JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
June 30, 1881. ] 
539 
drew upon the blocks nearly all the cuts, and thus saved the 
Committee several pounds, while I even paid for the wood out of 
my own pocket. The preface is nearly all Mr. Peel’s, who kindly 
wrote it at my request, and not at the request of the Committee. 
As a bee book “ Modern Bee-keeping ” is wholly mine, and I 
am glad that the profit derived from its sale has tended much to 
improve the financial position of the Association. There is honour 
in service ; and if the fact that some of this honour is falling on 
me has awakened jealousy in the minds of any I can give such 
my pity, and hope that if too much selfishness has hindered their 
usefulness the hindrance may be taken away.— Frank R. 
Cheshire, Avenue House , Acton, W. 
INCREASING STOCKS. 
I have received a letter from a correspondent on this subject, 
and as the questions contain matter for a general lesson on in¬ 
creasing stocks I shall venture to quote part of the letter touching 
the difficulty referred to. “I set aside a straw skep to breed from 
exclusively, having other hives devoted to honey-gathering. First 
I took a swarm of fliers (the bees flying about) and gave them a 
Ligurian queen. Next I took a large swarm with old queen from 
the straw skep. Lastly I took another swarm with young queen. 
For a week I watched if the young queen would commence laying, 
but at the end of a whole week she had not laid, so I thought she 
had not been fertilised before swarming. A double difficulty 
cropped up here, for I came to the conclusion that as the young 
queen had not been fertilised before leaving the old hive, which 
had no other queen in it for over fourteen days, that there was 
neither brood nor eggs in the old hive from which to rear a young 
queen. So I have put the young queen back into the old straw 
hive till she is fertilised and goes on with her laying; and into 
the new-made hive (presumably the second swarm hive) I have 
put the Ligurian queen, leaving her family to make a queen for 
themselves.” 
If our correspondent had stated when these movements were 
made, or how soon the one followed the other, it would have 
been easy to have told him what was right and what was wrong 
in them. His first move was to catch or guide the bees flying 
about into a hive having a Ligurian queen. This I consider was 
a risky and unwise proceeding. He knows whether it answered 
or otherwise. After this he took a large swarm with the old 
queen. This was right, and quite in harmony with good prac¬ 
tice and natural laws. Lastly he took another swarm with 
young queen, not knowing whether the old hive had a queen 
or egg left in it. Our correspondent now sees his difficulty, 
and wants to know how the young queen remained so long 
unfertilised in the old hive, and for a whole week in the new hive. 
Perhaps she was fertilised, perhaps she was not. Fertilisation 
may take place three days after birth, and it may not take place for 
twelve or fifteen days after. Only one queen have I known fertilised 
so late as the fifteenth day of her age. Queens are not fertilised till 
swarming is completed, and sometimes piping continues for six 
days before second swarms are cast off. After swarming has 
ended weather may prevent queens leaving their hives in search 
of mates, and even in fine weather they may be unsuccessful for 
some days in their outdoor trips. When successful excursions 
have been made some days pass before queens commence laying. 
This explanation will show that no one can exactly tell how soon 
the Ligurian hive will have a queen hatched, fertilised, and laying. 
If an average swarm had first been taken with the old queen from 
the straw hive, and then given it the Ligurian queen, it would have 
been better, for from the straw hive (with Ligurian queen) two or 
three more swarms might have been had, and from the first swarm 
a virgin swarm. Thus moving on safe and natural lines the stock 
would have been multiplied into five or six good hives. In all 
such proceeding it is well to assist Nature, not wise to fight against 
it.—A. Pettigrew. 
SHALL WE CULTIVATE MELLIFEROUS PLANTS 
FOR OUR BEES? 
That the place occupied in Nature by bees in general, and the 
honey bee in particular, is, as a rule, not understood even by the 
bee-keeper himself, is certain; and he in consequence is often led 
into expenditure which he would not otherwise have incurred, 
while he is not unfrequently met by disappointment which a 
little greater knowledge would have prevented. Let me in order 
to make this clear explain that the business of the bee as a honey 
and pollen gatherer, although most interesting to us as bee-keepers, 
because upon this our profit rests, is after all but the least part of 
the work which the insect accomplishes in the great aDd wondrous 
scheme of Nature. The bloom secretes honey, but not for itself; 
it is a gift to the honey-gatherer—nay, rather a payment, for the 
bee in its visit to secure food for itself and young unconsciously 
performs an act which completes the object of the flower’s ex¬ 
istence, and receives the honey as a compensation for its service. 
This subject is so full of marvels and is so various in its details, 
that anything beyond an illustration or two I cannot at the pre¬ 
sent attempt. There always seems so much to write about that 
off questions like these get pushed on one side, but perhaps the 
winter may supply further opportunity. Speaking broadly then, 
honey-bearing flowers have anthers which shed pollen, while at a 
certain period a central organ or organs of the bloom (stigma or 
stigmata) open and wait for pollen being placed upon their sur¬ 
faces. When this occurs a pollen tube, as it is termed, grows 
down from the pollen granule to the ovary and enters the ovule, 
which henceforth passes into a new phase of its existence as a 
fertilised developing seed. Without this placing of the pollen 
granule upon the stigma the bloom remains expanded for an 
unusual time, but at length fades, leaving no seed behind. The 
placing of the pollen granule upon the stigma can hardly be 
accomplished without the intervention of insects, for almost all 
blooms present some curious correlation of parts which makes it 
difficult, or even impossible, for its seed to be fertilised by pollen it 
has itself produced. Cross-fertilisation and not in-breeding is 
the law for a reason amazing by its beauty. This crossing is 
secured by means which are legion, but amongst which two are 
the most common—viz., the anthers ripen first, and not till all 
their pollen is gone does the stigma become receptive (protan- 
drous), or the stigma is first produced, the anthers not ripening 
till after an opportunity for fertilisation by other pollen has been 
given (protogynous). 
It is a general rule that honey continues to be secreted till 
fertilisation takes place, when a diversion of nutrition occurs, and 
with the ceasing of the honey the petals, Nature’s coloured flags 
hung out to attract the insect visitant, drop. The netting of the 
greenhouse or conservatory against insects is of course right, 
because here bloom and not seed is the object desired. 
But all this has a very practical application, for bee-keepers 
are prone to believe that their success depends upon the imme¬ 
diate surroundings of their hives. This mistake is seen in greatest 
intensity in a question I have been scores of times asked —“ Do 
you think bees would succeed with us, we have a number of 
flowers in our garden 1 To this it might be replied, Bees do not 
depend upon garden flowers, but if they did the fact of the 
flowers being in your garden wmuld render them nearly useless. 
Is it not clear that the work the bee has to perform can only be 
accomplished by its scattering widely ; and if its instinct led it to 
alight upon the verj first bloom before it as it issued to forage 
that bloom would, in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred, 
have been already rifled, and so possess nothing to offer, while 
the honey further a-field would be left untouched and there seed 
would be unfertilised. I have this year grown two long rows of 
Limnanthes Douglasii, an excellent honey-bearing annual, very 
free-blooming, and decidedly protandrous, so that bees are 
required for its seeding. I have twenty-three stocks of Cyprian 
or Ligurian bees standing at an average distance of 60 or 70 feet 
from these plants, while I do not know that any black bees could 
be found under one-third of a mile from my house. The Lim¬ 
nanthes has been alive with insects, the hive bee exceeding all 
others in number; but I examined these plants several times 
daily for eight days in succession, and saw during the whole time 
but one Ligurian bee upon them, all the others being blacks. 
That bees will in times of scarcity visit at the very door of 
home Sedum fabaria, or even such poor honey-yielders as 
Geraniums, I know, but at the same time would denounce as a 
mere delusion (what a scientific view of the case must dispel) 
that the planting in small gardens of the finest melliferous 
flowers will ever at all materially improve the position of our 
stocks. 
Let us not discourage this honey-production, however, for 
— my Limnanthes to wit—if we do not thus much help ourselves 
we do a little towards helping others. The scattering of Clover 
and Borage seeds, and such like, in waste places on railway banks 
and disregarded corners, or in our grounds if extensive, is very 
useful, because here we conform to a natural instinct which we 
neglect if our blooms are made to nod their heads in the very 
face of the bees as they start from the alighting board. I have 
been told not a few times by disappointed purchasers of seed 
packets potentially containing whole supers of honey that the 
plants represented to be so suited to bees were quite unvisited. I 
hope I have now made the reason apparent. 1 his year, in watching 
my Cherry trees about 70 yards from my hives, I found but few 
yellow-banded bees amongst them in comparison with the number 
seen on those of a neighbour at four or five times the distance. 
