February $ 1893. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
123 
endeavour to have his samples of honey with all the virtues 
Nature gave them, because of the increasing imports of honey. 
According to the Americans’ own showing, nearly 50 per cent, of 
^eir honey is adulterated (vide “Gleanings” for January 15th, 1893). 
British honey, to command the market, must not be reduced in 
quality by foolish actions of the bee-keeper. 
Sugar Cleansing and Bees Dying. 
Professor Cook and others of America say that sugar undergoes 
a change after being fed to bees, and that it requires a “ferment ” 
to prevent it “ crystallising in the comb ; ” that “ pollen ” is the 
necessary ingredient, and unless that is supplied bees fed on syrup 
made from sugar will die during the winter. 
The proposition is absurd. I have always contended that sugar 
stored by bees contracts a slight flavour, probably through the 
influence of the honey sac by an abstruse secreting organ or organs. 
I could quote hundreds of cases to fully disprove such assertions, 
but a few will suffice. It is a well known fact that our bees 
gathered no pollen to speak of after the middle of August. Owing 
to stress of weather it was late in October and even November 
before favourable weather enabled me to reduce my stock. The 
bees were given away, and all were fed with pure sugar syrup at 
a time when there was no pollen to be gathered. According to 
the American gentlemen these bees should have been all dead ; but 
they are just the opposite, for all are healthy. The absence of 
pollen during the winter makes healthy bees. We do not remove it 
from the hives, as it ensures strong stocks and early swarms, but 
we feed with a few pounds of sugar in the autumn, and that is one 
cause of our stocks always being so healthy and easily wintered. I 
have not seen one speck of voided matter on or about any of my 
hives since shortly after I had them home from the Heather, and 
the winter has been both severe and protracted. If any ferment 
was added to honey or sugar the cells would burst, and the bees 
would die from dysentery. 
The cause of sugar-fed bees dying in America is not due to 
what is stated above, but to cold, arising from the condensed damp 
upon the hives, and a ventilating floor and porous crown would 
have prevented the fatality. 
Storing Honey. 
In the same number of “Gleanings” Mr. G. M. Doolittle asserts 
that the “ fleld bee gives her load to a young bee, and this young 
bee carries it to the sections.” This is mere hollow assertion. 
Until the young bee is five or six days old she is not capable of 
this work, and what if there be no young bees in the hive ? 
I have watched bees hundreds of times come direct from the 
fields and store their honey in the super comb. Moreover, 
I have repeatedly at the moors had bees which formed stocks made 
up from driven lots that could not be less than two months old 
and had no young bees. Yet on the resumption of work, after a 
prolonged idleness of three weeks, in five minutes after the bees 
began to come in I have on examination witnessed the newly 
gathered honey glistening in the cells ; and similarly with others 
treated in the spring for foul brood, when honey began to be 
gathered from fruit blossoms. In a previous article the same author 
asserts that the maximum life of the honey bees is forty days. 
Varieties of Bees. 
Mr. Benton has given a long dissertation on many varieties 
of bees to the North American Bee-keepers’ Association. My 
own opinion is that too much weight is put upon what he says 
being as applicable to bees in this country as in their native land. 
I have often alluded to that; we can only test bees properly when side 
by side with others in this country. Mr. Benton makes a mistake 
when he states the purest Italian Alp bees are to found round the 
cities of Modena, Parma, and Venice ; whereas those who have 
visited Italy and the Italian Alps have told us distinctly that the 
pure Italian Alp bee is only to be found in the Italian Alps, 
Switzerland, and not anywhere in Italy. He has, however, a good 
word to say on behalf of the Punic bees, describing them as being 
“ excellent honey gatherers.” In the same number, page 53, Mr. 
P. H. J. Baldensperger says, “ I have obtained 120 lbs. of ex¬ 
tracted honey in a honey flow of about twenty-eight days from the 
North Africans, but had to fly from their stings.” 
The savageness of bees under the management of people who are 
unacquainted with their temper cannot be accepted as a true criterion 
of their nature in a country where they are properly managed and 
understood by a truth-seeking and scientific people. The worst 
tempered bees I have had to deal with throughout the year were 
the original British bees. I have known them attack people, 
horses, and cattle a quarter of a mile from their apiary, and seldom 
could they be approached without being stung, and when at the 
Heather were perfect demons. Italians and Syrians were sometimes 
worse, but their spitefulness lasted a short time only. Punics also 
showed at the Heather a little inclination to be spiteful, but they 
were not so bad as any of the three mentioned. 
Strong attempts have been made from time to time by certain 
persons who had little or no practical experience with Punic bees 
to prejudice people against them, and I cannot free myself from 
thinking that the Editor of “ Gleanings ” has acted his part well, 
infallible as he strives to be. He has suppressed one or more 
favourable accounts of these bees, but gives full prominence to 
everything that is of a derogatory nature. He publishes a letter 
about Mr. Cowan, his portrait, and photograph of a manipulation 
with Punic bees, calculated in my opinion to impress people how 
spiteful they are, and adds that “ Comment on the picture by us is 
unnecessary further than to note how the natives prepare for 
war.” I entirely differ from the Editor’s views. The hives and 
operators stand in the foreground against a pallisade which sepa¬ 
rates the apiary from some houses. The hives appear to be narrow 
frame hives, holding perhaps about half a dozen frames. One of 
the operators stands with a bellows and smoker, the other stands 
behind the hive, having in one hand a frame partly filled and held 
by a grip of some sort, while the other hand, bare, is grasping 
another frame. Why he has to grip one frame with tongs and is 
risking his bare hand with another is not easily understood. 
Neither the detached frame nor the hive itself shows many bees. 
Mr. Thos. William Cowan has high eulogiums passed on him 
for four qualities, the last that he is the owner of 10,000 volumes 
of books. With one volume a day thirty years would be required 
to read them through. We had ample proof lately in these columns 
that Mr. Cowan did not know all that his journals contained. Does 
his library suggest the reason ? 
I will now turn my attention to the “ Bee-keepers’ Record ” for 
February, 1893. Its pages teem with information and queries on 
the two queens in one hive system. The Editor persists in claiming 
the novelty of the plan for Mr. Wells. He says Mr. Wells “is 
entitled to the fullest credit,” and goes on to say that it is not the 
doubling of swarms, as has been suggested by some critics of the 
two-queen system. The Wells’ system is practically our system. 
It was described years ago in this Journal and practised by us for 
well nigh half a century. I now challenge the Editor and defy him 
to prove the Wells’ system is “ novel ” or materially different from 
our plan of working two queens in one hive as I first gave it in 
these pages.—A Lanarkshire Bee-keeper. 
TRADE CATALOGUES RECEIVED. 
Brewin & Sons, Bawtry, Yorks.— Garden and Flower Seeds, 
H. Cannell & Sons, Swanley, Kent.— Floral Guide for 1893. 
Jones & Sons, Shrewsbury.— Vegetable and Flower Seeds. 
Henry Norton, Louth, Lincolnshire.— Dwarf Roses. 
•^•All correspondence should be directed either to “ The 
Editor ” or to “ The Publisher.” Letters addressed to 
Dr. Hogg or members of the staff often remain unopened 
unavoidably. We request that no one will write privately 
to any of our correspondents, as doing so subjects them to 
unjustifiable trouble and expense. 
Correspondents should not mix up on the same sheet questions 
relating to Gardening and those on Bee subjects, and should 
never send more than two or three questions at once. All 
articles intended for insertion should be written on one side of 
the paper only. We cannot reply to questions through the post, 
and we do not undertake to return rejected communications, 
“IVIonkey Tree” (.4, H.P.).—The very distinct Conifer, Araucaria 
imbricata, is commonly called the Monkey Puzzle, because of the 
difficulty the monkeys experience in climbing it, in consequence of the 
spiny appendages. 
iLvenue Trees {J. //.),—Of the trees in the list given on page 41, 
Horse Chestnut and Elm are best suited to the soil; and of evergreens, 
Finns austiiaca and Picea nobilis. In your first inquiry you did not 
state clearly the nature of the s'lil. 
