JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
392 
[ May 11, 1882. 
at 80°. A slight shade for an hour or two at midday will he beneficial. 
Maintain the bottom heat at 80° to 90°, and when needful afford weak 
liquid manure abundantly. 
PLANT HOUSES. 
Greenhouse .—The young Heaths and other hard wooded plants that 
were potted in February will by this time have rooted in the new soil 
and be growing fast. Small plants desired to be grown on quickly 
will be much aided by having their flowers removed. Where there is 
no special structure for Heaths they should be placed at one end of 
the house, which must be well ventilated. 
Azaleas that have flowered should at once have all seed pods re¬ 
moved, as the formation of seed injuriously affects the young growths. 
See that the plants are free from thrips and red spider, washing them 
with an insecticide, as the young foliage will not bear enough smoke 
to destroy thrips. Syringe liberally every evening with tepid water, 
and encourage growth by a genial temperature. Plants coming on 
for late blooming should, as soon as the flowers are showing colour, 
be syringed every evening, closing the house at the same time, and 
the increased temperature and moisture will improve the flowers in 
size. Shade should be given from bright sun, or some varieties will 
lose colour. 
Camellias that are growing where there is no proper structure to 
give them exactly the treatment they require should be syringed twice 
a day, which will be found to induce a freer growth than if the foliage 
is kept dry. Shade must also be afforded from the direct rays of the 
sun. The earliest-flowered plants that have made a correspondingly 
early growth must only remain in heat until the buds are set, for if 
kept too long in heat the buds will become so large as to flower 
too early ; during the growing season is the time to regulate that of 
flowering. 
Chrysanthemums should now receive every attention by potting and 
keeping them free from aphides. Deutzias that have flowered will 
now be growing, and should have the old wood cut out after it has 
flowered, depending on next year’s bloom upon the young shoots that 
start freely from the collar. Encourage the plants with a little heat 
until the growth is made and flower buds are formed. Transfer all 
plants requiring it into larger pots, and supply those more advanced 
with liquid manure. 
WEAK AND DESERTED HIVES. 
A correspondent (Mr. J. Godley) writes, “ Can you tell me 
through your Journal what can be the reason that within the last 
month I have lost two hives of bees ? One was a large flat-topped 
straw hive full of nasty black comb3 with some honey ; the other 
not so large and only half full of white combs and some honey 
in them. The bees have disappeared, and no dead ones can be 
seen anywhere. They have been fed all through the winter, which 
I believe is wrong. I have discovered that the bees out of another 
hive have also disappeared. My hives have been in a covered 
house and well protected with hay. I have four stocks left which 
are weak.” 
If an experienced bee-keeper were to see the hives that have 
lost their bees and those that are now in a weakly condition he 
would be better able to explain the cause or causes of the loss and 
weakness. As the loss of bees in spring is not at all uncommon, 
and as weak hives then are common enough and very disappoint¬ 
ing, we may profitably notice here some of the causes of deaths 
and weakness in the apiary. Often, indeed, are weak hives a 
greater misfortune than dead bees, as many after being watched 
with the greatest care and fed for weeks and months die at last. 
Bees, as is often stated in this Journal, are short-lived creatures, 
the longest livers die at the age of nine months, and many do not 
live half their days. Last year we had hot honey weather at the 
end of June and beginning of July. Hives then, generally 
speaking, were strong in bees and well filled with brood. The 
weather then suddenly changed, no more honey was afterwards 
gathered in England, and the bees ceased to breed. There were 
no late hatches of brood. Last autumn and winter were open 
and mild, and the bees consumed much honey, and continued 
numerically strong and healthy till February and March of the 
present year, when their ranks were rapidly thinned by the death 
of old bees. Some hives became so weak in bees that they had 
not power to hatch brood and died. In some hives the oldest 
bees survived the birth of the first small batch of brood, and by 
natural decay and death gave place to their young, leaving a 
weakness difficult to surmount. Such young bees have a hard 
and up-hill battle to fight. If they have numbers enough or heat 
enough to hatch brood, they will live and slowly gain strength. 
The crisis of life or death in weak hives unfortunately happens 
in the cold season of spring, when both bees and brood require 
all the heat they can obtain. Sometimes hives lose so many bees 
in winter that the survivors creep closely together for warmth, 
and die by reason of cold in small clusters before breeding com¬ 
mences ; and some bees suffer much, if not killed outright, by a 
superabundance of honey or syrup stored in their combs. Honey¬ 
comb is so cold that bees shrink from it in winter. Some be¬ 
ginners glut their hives with syrup before winter and thus do 
harm. In the midwinter we have seen the bees of many hives 
hanging in clusters from the points of their combs rather than set 
amongst them. We have seen bees in heavy hives clustering to 
their sides rather than live or set near cold honeycomb. In¬ 
stances are not rare of the bees of weak hives being killed by the 
robbers of strong hives seeking plunder. In all these cases the 
dead do not disappear. Bees that die of age, of disease, or 
exposure to cold, and those that are murdered, are left on the 
ground or in the hives. In the case of our correspondent the 
bees all vanished as stated by herself. The stench of foul brood 
often causes bees to desert their hives. Sometimes they go off as 
a swarm and leave not a bee behind, and sometimes they dwindle 
slowly away as in the cases of old age, leaving the queen only to 
mourn her loss. Foul-broody hives are always weak in bees in 
spring, and are worse than worthless, and should be “stamped 
out” at once, as Mr. Eaitt puts it, for foul brood is an incurable 
distemper, and bee-keepers everywhere will yet come to know 
this. 
Better still, they will learn that hives made strong in autumn is 
the secret of successful bee-keeping : that hives made strong in 
autumn seldom or ever become weak in spring. Grand results 
and great profit come from hives properly managed in autumn. 
I met a Cheshire bee-keeper the other day, when he said that his 
“ hives had been so strong and satisfactory all last winter that he 
would never have weak hives again. The bees of my hives were 
never off their boards all winter, and some of the hives were 
ready to swarm in April.” His autumn treatment consisted in 
giving his stock hives extra bees or swarms of bees from honey 
hives and in getting late hatches of brood in autumn. All bee¬ 
keepers can strengthen their stock hives in autumn by uniting 
condemned bees to them. Suppose a bee-keeper has six hives at 
the end of August—three for honey and three for stock ; the 
bees of the honey hives given to the others would make them 
strong for winter and spring. Even in autumns when there is no 
honey to be taken it is better, more profitable and satisfactory, to 
have three good hives than six weak ones, for the risks and losses 
and disappointments of bee-keeping come from weak hives, and 
weak hives are the result of mismanagement in autumn. 
Our correspondent truly says she did wrong to feed her bees in 
winter. Bees should not be fed or molested after October. They 
naturally remain in a quiet semi-dormant state from October till 
the end of February.—A. Pettigrew, Boredom,, 
TRADE CATALOGUES RECEIVED. 
James Yeitch & Sons, King’s Road, Chelsea.— Catalogue of Plants 
for 1882 ( illustrated ), and List of Bedding Plants. 
Dickson & Robinson, 12, Old Millgate, Manchester.— Catalogue of 
Bedding Plants. 
Anthony Cullen, Staines.— List of Bedding Plants. 
*** All correspondence should be directed either to “The Editor” 
or to “ The Publisher.” Letters addressed to Dr. Hogg or 
members of the staff often remain unopened unavoidably. We 
request that no one will write privately to any of our correspon¬ 
dents, as doing so subjects them to unjustifiable trouble and 
expense. 
