August 3, 1882. ] JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 113 
most suitable place for them. For general purposes 6-inch pots are 
quite large enough. 
Cinerarias for winter and early spring-flowering, seed of which was 
sown early, should be shifted into 6-inch pots for general purposes, 
and 7 or 8-inch pots when large plants are required. The soil advised 
for Primulas suits them. They should be stood on a bed of ashes 
in a pit or frame, as they do not thrive in a dry medium, and 
should be near the glass. It is important that they be kept free 
from aphides by moderate fumigation or dipping in or syringing with 
tobacco water. Shade should be given them from powerful sun. 
Fuchsias that flowered early and been rested may now have the 
shoots shortened back a little, have the surface soil removed to the 
depth of an inch or two, supplying fresh, cleansing the foliage with 
an insecticide, and afterwards remove them to a house or pit where 
they can be kept a little close and moist by syringing overhead 
morning and evening. They will break freely and come into flower 
in about six weeks, and, being assisted with weak liquid manure, 
will continue to do so until autumn is far advanced. Young Fuchsias 
are much to be preferred to old plants. Cuttings of free growth 
should be inserted now and kept close and moist until rooted, after¬ 
wards as soon as rooted shifting them into 8-inch or 4-inch pots. 
(dts 
B- 
p! 
Sim 
HE BEE-KEEPER. 1 
DRIVING STOCKS. 
Please to inform me through the Journal when will be the 
best time to drive stocks of bees. I artificially swarmed them 
during the latter part of May and the early part of June. My 
intention was to drive them on the twenty-first day after swarm¬ 
ing, but they were so dreadfully light at that time they were not 
worth the trouble. I am afraid the honey harvest will soon be 
over here, the Limes and white Clover are the chief pasture now. 
What I want to know is when I may expect to find the least 
unhatched brood.— Debby. 
P.S.—We have only had eight days without rain, more or less, 
since the 3rd of June. 
[If your hives are full of bees and brood now we would advise 
you to drive three-fourths of the bees into empty hives and 
vigorously feed them as swarms ; the other fourth of the bees 
should be left to hatch the brood, and at the end of three weeks 
give all the bees to the swarms. Thus hives extra strong would 
be obtained. The feeding of the swarms would enable them to 
build combs rapidly and fill them with brood. This plan is, we 
think, the best to get strong stocks for winter and next year. If 
the hives are not strong enough to stand this treatment the bees 
should be encouraged to breed by feeding for a fortnight or three 
weeks, and thus made strong enough. Another plan is to let them 
go on as they are doing till September or till all the brood is 
hatched, and then drive all the bees at once into empty hives and 
feed them into stocks. This plan is more extensively practised 
than the other, but we prefer the former for creating good stocks, 
the latter for a chance of a late harvest of honey. In September 
queens naturally cease laying, and artific al feeding then does 
not cause so large batches of brood as it does in July and August. 
This advice is given on the assumption that the honey season is 
nearly over this year.—A. P.] 
PROLONGING THE LIFE OF THE QUEEN BEE. 
I cannot help protesting against the assumptions of Mr. Petti¬ 
grew (page 65) in regard to the duration of life of the queen and 
worker bee. Not a jot of the evidence he adduces meets the case. 
Had he worked with bar-frame hives and Ligurian bees he must 
long ago have given up his theories as untenable. The now common 
operation of introducing a yellow queen into a black stock proves 
to a certainty that the whole population of a hive is changed in 
from four to six weeks in summer, and from six to eight months 
in the resting season. If the proper deduction from this fact is 
not that work exhausts bees I cannot conceive any other. There 
is a difference, however, between outdoor and indoor work, my ex¬ 
perience being that the latter—viz., comb-building and brood- 
rearing, are by far more exhaustive than outdoor labour. The 
extended existence of a queenless stock proves this. 
There are, however, other elements at work in reducing the 
population of hives even at midsummer. I have reports from 
several districts in Scotland before me to the effect that during 
May and June of this year strong hives lost so many thousands of 
bees (mostly young bees too) that they dwindled rapidly, and 
were rendered useless as super-producing stocks for the present 
season. In these cases the symptoms were exactly such as I have 
formerly described as the result of feeding on honeydew off cer¬ 
tain trees. The bees young and old were found running helplessly 
about in front of the hives. They could not fly, and though lifted 
on to the floorboard refused to re-enter their hives. On being 
dissected their honey bags were found full of a sticky substance 
like glue, probably honeydew. But these are exceptional causes 
of depopulation, the main fact standing much as Dr. Dzierzon ex¬ 
presses it. The practical value of the facts lead all advanced bee¬ 
keepers to guard against any cessation of breeding in the early 
autumn months. We do* not double stocks to ensure strong 
populations as the disciples of Mr. Pettigrew wastefully do. We 
only stimulate by gentle feeding during the early months of 
autumn and spring, and thus get at little expense a fresh hatch of 
young bees, 1 lb. of which in August are worth 5 tt>3. of driven 
bees at a later date. 
As to queens, I am also constrained to differ from our venerable 
friend of skeps. Mr. Pettigrew seems to teach that nothing the 
bee-keeper can do has any effect on the number of eggs laid by a 
queen ; that, in fact, there is no such thing possible as stimu¬ 
lation, and that consequently every queen bee should live out her 
full term of four years or more. Now, it is somewhat extra¬ 
ordinary that though I never kill a queen that is doing well, 
especially if she is an Italian, I have not in an apiary of nearly 
forty hives one queen over two years old. Careful observa¬ 
tion leads me to conclude that the bees quietly supersede queens 
that are failing far oftener than we generally suppose. Only 
three weeks ago I found the last of my three-year-old queens 
laying on a comb alongside of a princess a few days old ; in a 
few days more I found the dead body of my old favourite in front 
of the hive, and I have every reason to believe that other four or 
five of my oldest queens were thus superseded during this summer. 
Bee-keepers generally do not take means of identifying their 
queens, all are alike to them, consequently an old queen may be 
superseded and the young one get the credit of all her years 
added to its own. Thus we hear of queens seven years old, the 
proof being that the stock never swarmed all that time ! 
Others, however, like myself, know almost every queen by sight. 
We see them frequently and note their differences in shape, size, 
or colour. Mixed apiaries of black and Italian bees soon come 
to have queens with different characteristics ; and this is useful, 
especially at swarming time, for we can separate a mass of bees 
composed of two or three swarms and return each queen to her 
own hive if desired. One is pure black, another is a dark Italian, 
a third is yellow to the tip, the fourth has a very yellow body 
with a black tip, and so on. Thus we are able to some extent to 
follow out the history of our queens and to certify their age ; 
others, not content with natural marks, dye or punch the queen’s 
wings, or clip off certain portions of them each year in order to 
be able at a glance to tell her age. I have all valuable queens 
clipped, not only to mark their age but to prevent loss of swarms. 
I mention these things to show that we do not speak without book 
when we mention the ages of our queens. 
Now, I may state it as a fact that before the advent of comb 
foundation it was the rule rather than the exception for my queens 
to live from three to four years. Now, however, they are so fre¬ 
quently superseded by the bees, or fail otherwise before they are 
three years old, that I never judge it safe to keep one over two 
years. Comb foundation, combined with stimulative feeding 
perhaps, has shortened the life of queens by a year. And this is 
how it happens. Instead of wintering a stock on all its combs we 
remove all that are not crowded with bees. In spring we insert, 
as fast as the bees get crowded, sheets of foundation in the centre 
of the brood nest. We use these rather than the old combs, 
because we get nearly twice as many eggs laid in them. The 
bees, seconded by the queen, use every endeavour to occupy the 
hiatus, and often in twenty-four hours there are from three thou¬ 
sand to four thousand eggs laid in these sheets. We know this is 
hard on the queen, and only by great care do we prevent a per¬ 
manent separation of the brood nest into two. Now if the queen 
has no power over the production of eggs it seems strange that a 
good queen so nearly lays in proportion to the number of bees. 
Doubtless, occasionally she will lay three or more eggs in a cell, 
but not if she have room otherwise within the cluster. This does 
not prove any inability on the part of the queen, but only her 
uncommon pr'olificness, and the necessity for supplying her either 
with more bees or with empty cells. 
Leaving facts and venturing on theory, I should say that it seems 
