November 16, 1882. ] JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 463 
encouraging as much fresh growth as can have exposure to light, 
but avoid overcrowding and overcropping as the greatest of evils. 
PLANT HOUSES. 
Epacrises. —These are coming into flower, and if encouraged with 
a slight heat will soon be in full beauty. They are fine for con¬ 
servatory decoration, their long shoots being excellent for cutting, 
and especially useful in large vases. In flower now are Ardentissima, 
Salmonea, Lady Panmure, The Bride, Devoniana, Eclipse, hyacinthi- 
flora, and its vars. carminata and candidissima ; miniata splendens, 
Vesuvius, and Viscountess Hill. 
Heaths. —These, though not so accommodating as Epacrises, are not, 
however, injured by employment for a few weeks when in flower in 
the conservatory, provided they are kept in a light, airy, cool part of 
the house, and not too crowded, the last spoiling more plants than 
anything else. Some of the best for winter are Erica hyemalis, E. 
gracilis autumnalis, melanthera, persoluta alba, ventricosa vars., 
caffra, colorans, grandinosa, scabriuscula, regerminans, candidissima, 
mammosa pallida, cerinthoides coronata, and Lambertiana rosea. 
Lachenalias .—These are useful plants, pretty alike in foliage and 
flowers, they being easily grown. A position on a shelf near the glass 
should be given them, and, growing as they now are freely, a little 
weak liquid manure should be given occasionally. They do well in 
sandy loam, and do not require a great deal of pot room. A dozen 
bulbs can be grown well in a 6-inch pot; six or eight in a 5-inch. 
Tropceolums of the tuberous section, as tricolorum, Jarratti, and pen- 
taphyllum, are not so common as they deserve to be, few plants being 
more effective when well managed. Early training is necessary, so 
as to cover the bottom part of the trellis with young growth before 
the shoots get to the top, or there will afterwards be a difficulty in 
furnishing them well at the base. They do not require a great 
amount of pot room, ought never to be overpotted, and should not be 
overwatered, just keeping the soil moderately moist, or allow to 
become fairly dry, and then afford a supply of water. 
THE ART OF BEE-KEEPING.—No. 2. 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
The basis of successful bee-keeping is an accurate knowledge of 
the instincts and habits of bees. Matters of detail, such as their 
anatomical structure, the mathematics of comb-building, and the 
peculiar harmony between the structure of flowers and the bees 
that fertilise them, can scarcely be expected to occupy space in a 
series of papers purposely limited to what is of most practical 
importance to bee-keepers. Students of natural history desirous 
of entering into these most interesting details are recommended to 
such works as those of Huber, Bevan, Darwin, and Lubbock. "We 
meantime confine ourselves to outlines of practical importance. 
First of all we invite attention to that feature in the honey bee 
which makes its domestication possible—viz., its perfect sociality. 
While other bees and -wasps are only semi-social—that is, exist as 
colonies during only a part of the year, the hive bee maintains its 
social habits from one season to another. While the queens of 
wild or bumble bees and wasps exist by themselves during the 
winter, and develope all the instincts and powers necessary to 
originate colonies during the following spring, the queens of the 
hive bees cannot exist apart from the workers, and possess no 
power of building, foraging, or even of nursing their own progeny. 
In harmony with this special character the hive bee finds a high 
temperature necessary for all active operations inside the hive, in 
this respect resembling warm-blooded animals. Ordinary tem¬ 
peratures soon chill both bees and queens, and cause the death of 
their young ; w hile under these same conditions the wild bees and 
wasps exist even in a solitary state, their young hatching without 
any brooding heat. These facts have an important bearing on the 
question of hives, their material, capacity, and management. 
Notwithstanding the immense importance of the queen in a 
colony as the mother bee and centre of attraction, the workers are 
the agents on w r hose labours and instincts the colony is maintained, 
and to which the bee-keeper mainly looks for the results of his 
attention. Let us therefore shortly consider the ways of the 
workers, leaving the queen to he dealt with in a special chapter. 
The worker is the typical bee, the bee of our childhood, the “ busy 
busy bee” of the poet, the bee for whom both queen and drones 
exist, and without whom they would cease to be. They are the 
active agents in all the offices w r hich bees seem destined to fill in 
the economy of Nature, the unwearied producers of the honey and 
wax we so much prize, and seem specially destined for the important 
work of fertilising blossoms. Numerically and potentially they are 
far the most important inmates of the hives, and the bee-keeper’s 
aim should be to discover in what ways be can best assist them in 
their willing work. Nature must be studied with a view to giving 
her assistance—all attempts at thwarting her must prove ruinous. 
Such sentiments do not, however, give any encouragement to the 
let-alone system of bee-keeping, which is so often boasted of as the 
more natural one. In it little or no assistance is afforded to the 
bees—calamities are allowed to come as they may, stocks perish of 
queenlessness or disease, a greater or less per-centage are allowed to 
die of starvation every year, and the survivors are cramped for 
room to store their supplies, till they are forced to swarm and swarm 
again as they never do in a state of nature. Let us remember 
that reason is superior to instinct, and that the latter often finds 
itself in straits and ready to accept help from the former. 
"Worker bees are hatched in about twenty-one days from the egg 
—viz., three days in the egg, four days as a larva, and fourteen 
days in the scaled state. They do not generally leave the hive 
till about a week old. As in the grub state they do not seem to 
void any excrement, their bowels are generally pretty much dis¬ 
tended with the excreta of their food, and their first flight seems 
mainly with a view to clear themselves. Bees bred in winter, as 
from untimely feeding, are thus in danger of perishing either through 
distension of the bowels or while endeavouring to take the needful 
flight. The early stages of the bee’s life are occupied with the 
labours inside the hive: preparing and supptying the pap for the 
numerous larvae, sealing them up when about to change into 
chrysalides, cleaning out the cells just vacated by hatching bees, 
feeding the queen, secreting wax, and building combs. As they 
grow older they partially lose the instinct for such employments, 
and probably also the power, and betake themselves to the fields 
as foragers for the community, or take their turn as sentries and 
defenders. Thus old bees that happen to become queenless often 
seem either indifferent to their loss or unable to avail themselves of 
the chance of raising a new queen, and in this queenless state will 
often keep together, and carry on their foraging for months, or 
until they dwindle away altogether. 
Each of the operations above referred to seems to be the result 
of a special and highly endowed instinct. We have already noticed 
how their social instincts keep bees together as a colony, preserve 
the due relations between the queen and the workers, and award to 
each individual a share in working for the common good. The same 
instincts work in apparent discord when the time comes for casting 
swarms, when the colony is split and split again as swarm after 
swarm departs. But there is no contrariety: all is done without 
discord or strife, all is done for the common weal. The hees, 
whether they realise it or not, are, in the act of swarming, making 
the very best provision for the continuance of their species. Were 
there no swarms there w r ould soon be no bees, for it is only a 
question of time when every colony would perish from one or other 
of the evils of queenlessness, disease, or robbery. 
In considering the attitude of the bee-keeper towards these social 
instincts w r e must remember that bees are kept by us in circum¬ 
stances not altogether natural. Our hives are necessarily very 
different from the abodes naturally selected by the bees themselves. 
In regard to these, it should be our aim to furnish a habitation so 
arranged as to encourage every object for which bees cluster together, 
due provision being made for warmth, ventilation, and storage. 
We must remember also that circumstances may arise -where instinct 
will be powerless, such as queenlessness or disease; or that circum¬ 
stances alter matters, as when a large number of colonies are kept 
close to each other, in which case the production of drones sufficient 
to fertilise all the queens of a neighbourhood may be restricted to 
a single stock or to a few from each. In regard to swarming, 
too, it should be remembered that bees learn nothing from previous 
experience, those of a former year having long since perished. 
They have no idea how long or how short the honey season in 
any locality may last, consequently they may and do often indulge 
the swarming instinct to an excessive extent, and that, too, at a 
season when, in their own interest as well as ours, it should either 
be strictly controlled or altogether prevented. 
In like manner the bee-keeper should take into account the 
other instincts of his bees. The provident instinct should be en¬ 
couraged to the utmost, room for storage being provided at all 
times slightly in excess of immediate requirements, so that no 
idle clustering bees may be found hanging about the hive entrances, 
and the bee-keeper should know how to aid his bees by timely 
