November 4, 1880. ] JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 429 
against 1,070,GOO,000 tbs. These are royal figures, expressive of the 
American trade in hog products. Hogs have declined about 20 cents, 
per 100 lbs. in the Chicago market, and the receipts at that point are 
running steadily below the corresponding time last year. 
THE BEE SEASON OF 1880. 
The bee season in Scotland has been, I believe, on the whole 
satisfactory to apiculturists, especially to such as have apiaries 
within easy reach of the Heather, that best of honey-producing 
autumn plants. But for this, however, the results in many dis¬ 
tricts would have been far from favourable. Such, at least, has 
been our experience in Midlothian. 
The past spring opened promising enough considering the sad 
condition in which the previous autumn found our stocks both as 
regards population and stores. Inauspicious weather supervened, 
however, and being somewhat prolonged breeding went on so 
slowly that in April little progress was perceptible, the older bees 
disappearing faster than the accession of the young from the 
brood cells, so that the weaker hives dwindled away simply from 
want of a sufficiency of bees to carry on the necessary work. 
More favourable weather followed in May and June, and breeding 
was again in full progress. Still swarmiDg was not so general as 
in ordinary seasons, and honey-gathering was extremely meagre. 
Summer honey-yielding blossoms were not so plentiful as usual, 
and as time went on appearances became even more gloomy ; so 
that bee-keepers like myself, who do not benefit by a proximity 
to white Clover-growing pasture lands, had a poor return of flower 
honey, and in some cases feeding had actually to be resorted to 
to prevent starvation. But another chance still remained. The 
Heather season was at hand. August commenced under auspicious 
circumstances ; good weather set in early in that month. The bees 
were forthwith dispatched with all haste to seek their fortune 
among the Pentland Hills, and retrieve if possible the short¬ 
comings of the summer, and not for many years has there been a 
fairer prospect of success. The Heath was rich and luxuriant, its 
purpled blossoms abundant and opening. Could the result under 
such circumstances, and with a continuance of good weather, be 
doubted 1 In a little over four weeks these comparatively empty 
hives were brought back to their summer stances laden with 
golden stores, some having gathered from 40 to 50 lbs. of honey. 
Scottish apiarians who have thus availed themselves of sending 
their hives to the moors and Heath-clad hills will find them, even 
after the appropriation of some well-filled supers, in splendid 
condition for wintering ; and it may be hoped that having at last 
obtained, on the whole, one good honey season, it may be the 
harbinger of a series of prosperous years to follow.— J. Lowe, 
Slateford House, Edinburgh. 
NOTES ABOUT BEES. 
Surely bees were never m a better state of health and spirits 
than they have been this October. It has not been necessary with 
me to feed more than one hive which I had plundered rather 
freely, and which had been disturbed by the union with it of the 
population of a stock of degenerate Italians, whose queen it was 
desirable to dispose of. At such times there is always some extra 
consumption of food ; yet even here 5 lbs. of sugar was enough to 
make-up what was needed, because of the surprising quantity of 
Ivy blossom honey which all hives are storing as busily as in 
summer-time. I see cells on the outskirts of the combs that had 
been quite empty glistening with this honey, which seems to 
abound in unusual quantities. Of course breeding is going on 
largely, and pollen is taken in in fair quantities. The honey itself 
is simply unsuited for human food, but good enough evidently for 
bees ; perhaps there is something of the nature of a cordial in its 
pungent acrid flavour, which may be specially useful to bees at 
this time of year. 
My experience this year with long expanding bar-framed hives 
holding as many as sixteen frames has led me and others to think 
that little is left to be desired by the practical bee-keeper. Mine, 
I think, are too narrow and not deep enough. Large frames 
would answer better ; but the principle is, I am persuaded,‘a good 
one. I have four such hives in operation, and although each 
began the year with little more than a pint of bees, they have in 
every case filled every comb first with brood, then with honey, 
and given me some good comb besides in supers. Two of them 
swarmed, one of the swarms being lost during my absence from 
home, but apparently with little diminution of the population. A 
good size of frame would be 14 inches clear width, and 9 inches 
in depth. In winter dummy frames at each end reduce the home 
nest to seven or eight combs. The ends should be filled with 
shavings or paper loosely crumpled up. There is practically no 
limit to the length of these hives, which may be made to hold 
twenty frames in a good honey district, to which the bees can 
have access given over and above the brood nest from time to 
time as they need room. It is only necessary to shift the dummies 
to the right and left, for which reason they ought not to be 
fitted into a groove, but should be allowed to slip easily along the 
hive ledge. The frames should be covered over either with the 
quilt or narrow strips of wood a quarter of an inch thick, so as 
not to uncover more of the combs than is necessary for the purpose 
of access to any part of them at any particular time.—B. & W. 
BRITISH BEE-KEEPERS’ ASSOCIATION. 
The quarterly conversazione of this Association was held on the 
27th ult., and fully maintained the character of these interesting and 
useful gatherings. The Itev. Stewart Walford having been called to 
the chair, Bev. E. Bartrum, the essayist of the evening, proceeded to 
read a paper upon the Stewarton hive, which was at once excellent 
in matter, structure, and expression. Having traced the history of 
the Stewarton from the octagon box of the middle of the seventeenth 
century to the form it has reached under the improving modifications 
of the “ Renfrewshire Bee-keeper,” he proceeded to explain, by 
the assistance of a set of hives, the method of management, pointing 
out the elasticity of the Stewarton with the advantages it possessed 
in preventing the intrusion of the queen into the honey boxes, both 
by the use of slides wide of the centre, and the presence of a super 
with elongated or filled cells immediately above the proper scene of 
her activities. The good results arising from an external case in 
promoting ventilation and screening from wide fluctuations of tempe¬ 
rature were pointed out, and the great control over swarming by 
ekeing and giving space below when required by an additional body 
box was well explained. Mr. Bartrum recounted his fine results with 
Stewartons, which were in advance by much of those he obtained 
with ordinary bar-framers, and referred with evident satisfaction to 
the doings of the acknowledged Stewarton champion, the “ Ren¬ 
frewshire Bee-keeper.” He also expressed a strong opinion that 
the attention the hive required was less than that demanded by most, 
and that therefore the Stewarton was the hive for the busy man. 
The paper closed by some stirring lessons for humanity drawn from 
the thrift, the earnestness, and the perseverance of the wondrous bee. 
The discussion was started by Mr. Cowan, who stated that after 
ten years’ experience with the Stewarton he could merely regard it 
as an excellent hive, taking a sort of middle place between the skep 
and the bar-frame. He could not agree that the Stewarton was less 
troublesome than frame hives ; on the contrary, he had found all 
manipulations with them to be slow. The advantage of ekeing as 
preventing swarming was easily reached in ordinary moveable-comb 
hives by giving space in the centre of the brood nest when a dis¬ 
position to swarm would be quite as thoroughly controlled. He 
thought the large quantity of honey that the Stewarton system 
required to be gathered before boxes could be removed a disad¬ 
vantage. He stated that a crate of twenty-one sections would keep 
any stock busy if the sealed store was taken away as soon as com¬ 
plete, and that the honey would be the better for this prompt removal. 
Mr. Cowan then explained a plan he had employed this autumn to 
save trouble in obtaining sealed store for wintering stocks. He 
removed a queen and then fed the bees freely, keeping the hive arti¬ 
ficially at a high temperature. Perfect slabs of comb, every cell 
sealed, were soon at command, and these were divided amongst other 
stocks as needed. 
Mr. Cheshire pointed out that he had made every comb moveable 
in the Stewartons he used by adding frame sides but not bottoms 
to the outside bars, making these triangular in section. He said 
that a few years since it was common to so manage the frame hive 
that it was practically inelastic. Swarms large or small were alike 
put within, and but few dreamt of reducing the internal capacity 
under any circumstances, not even in winter. The Stewarton, on 
account of its expansibility, would have over frame hives, thus 
handled, no inconsiderable advantage; but the frame hive as we now 
find it in good apiaries can be adjusted with much greater nicety 
than the Stewarton, which must piass at once from one body box to 
two. He gave some account of the nature of the instinct which 
forbade swarming with an unfilled eke, and pointed out that frame 
hives gave much better opportunities for enlarging the brood nest in 
spring to promote breeding than did the Stewarton. He said that 
bees true to mathematics gave their brood nest a globular form, 
as this figure had the largest mass for its surface, and thus was most 
economical of heat and labour. "When this form was interfered with 
every effort was made to restore it. Single Stewarton boxes would 
winter well, especially if surrounded by chaff and supplied with pea 
flour cake, the benefit of which could not be over-estimated. He 
related some good results in Stewartons from very small lots of bees, 
which he thought he could hardly have reached with any other form 
(a statement with which Mr. Cowan hardly agreed), and closed by 
saying in reference to uniting swarms that some carefully conducted 
French experiments had seemed to show that bees benefit by massing 
until about 12 tbs. is reached, but beyond this uniting results in loss. 
The Rev. G-. Raynor stated that although he had found greasing 
the slides with tallow at first an advantage, yet the bees soon re¬ 
moved it, and propolised as freely as upon clean wood. The Stewarton 
