218 JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. [ March 17, 1881. 
crntribute a few observations on the subject to the Journal of 
Horticulture. 
I admire the straw hive very much. Of all known hives it is 
the best looking, and of all hives used in Great Britain and 
Ireland it receives the greatest patronage. It is suitable for all 
persons, places, and seasons. I have used it for fifty years, and use 
it still with increasing confidence. The straw hive offers advan¬ 
tages which no wooden hive can for the comfort and safe keeping 
of bees in winter. If not too firmly sewed the straw hive affords 
a healthy ventilation, and permits the moisture to pass off through 
the walls uncondensed. Straw hives firmly sewn and thickly 
coated with paint, and with wooden hives of all kinds, the 
difficulty of removing the moisture of hives is very great in 
winter, and if allowed to remain it decays the combs outside the 
brood nest. Many schemes and inventions have been tried to 
clear the moisture from wooden hives in winter. The quilt has 
been tried, and perforations of their sides and crowns too. Wire 
gauge and cavity walls have been tried ; last of all chaff has been 
used in the cavity walls, but whether any of these inventions and 
efforts have been uniformly successful I cannot say. 
Straw hives in spring are certainly covered and kept warm, 
easily handled and examined. It is no small advantage to a 
working man to have hives which he can speedily turn up and 
examine internally. Anyone expert could turn up twenty straw 
hives and see all he requires inside in twenty minutes. Hives 
offering such facilities for examination enable bee-masters to 
ascertain how fast brood is spreading, how soon supers will be 
required or swarms expected. With other hives these things can 
be ascertained, but not, I think, with equal ease and speed. 
At the time of swarming, and in natural swarming, the straw 
hive has no advantage whatever over other kinds of hives. At 
the season of swarming the heat of hives and the fanning of bees 
drive out by the doors all the superabundant moisture of hives. 
Hence there is no condensation of moisture in the height of 
summer. With straw hives the process of artificial swarming is 
simple and easy. Being easily handled they are turned up and 
placed on their crowns, empty hives placed over them, and swarms 
extracted from them by drumming—about five minutes is required 
to extract a swarm. This process of artificial swarming is a very 
near approach to Nature. The process generally adopted in the 
bar-frame school is a very unnatural one. About half the combs 
and half the bees are taken from a moveable-comb hive and 
placed in an empty one. It does not matter whether the queen 
goes with the colony or is left in the mother hives, as both hives 
have combs with brood in them, and therefore the bees without 
the queen can rear a queen for themselves. The removal of the 
combs with the bees is most hurtful to the mother hive and of 
questionable advantage to the swarm. This artificial method in 
swarming frame hives is not an argument against the moveable- 
comb hives, which could be swarmed as ours are by a method 
less artificial and without the removal of the combs. The differ¬ 
ence of the two systems are now mentioned merely to show that 
moveable combs are of no advantage in either artificial or natural 
swarming. 
In supering the straw hive has all the advantages and con¬ 
veniences of other kinds of hives, for supers large and small and 
of all kinds of material—glass, wood, or straw—may be placed on 
it. Sectional supers may be placed on one to any extent. I am 
inclined to think that the Stewarton hive has a slight advantage 
in supering over both the straw and frame hives. 
Cross sticks used in straw hives give them the advantage in 
some respects. Cross sticks give firmness and security to the 
combs, and thus prevent accidents and breakdowns in handling 
hives or in removing them from place to place. In summer there 
is great risk run in removing moveable-comb hives from one 
place to another, even when the bars are pretty full of combs, but 
straw hives with moderate care and fairly ventilated may be safely 
carried or sent by a common carrier from one end of the country 
to the other. They owe their safety to the support given to the 
combs by the cross sticks. Cross sticks in hives are advantageous 
in another respect. The bees in fastening their combs to them 
leave a small hole or byway at every stick or crossing, and thus 
four or five cross lanes or short cuts are made from side to side 
through the combs of every hive. For nadiring, eking, and en¬ 
larging the straw hive is probably unequalled, as every kind of 
enlargement can be securely fastened to it by nails. 
Now let us come to the drawbacks of straw hives—viz., the 
inconvenience of fixity of combs and their unsuitability for the 
use of artificial comb foundations. Often have I admitted that 
moveable combs in hives are advantageous to clever bee-keepers, 
and that they can be well and profitably used under certain 
circumstances and at certain junctures in the management of 
bees. In a favourable year for honey gathering, or when almost 
all hives are too heavy for keeping, the moveable-comb system 
appears to some advantage—I might say great advantage. Let 
us suppose that we have ten hives at the beginning of September 
weighing 80 lbs. each, all too heavy for stocks, and each contain¬ 
ing twelve frames. How easy and how pleasant it would be to 
the bee-master to take six honey bars from each hive and leave 
the six central bars for the bees to winter in. Then it would be a 
stroke of good management, and no very difficult matter, to unite 
all the bees and combs of the ten hives in five of them ; thus sixty 
bars of honeycomb—not all virgin comb—would be obtained, 
and five good stocks full of combs and well populated with bees. 
This would be capital practice, and nothing better can be said in 
favour of the moveable-comb system. Doubtlessly the moveable- 
comb hive offers other advantages, but all together would not out¬ 
weigh the one now mentioned. Suppose that each of the five 
stock hives referred to contained 15 lbs. or 20 lbs. of honey for 
the bees to winter on. Suppose that all the honey was taken at 
the first and capitalised, putting £4 or £5 more money into the 
pocket of the bee-master, and all the bees put into empty hives— 
five in number—and fed with syrup into stocks at an expense of 
20s. or 25.?. This is my method of management with straw hives 
under such circumstances ; and if any gentleman were to offer to 
sell me five stocks formed by the union of second-hand combs 
and five stocks—bar-frame stocks—formed by feeding with sugar 
syrup, I would much prefer the syrup stocks to the others, and 
give more money for them and expect greater results. This is a 
question of great importance in the management of bees. 
One more objection to the straw hives I have to notice—viz., 
the difficulty of using and utilising comb foundations in them. 
This, doubtlessly, cannot be gainsaid. The straw hive as at present 
made offers very few and small facilities for using comb foun¬ 
dations, but if made with wooden crowns artificial foundations 
could be introduced and used in straw hives as easily and suc¬ 
cessfully as in bar-frame hives. I lately wrote on this subject 
showing how easily pieces of the foundations could be dropped 
into straw hives through slits in the crown boards and fastened 
on the outside. I think it would be quite as easy to introduce 
artificial foundations through the crowns of hives as it is to 
fasten them to frames. What is wanted is not the possibility of 
using them, but satisfactory evidence that their general use in 
hives would be remunerative. My opinion is not settled on this 
question, and I shall be pleased to find that artificial foundations 
are worth more more in apiarian practice than all that has been 
said about them. I have frequently said that natural comb, 
pure and white, is much better for use in supering than artificial 
foundations, and I have as frequently hinted that such natural 
virgin empty combs may be produced at a cheap rate. This idea 
is worth a consideration. I wish some enterprising young apiarian 
would commence a factory for the production of natural virgin 
comb for use in supering. If such could be produced at a mode¬ 
rate price there would be a great demand for it. 
Let us come again to notice the straw hive and the introduction 
of a swarm into it. By giving the bees G lbs. of sugar in syrup, 
costing Is. GrL, in three or four feeds, they build combs down to 
the bottom stocks, the hive is nearly half filled with combs and 
brood in less than a week, and under sunny skies it will do more 
for a poor man than an Ayrshire oow will. What have I not seen 
done for many a family by four or six such hives in a garden. It 
is a useful, cheap, and profitable hive, and I know none better.— 
A. Pettigrew. 
THE HEATH BEE AND THE CAUCASIAN BEE. 
[The follo.ving paper was written for the Cologne bee meeting, 
but in consequence of the death of the author was not delivered, 
and has been published in the “ Bienenzeitung,” from which this 
translation has been made.— Alfred Neighbour.] 
Gentlemen. —I have no intention of drawing a comparison between 
the Heath bee and the Caucasian bee ; I only wish to give you a short 
account of my experience as regards each of the two varieties of bees. 
To begin with the Heath bee. The demand for Heath bees has been 
very much on the increase lately, though this is certainly not due to 
any special recommendation, and it no doubt proves that the good 
qualities of these bees are becoming more appreciated. It is a pecu¬ 
liarity of the Heath bees that they increase largely and give off many 
swarms, for which reason they are especially suitable for those bee¬ 
keepers who are anxious to increase their stocks, and therefore rejoice 
to see their bees swarm frequently. But the Heath bees do not only 
give off many swarms, they also collect large quantities of honey, as 
may be seen in the Liineburg Heath district. In no part of Germany 
is the honey harvest so large as it is there, for while in other parts 
of the country pots suffice to hold the honey which the bees collect, 
the Liineburg Heath bee-keepers are able to fill many casks. People 
are therefore disposed to look upon the Liineburg Heath as an “ El 
Dorado ” where honey is always flowing, but this is by no means the 
