September 16, 1886. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
2G1 
The balling of queens is, in my opinion, entirely due to 
stranger bees ; at least, I have never witnessed a case other¬ 
wise. There are different phases of balling, but the most 
prominent one is when the bees favourable to the queen dis¬ 
cover one or more fractious bees they immediately ball her. 
If the disloyal bee or bees are kept outside the queen is safe, 
but if one or more get near her she is either maimed or stung 
to death. Therefore select a young queen and cage her for 
at least twenty-four hours, releasing her at dusk. 
Young bees at this season are doubtless not to be despised, 
neither are much older ones ; both make capital stocks. It is 
the care and judicious management of these that determines 
our future success with either—not their age. One great 
thing with all queens is to take care and not stimulate these 
to breed at this season. All their strength and egg-laying 
power is best to be conserved till spring, the season that is 
most required for profitable bee-keeping. 
If there is a paucity of bees in the hive containing a 
young queen, it rather taxes the powers of an aged one (in¬ 
tended to be deposed) to fill a few frames with brood, and 
place in the hive containing young queen intended for stock. 
Hives that require to be fed now, and not having a ventilating 
floor, should, immediately the feeding is past, have a clean 
dry board substituted, and, indeed, should be continued at 
intervals throughout the winter. A ventilating floor obviates 
all that, and conduces to having healthy bees, and many of 
them. 
Robber bees are now on the alert. Keep a strict watch 
over all weaklings, and contract entrances according to the 
strength of the colony. Be careful neither to spill about nor 
expose syrup nor feeders. These are the things that decimate 
the bees, and those who have for years advised the autumnal 
stimulative feeding of hives must have, in their ignorance of 
the proper management of bees, practised some or all of the 
above. For many years it has surprised me why bees re¬ 
quired feeding in autumn to stimulate breeding, when our 
own hives, as well as those in the whole district, were over¬ 
flowing with bees. A clergyman of my acquaintance used to 
say, “ Instead of requiring to feed to cause breeding I would 
rather feed to reduce the population of the hives, as they are 
by far too strong.” While I advise strong hives for stocks at 
this season, I must not forget that for many years my best 
and most profitable ones were simply nuclei occupying only 
two or three frames, only they had large stores, and were 
kept comfortable.—A Lanarkshire Bee-keeper. 
BEE-KEEPING IN CUBA. 
The honey bee waa introduced into Cuba from Spain at a very early 
period of its history ; and being a land of perpetual flowers,with no winter 
to impede their labour, they soon spread to all parts of the island, and 
bee-keeping has long since become one of the established industries. 
There is probably no other country of equal extent on the globe which 
has furnished an equal amount of honey and beeswax. The latter has for 
more than two centuries illuminated the churches of both this island and 
the mother country, besides furnishing the supply needed for other pur¬ 
poses, while the former has found a remunerative market in all civilised 
countries, chiefly in Germany, England, France, and the United States. 
A Cuban bee hive is very simple, consisting merely of a hollow palm 
log, or oblong wooden box, 10 to 15 inches in diameter, and 5 to 6 feet in 
length, open at both ends. These hives are arranged in a horizontal posi¬ 
tion, 3 or 4 feet high, supported on a framework of long bamboo poles 
resting on posts driven into the ground. When these hives are full of 
honey, the Cuban bee-keeper, after thoroughly smoking the bees, thrusts 
into one end of the hive a long sword-shaped knife and cuts the combs 
loose from the inside walls. He then inserts a long iron rod, flattened at 
the end and bent in the form of a right angle, clear into the brood-nest 
(which generally occupies about 15 inches in length of the centre of the 
hive), cuts the combs, and pulls them out one by one. He then performs 
the same operation on the other end of the hive, and so continues until 
the whole apiary is gone over. The combs are now submitted to pressure, 
and the wax separated from the honey. Of course, the honey so obtained 
is not very pure, being mixed with pollen, propolis, dead bees, and the 
juices of larvae, all of which tends to cause fermentation; Cuban honey 
(than which, when pure, there is no finer in the world) has gained an 
unenviable reputation. Native apiaries of from fifty to 300 or 400 
colonies are frequent, and sometimes as many as 2000 are kept in a single 
yard. The season for surplus honey extends from October to April, the 
height of the flow being from the middle of December to the middle of 
February ; but there is almost always a sufficiency for breeding purposes, 
and hence the Cuban bee-keeper never resorts to feeding. He “robs” 
his hives only once or twice during the year, and seems satisfied with an 
average production of 75 to 100 lbs. of honey, and 4 or 5 lbs. of beeswax 
per hive. 
Nearly three years ago the writer introduced for the Messrs. J. N. and 
P. Casanova, 100 colonies of Italians in moveable-frame hives, together 
with all the modern appliances necessary to insure success. They were 
located about eighteen miles south-east of Havana, eight miles from the 
ocean, and, we believe, constitute the first apiary on modern principles 
ever seen in the island of Cuba ; and to the gentlemen referred to belongs 
the credit of this great change in the systems of bee-keeping, from which 
promising results will undoubtedly be realised by many of their brethren 
in the near future. 
MODERN BEE-KEEPING versus THE OLD WAY. 
The year following the introduction of these bees, 113 colonies of them 
gave, in a period if four months, 43.000 lbs. of choice honey, being over 
380 lbs. per hive, or more than four times the amount produced on the old 
plan. The success of this experiment far exceeded the most sanguine 
expectations of the Casanova brothers, and, being gentlemen of means, 
they at onoe set about and completed one of the best appointed modern 
apiaries to be found in any country; and for the benefit of the readers I 
will briefly describe it. 
The apiary and buildings cover nearly three acres of ground, in the 
form of a rectangle, sloping to the south-east with a descent of 10 feet in 
100. Near the centre of this plot are two sheds, each 200 feet long, 
extending across the plot in parallel lines, east to west, and about 30 feet 
apart. Opening out from the northernmost of these sheds are six others, 
extending to the north line of the plot in parallel lines 25 feet apart. At 
the centre of the south one of the two first mentioned is another shed 
extending to the south 60 feet, to the extracting room. These sheds are 
all 9 feet wide, 6 feet high at the eaves, peaked palm-leaf roof about a 
foot thick. They are high and airy, affording perfect protection from sun 
and rain, and are always comfortable, even in the hottest weather. 
Along both sides of the sheds, just inside of the eave-lines, are the 
long rows of twcwtoiey hives, painted white, 5 feet apart, and, of course, 
facing outward, so that the flight of the bees in no way interferes with 
the workmen. The ground, all sloping toward the honey-house, makes 
the wheeling-in of the loads of well-filled combs comparatively easy. The 
extractor is a six-frame reversible, of heavy galvanised iron, and delivers 
the honey through a large pipe on top of the centre of a broad screen, 
covering the top of an evaporating tank holding 8000 lbs., where the 
honey is freed from any little pieces of comb, &c., which may have got in 
by accident. From the concave bottom of this tank an iron pipe extends 
down the sloping ground 60 feet further, to a broad covered shed, where 
the honey is received directly into the bungholes of the tierces by merely 
turning the large faucet on the end of the pipe. Along the lower side of 
this barreling shed, and coming close up to it, is the roadway, which is 
enough lower than the floor of the shed to admit of the rolling of the 
filled tierces into the carts ready for transportation to the depot. 
It will thus be seen that, from first to last, there is no dipping or lifting 
of honey required. We might go on and describe the uncapping arrange¬ 
ment, with their screen bottoms and troughs leading to the evaporating 
tank, and many other useful appliances of the large airy extracting room; 
but our “story” is already drawn out beyond the space we supposed 
necessary to tell it; so we will close by saying that everything is built 
substantial, ample, and yet simple, and contrasts strongly with some of 
the little “ cluttered up ” arrangements too often seen in our own country, 
—A. J. King (in The American Bee Journal). 
TRADE CATALOGUES RECEIVED. 
James Yates, Underbank, Stockport .—Catalogue of Bulbs. 
Ketten Freres, Luxembourg .—Catalogue of Boses. 
George Bunyard & Co., Old NuraerieB, Maidstone.— Descriptive Catahgue 
of Fruit Trees. 
Corry, Soper, Fowler & Co.—Trade List ofHorticultural Sundries. 
Wood & Son, Wood Green, London, N.— Li*t of Horticultural Specialities 
All correspondence should be directed either to “The Editor’ 
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members of the staff often remain unopened unavoidably. We 
request that no one will write privately to any of our correspon¬ 
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expense. 
Correspondents should not mix up on the same sheet questions relat¬ 
ing to Gardening and those on Bee subjects, and should never 
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