May 31, 1888. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
455 
must once more emphatically warn him against taking measures to 
compel the bees to work in supers before they are really strong 
enough to do so, having regard to the fact that swarms of this year 
will form the stocks of next. A swarm may be forced into supers 
by contracting the brood nest, but the result of such an injudicious 
manipulation is that the queen has not sufficient cells to hold the 
eggs which she should deposit, and as a consequence there are not 
sufficient young bees hatching out from time to time to take the 
place of those which issued from the stock and formed the swarm 
when it was first hived. Xo brood chamber should ever consist 
of less than ten standard frames, and in many instances—in fact 
in almost every case, and under nearly all circumstances—a hive 
of double that size will in the end be more profitable. 
We grant that if the old stock from which the newly hived 
swarm has issued has been confined to a small brood chamber, that 
the swarm will be comparatively small, and that therefore the bees 
wiU be less able to raise all the brood which they would have the 
power to rear if the swarm was of proper strength ; but we maintain 
that to hive a swarm which has issued from a stock located in a 
hive of the capacity of fifteen or twenty standard frames in a 
brood chamber containing eight or ten frames of that size only, is 
a suicidal policy, and against the weight of reason. A swarm should 
be hived on never less than ten standard frames, and when the 
swarm is a large one such a confined brood chamber is far too 
small. 
Early swarms hived in large hives give, in our experience 
greater results than the same swarms hived in hives of small 
capacity. It may be that swarms hived in small brood boxes are 
ready to work in supers before swarms which have a larger space 
to occupy, but in the former case there are fewer bees to go to the 
fields, and fewer bees hatching out to take the place of those dying 
or getting lost than in the latter. With small swarms and with 
late swarms the same line of argument hardly applies, because in 
the one case it will be as much as a small swarm can do in the 
course of the honey season to occupy fully the space given to it; 
and in the other, because no sooner has a late swarm filled the 
space already given to it than the season is at an end, and con¬ 
sequently the constantly hatching bees will never have a chance of 
going to the fields and bringing in their loads of honey. 
The moral to be drawn is clear. Large swarms hived in 
capacious hives are the most profitable. Small swarms are, for 
honey gathering in the current season, practically worthless, but 
are excellent for forming stocks for another year, while late swarms 
are neither valuable for honey gathering purposes nor for the 
purpose of forming another season’s stocks, unless special attention 
is devoted to their management. By uniting small swarms and 
late swarms, and thus forming from say every two or three swarms 
one strong swarm, the evil may be partially remedied, but happy 
is the man who has early swarms from stocks in large hives. Bee¬ 
keepers cannot nowadays afford to expend as much time on the 
care of individual stocks as was the case when honey was saleable 
at high prices ; the object must now be to produce the largest 
possible quantity at the smallest possible cost. In a question of 
profit and loss the bee-keeper must watch small matters in order to 
gain his end, and if there is one thing more important than another 
to a practical bee-keeper, it is to either prevent swarming alto¬ 
gether, or else to take measures to insure that his swarms shall be 
both early and strong in numbers, and headed by prolific queens, 
and not by worn-out dowagers Avho are compelled to lead off a 
swarm by the importunate demands of their children, who desire 
the population of the colony to increase at a greater rate than 
the powers of the queen enable her to give them the means of 
accomplishing.— Felix. 
NOTES ON BEES. 
Ox the 18th of May the day temperature had risen in a week’s 
time to a mean of 50“ Fahr. from one of 40“ Fahr., and on the 
next day the temperature rose to 80°, culminating in a severe 
thunderstorm with heavy rain, and it continued thundering for 
twenty-four hours. Owing to the sudden but welcome rise in 
temperature the bees for the first time tliis year could venture out 
without being chilled, as they Im'e been so much subjected to the 
entire spring throughout, and they took advantage of it, working' 
in fine style for the first time, and enabled us to form a ptroper 
estimate of their forwardness. Some of them are in readiness for 
swarming, and we hear of many hives expected to SAvarm daily,, 
which have received no feeding whatever ; this is sufficient to 
warrant us in condemning the manipulating and meddling system. 
Aproijos of the question of introducing queens, I may state that 
before introducing a valuable queen I give the queen'less bees a 
piece of comb containing eggs and larA’ai. If the bees start queen 
or^ royal cells I give them the queen at once; if they refuse to 
raise royal cells I decline introducing her, as there is not only a 
risk but a great likelihood that the queen Avill be killed. In all 
cases of hives having young unfertilised queens, I provide them 
with a piece of comb containing eggs and larvoc, in case the queen 
may be lost during her wedding tour. 
The simplest plan of doing so, and to see at a glance Avithout 
opening the hive, is to put the comb containing the eggs inside a 
clear tumbler on the top of the hive over the centre of the cluster 
of bees. 
Sivarming will soon be general, and the eye should never be, 
long absent from the bees, as owing to the nature of the year 
many hives will make an effort to raise queens which Avill swarm 
in spite of every care taken, and every system supposed to prevent 
it. The loss of a SAvarm means the entire loss of a honey harvest,, 
and nothing said to prevent it or assurance that they Avill not 
swarm should cause the owner to relinquish watch OA'er his 
favourites until the honey season is past, when young fertile queens 
should be given to every stock.—A Laxarksiiire Bee-keeper. 
•jj* 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 un¬ 
avoidably. 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 communica¬ 
tions. 
Hyacinth Bulbs {Spalding ').—We haA’e received some Hyacinth 
bulbs, but no letter pertaining to them. 
Insects In Peach House (J. P .).—The insects sent belong to 
the .aphis tribe, a hand magnifier revealing the honey tubes, which may 
indeed be perceived by the naked eye, and Avhich serA’e as a “ bond of 
union ” between ants and aphides. The particular siiecies appears to be 
that called A. ulmaria, and occurs on various plants in and out of 
houses. It has been conjectured that in the winter months this and 
some other aphides that infest fruit trees retire to the Ioav plants of 
fields or gardens Avhich are green during the winter, and come back to 
the trees in spring. This suggests the application of some such prepara¬ 
tion as the wash of soap and petroleum often recommended, Avhich 
would render the branches distasteful to the aphides returning; also, 
they would doubtless be kept off or destroyed by tobacco water. 
Profitable Use of Blg-ht soil (A Thirty-years Ecader).-— 
Flowers are grown in such abundance by expert cultiv.ators and in 
private gardens that an inexperienced person coulil scarcely expect to 
compete succes.sfully Avith them in the market supply, and you would 
perhaps do better by growing early Potatoes, Peas, Kidney Beans, 
Strawberries, Cos Lettuces, &c., taking cognizance of the markets, .and 
growing those for which there is .a demand and most likely to yield 
remunerative prices. The dryness of the soil m.ay, to a great extent, be 
overcome by mulching ; indeed it would be better to use the manure as 
a mulch than apply great quantities to the soil. Early flowers would 
be most likely to p.ay, and those you name Avould grow very well, but 
AALether, having bulbs to purch.asc, you Avould find the culture profit¬ 
able or not, is an open question. We neither advise you to make a 
ch.ange nor dissuade you from doing so. 
