October 23,1880. ] JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 407 
store purposes. They should be given corn daily, with common table 
salt mixed with it, not once or twice, but continually, and powdered 
sulphate of iron once a week, mixed in the same manner, to supply 
the blood with the red globules which almost entirely disappear where 
death proceeds from the presence of flukes. To prevent the develop¬ 
ment of flukes when the sheep were put on low feeding land in the 
summer, without any other food, sow manure-salt broadcast over the 
pasture before allowing the sheep to graze. Two cwt. or three cwt. 
per acre was sufficient. If the sheep were kept for the winter on 
doubtful pastures, sow the salt spring and autumn as well. It was 
well known to be impossible to give sheep the fluke-rot in salt marshes 
over which the tide flows. The insect, or entozoon, might be almost 
described as a fresh-water fish, so nearly does it resemble a fish’s 
shape. In conclusion, Mr. Heath said he felt convinced that if these 
measures were systematically carried out, there was no reason why 
there should be greater mortality among sheep than any other live 
stock, and that if they were generally adopted the youngest farmer 
present would never live to see a repetition of the disastrous season 
through which they had just passed.” 
QUEEN ENCASEMENT—MAKING THE MOST OF 
WEAK STOCKS. 
Whether encasement of queens is of one or of two kinds is a 
question to which perhaps no bee-keeper is able to give a thoroughly 
satisfactory answer. 
It is probably true that at times queens are “ balled ” by their own 
bees for the purpose of making impossible any attack by aliens 
which have been added or have added themselves to their number; 
but for myself I have of this never had any satisfactory proof. 
In uniting blacks to Ligurians, although I have many times had 
to release the queen, I have never found that the yellow-banded 
bees formed the enclosing mass, which should at least have hap¬ 
pened occasionally according to the theory of defensive encase¬ 
ment. Yet we must remember that this theory has been advanced 
by some of the most observant amongst apiarians, while we all 
are occasionally met by such unexpected behaviour (apparently 
vagaries) in the workers towards the queens, that we feel as yet 
in the dark without a shred of explanation to offer. Our diffi¬ 
culties notwithstanding, it is not too bold to say that dissatis¬ 
faction is almost if not quite always the reason of the trouble. 
The past spring has apparently been remarkable for the unusual 
number of encasements occurring in hives which have been in no 
way disturbed. Of the embarrassments of this order which I 
have this year encountered, two at least seem worth recording as 
showing that bees will often bear with a queen that they know to 
be imperfect while they have no chance of getting a better, and 
anything which helps to explain the reasons of queen-rejection is 
of value as possibly leading up to some improvement in queen- 
introduction. 
The Cyprian queen which Mr. Jackson presented to the Associa¬ 
tion I was asked to “ have and to hold ” for the Association and for 
apiculture. This queen had had the wings on the left side removed. 
She was introduced to a small stock without difficulty, and was 
quickly built up into strength. She laid magnificently, and no 
queen could have discharged her duties in a more queenly fashion, 
lioyal cells were started, and frame after frame was removed in 
exchange for foundation to utilise the cells and keep my wingless 
Cyprian contented, lest in an attempt at swarming in my absence 
she should be lost. Yet ovipositing went on so rapidly, and queen 
cells were so constantly produced, that I moved her stock and put 
the mother into another hive on the old spot with a couple of 
frames of hatching brood, thinking that the bees would conclude 
that swarming was over, and so settle down to storing. But it 
was not so ; queen cells continued as before to poke out their bell¬ 
like openings, whilst I began to be made anxious by noticing that 
the much-valued mother exhibited more and more decidedly the 
rickety gait which no one likes to see in a pet of the apiary. 
Eager to secure daughters, because I feared the loss of the mother, 
I continued to hatch these cells in nuclei, but I have had to pay 
the penalty. The queen at a later examination was found encased. 
It was too late, and probably would have been useless had it been 
earlier to try her in another hive. She is gone, and an unmated 
successor remains. I happily have a good number of her regal 
children for drone-raising in the spring (for the latter, be it remem¬ 
bered, will be pure even if misalliances have occurred), while 
another queen from a distinct portion of the island of Cyprus, 
and imported direct by Mr. Jackson, is going in fine order into 
winter quarters, and will, it is hoped, supply many brides to the 
drones aforesaid. My limited knowledge of Cyprians led me to 
believe that the continued and exceptional production of queen 
cells was characteristic of the species or variety, whichever it may 
be determined to be ; but I now believe that some defect in the 
mother, known to the bees alone, determined them to remove her, 
and that her supercession and not swarming was the occasion of 
the continuous production of royal cells. The encasement was 
only the preliminary to her ejection, and a safeguard against the 
destruction of the maturing nymphs. Had 1 been able to prevent 
all of these hatching within the hive no doubt the queen would 
still have been tolerated, in the spirit of the woman who com¬ 
plained of a bad husband, but added apologetically “ he is much 
better than none at all.” 
It is my plan now to keep the population of my nuclei at work 
in nursing and raising bees by constantly giving them, as they are 
able to bear them, frames of eggs or larvae. In this way the nuclei 
instead of becoming weaker grow into strength, and are able by 
the time the queen comes into laying to brood all the eggs she can 
produce. These frames of eggs cost comparatively nothing, for in 
poor stocks the queen if worth keeping can always furnish more 
cells than the bees can cover, and by placing in the centre of such 
stocks an empty comb it will be furnished in a couple of days at 
most with a good patch of eggs. If this be allowed to remain 
ovipositing will be nearly suspended, the queen will become for 
a time comparatively idle ; but by removing it and giving it to 
queenless stocks, the bees of the latter will be provided with 
employment, and in the end much strengthened, while a frame of 
empty comb returned to the weak stock will evoke the energies of 
the queen. By repeating this plan queenless bees can be kept 
going and at work, and queens in weak stocks can be made almost 
as prolific as though they were in strong stocks. This explanation 
was necessary to make clear the second case to which I wish to 
refer. A nucleus possessed a queen which had not apparently 
mated, although she was between a fortnight and three weeks old. 
In order that it might not grow weak I gave it a frame of eggs 
and larvae. An hour or so after that husky buzzy roar which 
means an encased queen attracted my attention, and looking 
within I found the well-known compact mass, while every bee was 
fanning and running hither and thither so as to make confusion 
worse confounded. I broke up the crowd, found her majesty, 
smoked them till they must have felt like the boy in “ The First 
Whiff,” and placed the queen on the alighting board, but she was 
seized immediately. Releasing her again I carried her about 
20 yards and threw her into the air. In a few minutes she again 
sought an entrance, proving that she had previously flown for 
impregnation, but in a moment she was in the grasp of two or 
three and thrown to the ground. Thinking the bees knew what 
was best I dropped her into methylated spirit, and inserted a 
Cyprian cell, which has furnished a good mother now wintering at 
the head of a stock of unusual strength. That this case is in 
large part parallel with the previous one is, I think, apparent. 
Bees having normally but one queen, a means of getting rid 
of excess seems to be a necessity of their economy, and that 
means is for the mature insect encasement. Ants have many 
queens, and they accept at once those of any nest of their own 
species. In each case one fact in part at least explains the other. 
The only practical point that appears to come out of cases such 
as those I have related is this, that a queen is accepted very much 
more readily by a stock if the old queen has been in any way 
injured. Two accidental cases have occurred amongst my bees of 
a very startling kind proving this most conclusively, but upon 
these space forbids my saying anything now. May not, however, 
the difficulty experienced sometimes in introducing a new mother 
arise from some defect or injury possibly given during the time of 
caging ? And we must admit that since bees have the power of 
recognising every member of their own big household, and dis¬ 
tinguishing every stranger, it is quite likely that little matters 
which we cannot detect are to them as conspicuous and distinct 
as facial expression is to us.—F. Cheshire. 
SUCCESSFUL BEE-KEEPING. 
It is pleasant to write, read, and think of successful men and 
successful work. The success of the bee-keepers at Carluke in 
Lanarkshire has during the last fifteen years often commanded 
prominent notice. One or more of these bee-keepers annually 
send to me statements of their results. The report this year has 
come from Mr. James Rennie, who, I believe, is the largest bee¬ 
keeper in the locality. He says, “ This year (1880) has been a 
successful one, the best for profit that I have ever had in this part 
of the country. The bees did not gain much weight of honey 
from the fruit blossoms and Clover—just enough to keep them 
breeding. They made lots of workers. On being removed to tie 
heather they had three days of fine weather each week for a fort- 
