September 7, 1882.] JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 233 
Like many days in the past month of August, opening with 
a sunny sky, but ere many hours changing to cloud and rain, this 
season gave promise by the first glorious burst of spring in April 
and early May to be one of light and heat, and perforce of abun¬ 
dance of honey. An early and continuous income from the sweet 
May flowers brought joy and happy expectation to bees and bee¬ 
keepers. Queens hurried from cell to cell, from comb to comb, 
to deposit eggs, and the army of joyous labourers was soon having 
daily additions to its strength in the shape of newly hatched bees, 
which teemed out into the brilliant sunshine. All was joy and 
work and sweet reward for labour. Supers were placed on hives, 
and many a convert to the modern system of bee-keeping saw 
his first sections being rapidly filled, and he already built up a 
goodly pile on the show tables of future exhibitions. Alas ! they 
were veritable chateaux en Espagne. A change came—a sudden, 
unexpected, disastrous change. The latter part of May and leafy 
June brought clouds and ram, frosts at night, and truly blasting 
winds. The bees, obliged to go out for pollen and water to satisfy 
the cravings of thousands of larvas, were overtaken by cold showers, 
and battered to death by chilly winds, were mocked by the sight 
of myriads of beautifully painted flowers in which no nectar was 
secreted. Queens walked slowly and disconsolately over the 
combs ; the desire for depositing eggs ceased, or the foreseeing 
workers prevented their deposition. The newly hatched bees, 
instead of rushing out to the glorious sunshine, welcomed by 
their fellow labourers and ready to assist the veterans in their 
attack on the flowers, now proved so many thousands of hungry 
ones to feed from the rapidly emptying store cells. Driven to 
despair by the changeless leaden skies, by the dearth of food, 
that curious instinct came uppermost which transforms the care¬ 
ful nursing bee into a remorseless assassin. A general massacre 
of the innocents took place. Strewn on the alighting board were 
seen the dead bodies or emptied skins of the white unhatched 
brood. But matters had only come to this pass in the hives of 
those who through ignorance or carelessness allowed the poor in¬ 
sects to approach the threshold of starvation ; not so with the stocks 
of the bee-master. He had taken care, as the cold change in the 
weather gave him warning, to contract the size of the brood 
chamber, which he had gradually enlarged during the few weeks 
of prosperity. He anticipated the daily wants of his colonies by 
the constant application of wholesome food. Given in the shape 
of thin syrup, both food and water were regularly supplied, and 
although breeding did not continue at so rapid a pace as during 
the continuance of beautiful weather, yet the colonies did not 
lose strength. But what have we to say of the newly Lived 
swarms kept on the let-alone system ? We know of a cottager 
who, from the want of knowing what to do, lost four strong 
swarms out of seven, and the remaining three will not fully 
recover from the effects of the starving until too late in the year 
to give any surplus honey, should a few weeks of fine weather 
yet allow the Heather honey to be gathered. And now we are 
rapidly approaching the end of the ingathering season, which 
may, as far as we are concerned, be put down as one of the worst 
we have known. 
Those who are not in the neighbourhood of Heather knew that 
their hopes of a harvest were over as the month of August drew 
towards its end, but ourselves among others still hoped for some 
recompense when we saw acres of purple Heather expanded to 
the sight, and giving us whiffs of its sweet perfume when a gleam 
of sunshine lit up the hills. These hopes, we fear, will be blighted. 
Drenching rain and cold winds prevail as we write, and although 
our hives are teeming with bees, they cannot work ; and although 
the heathery expanse is purple on the near hillside, there is no 
genial heat to cause honey to flow in the blossoms. Then what 
reward has the bee-master had beyond the careless and the 
ignorant ? During the season of gloom his bees have been made 
to pay for the attention bestowed on them by having work 
apportioned to each hive according to its strength, such work con¬ 
sisting of the building of combs, the drawing-out of foundation, 
the contribution of frames of brood and eggs by the stronger to 
the weaker colonies, and in a very few well-favoured districts 
both super and extracted honey were obtained in some abundance 
during the early summer, when the fine w’eather prevailed. 
Lincolnshire stands first among the well-favoured counties of 
the current season. Nine-tenths of the honey exhibited at South 
Kensington came from Lincolnshire, collected in the nick of time 
from the fields of Mustard and similar flowers. 
One other drawback has to be added this season to the many 
others caused by a long period of showery weather. It has been 
a season especially favourable to the propagation of the aphis 
tribes. Trees and shrubs have been literally eaten up by vermin, 
the Hops more especially. The secretions of these vast armies 
of insects form what is called honeydew. Bees have collected it 
during the intermittent gleams of sunshine, and mixed it with the 
little honey they could obtain. Thus much honey which has been 
on exhibition tables and for sale has been the colour and con¬ 
sistency of thin treacle, having a slightly bitter taste, and causing 
a slight irritation of the throat. It was, as far as w r e can remember, 
in the year 1877 or 1878 when during a similarly rainy season 
honeydew was collected in great quantities, and much honey 
spoiled. An avenue of Limes was near our hives, and the bees 
managed to secure a certain amount of beautiful honey, but so 
much of the dark-coloured honeydew was scattered through the 
combs that w r e could not employ the extractor without spoiling all. 
We have now taken a retrospective glance at the season ; we 
have confined our remarks to the doings of the bees and the 
bee-keeper. Altogether the season has, as we have shown, been 
a most discouraging one. Yet the science, for it is a science, of 
bee-keeping is rapidly gaining ground, and bee-keepers’ associa¬ 
tions have during the past year multiplied exceedingly. Shows 
have been held in all parts of the kingdom, and to judge by the 
enthusiasm awakened by the sight of the various manipulations 
with living bees, by the numerous questions asked by intelligent 
visitors, and by the success of tradesmen in all parts of the country 
who have established a business for the manufacture and sale of 
bee-keeping appliances, it is very certain that the day is not far 
distant when foreign honey will be driven out of the market, and 
the culture of bees become a national industry. To those who 
have only during the present season begun bee-keeping we would 
say, Do not be put out of heart by one bad summer. One really 
good year wdll make up for the disappointment of previous bad 
ones; and taking the average return in five or seven seasons for 
our labour and capital, bee-keeping will decidedly give a better 
per-centage on expenditure than that given by many other invest¬ 
ments. This is only considering the subject in a pounds- shillings, 
and pence light, without taking into account the pleasure the 
possession of a few stocks of bees gives to a man fond of natural 
history, to whom apiculture becomes a delightful hobby—a per¬ 
petual source of enjoyment.—P. H. P, 
THE SOUTH KENSINGTON BEE AND HONEY 
SHOW. 
[Conclusion of Report.] 
Amongst modern bee-appliances the article termed a “ rack ” has 
come into very general use wherever the 1 lb. and 2 lb. sections are 
used. It is merely a frame for holding together the sections on the 
top of the stock hive, allowing sufficient space beneath for the free 
passage to and fro of the bees. To these most necessary adjuncts 
to the apiary Classes 10 and 11 were devoted, the former to those 
suitable for bar-frame hives, the latter to those adapted to straw 
skeps. The two classes contained thirty-one entries ; and although 
of necessity a great similarity prevailed, yet in several cases we 
noticed improvements over former years, especially in the manner of 
binding together or tightening the sections. The preferable plan 
appears to be by means of the wedge rather than the elastic band, 
which is liable to split and crack and requires constant renewal, 
while the wedge is simple and lasting, being also most easily mani¬ 
pulated. In several exhibits we noticed a bad principle which should 
always be avoided—viz., placing the rows of sections too near to 
allow of the insertion of the fingers in order to withdraw any single 
section when filled, and to replace it with another, with little or no 
disturbance of the bees. 
In the honey classes, 12 to 20, the display was by no means equal 
to that of last year either as regards quantity or quality; taking 
into consideration, however, the cold and wet season, we were agree¬ 
ably surprised by the exhibits in several of the classes, and parti¬ 
cularly by the large quantity of comb honey from Lincolnshire, 
without which the Show would have proved all but a failure in this 
department. The bee-keepers of that county were fortunate in the 
large breadth of land devoted to the cultivation of Mustard, during 
the blooming of which the fine weather enabled the bees to revel in 
its golden flowers. The quality of the honey derived from this plant 
is not of the finest quality, and it lacks the aroma and the pale 
golden colour of the white Clover honey. It is also said to granulate 
or become candied immediately after collection by the bees. Mr. 
Woodley’s first-prize glass super weighing 30 lbs. was one of the 
finest we ever remember to have seen. Some few of the prize 
sections were also well filled, evenly wrought, and of fine quality. 
The extracted honey was displayed in glass jars of improved shape, 
and well secured by metal caps. In quality it was equal to that of 
former years, and very far superior to the generality of adulterated 
trash sold in the chemists’ shops as pure honey. That great desi¬ 
deratum of bee-culture—a ready sale at remunerative prices for the 
honey produced at home—if not already attained is, there can be no 
doubt, in a fair way of accomplishment. _ 
The classes for comb foundation were fairly well filled, and the 
Judges evidently preferred the natural-based to the flat-bottomed by 
awarding the prizes to the former, Messrs. Abbott making a clean 
sweep of all the prizes. 
