms to come out with 
every appearance of doing well, and after making an 
unsuccessful attempt at clustering, return to the hive. I 
would advise the bee-keeper when this happens to ex- 
amine in the neighborhood of the Apiary, and he will be 
apt to find the queen, unable to fly from some injury she 
has sustained in the hive. The best course to pursue in 
the premises is to destroy her, and let them proceed to 
rear another, which they will do in a short time. 
When your nees swarm make no fuss. All beating of 
tin-pans, horse-shoes and triangles is quite useless. Do 
nothing more than spread a sheet directly under the bulk, 
upon this place your hive, raising it some four or five 
inches in front to allow the bees to pass under, then tak- 
ing hold of the branch give it a sudden jar, and you 
have done all that you can do, except to give them an 
occasional brushing to prevent them from crowding on 
the outside of the hive, which they are apt to do if the 
weather is very warm; on this account, too, it is some- 
times necessary to shade the hive. If your bees cluster 
on the body of the tree you will have to brush them off. 
Never sprinkle your bees, except in very hot weather, 
and then only when they show any reluctance in enter- 
ing the hive. Remove the hive to its place as soon as the 
bees have become quiet. For much useful information on 
this branch of the subject I would again refer the reader 
to Miner’s Manual. 
Trusting that these few hints may subserve a good pur- 
pose, I indulge the hope that the day is near at hand 
when no farm will be without its Apiary. 
Respectfully, V. La Taste. 
Cedar-Green, near Augusta, May, 1855. 
POD-EEAEING VEGETABLES. 
Professor Burger, (high German authority) in his 
‘‘Economy of Farming” thus commends the cultivation 
of pod-bearing vegetables: “The pod-bearing vegetables 
generally need less manure than plants of the grass kind ; 
for in a given soil, and in a given time, they produce 
more organic matter than do the latter ; because they ab- 
sorb a greater quantity of atmospheric and mineral sub- 
stances. Plants can take so much the more moisture 
from the air as the surface of their leaves is collectively 
greater, or as they have more absorbing vessels, or hair 
upon their surface. They dry less easily the thicker their 
leaves are, and the moisture shut up between them is 
more slimy, or viscous; and if the plants are connected 
with many thick or strongly haired leaves, and roots 
pressing deep into the soil, they all must draw a* great 
part of their nourishment from the air, and resist dryness. 
Pod-bearing plants have these properties in a higher de- 
gree than the grasses.” 
Our learned author describes peas, beans and lentils 
as having comparatively small roots ; while he speaks in 
high praise of lucerne, and white lupins, (lupinas albus, 
white horse bean,) as making a “luxuriant growth in a 
poor and light soil, by means of their long tapering roots, 
-- -I .11 11.1 — ■ .. II. Ill 
and many large, thick and heavy leaves,” which protect 
the plants Irom drying. Cactuses are remai’kable for col- 
lecting and retaining moisture in a soil and atmosphere 
so arid as to wither ajid kill most other plants. Lucerne 
being perennial, and lasting many years, really deserves 
general culture at the South. We have seen nothing this 
spring in Georgia th^t looked finer or promised better than 
a patch of Lucerne in a garden in Athens, owned by a 
gentlemen who was born and reared in England. He gets 
five cuttings in a' year ; and we venture to suggest that 
if he would irrigate the plants immediately after each cut- 
ting, he might have seven in place of five, and a weightier 
yield at each. One hundred tons, of 2,240 pounds each, 
haVe been cut off a single acre, in eight months, of Italian 
ryegrass, in England, by the aid of liquified manure. We 
have no faith in the growth of large crops of any kind on 
poor land, without both water and manure. Nevertheless, 
some plants do much better than others on a short allow- 
ance of manure and water ; and from the time of Esau, 
who sold his birth-right for a mess of lentils, or “pottage,” 
to the present hour, the pod-bearing vegetables have fed 
more people than the cereals, in the Old World. The great 
armies of antiquity subsisted mainly on beans, peas, and 
other leguminosaj ; and the weight carried by a Roman 
soldier attest at once the muscle and bone-sustaining ele- 
ments in his daily food, and the justice of that popular 
and profound regard for his fabian aliment. 
Thaer, Veit, Korte and Burger, the four highest 
German authorities, concur in stating that the pod-bearing 
plants exhaust the soil less than any others. Prof Korte 
says : “Annual pod -bearing plants with small roots, if 
they are mown before the formation of the seeds, may be 
i-egarded as equal to perennials for forage in the smallness 
of their tax upon the soil.” L. 
PLOWING IN TIME OF DROUTH, PHILOSOPHICALLY 
CONSIDERED. 
Editor.s Southern Cultivator — It is possible for a 
person of limited experience to throw out some sugges- 
tions, that may be of advantage to others in the very de- 
partment that is the business of the latter. If my remarks 
should be deemed worthy a place in your paper, I trust 
they will be allowed to appear. They will probably be 
too late to benefit any one during the present drouth but, 
if they are based on sound philosophy, they will always 
be of use, 
I believe there are few cultivators of the soil who would 
now question the impropriety of plowing a crop during 
an excessive drouth. But I have not yet heard any one 
assign, as the ground of his opinion, anything but his own 
experience and observation. Now, nothing can be better 
than the experience and observation of intelligent men. 
Even those, however, can be made more worthy the con- 
fidence of others, if they can see the reasonableness of 
what is affirmed, notwithstanding their own observation 
may not reach so far. 
It seems to me that the true reason why the ground 
should not be plowed while vegetation is suffering from 
lack of moisture, is, that, by breaking the crust of the sur- 
face, we remove an impediment that was checking, in 
some measure, the evaporation of the moisture below — we 
perform in the field wltat the chemist does in his labora- 
tory whenever a pellicle forms on the surface of a solu- 
tion thol is to be evaporated to dryness. The chemist breaks 
it up, and so allows the vapor to escape more readily. 
Now, if I am right in this, it would be injudicious to break 
the surface to the depth of the moisture below, even 
though the earth were not turned over at all. But as any 
form of plow will, in some degree, mix the upfier and 
lower soil, or the more and less dry portions, so the dry- 
ing process is still further promoted. 
It appears to me that, at such a time as the present, much 
