July SO, 1885. ] 
JOURXAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
99 
varieties are very similar, both are worth a place in any garden, but when 
wanted in quantity the last named should be grown on account of its 
cheapness. L. Harrisi requires exactly the same treatment as L. longi- 
florum. 
lilium lancifolium .—The varieties of this useful Lily are well worth 
in quantity for conservatory decoration from July until very late 
an the season. For flowering early the plants must be grown indoors and 
receive special treatment, f r their natural flowering time is late in the 
season. By very slight forcing the first season and greenhouse treatment 
me second they will flower afterwards naturally during the month indicated. 
Those growing outside should now be divided into two or three batcher. 
One batch should be placed in the greenhouse, another in a sunDy position, 
and a third in a northern aspect, which will insure a good succession. 
Frequently this variety may be seen when grown outside with its 
lower foliage turning yellow ; and very often the plants cannot 
be used for decoration on account of their unsightly appearance. In the 
majority of in-tinces this may be traced to injudicious watering, for it is 
unnatural for the foliage to turn prematurely yellow. If plants in this 
condition are examined the soil will be found too wet and the lower roots 
decaying. If this state of things is allowed to exist the bulbs will decrease 
m size and eventually die. 
Lilium avratvm .—After flowering this handsome variety must be 
tended with great care ; it must never be allowed to suffer through an in¬ 
sufficient supply of water, and must never be overwatered, or the 
roots will ro'. Watering should be so conducted that the roots remain 
fresh and working as long as possible, and even when the flower stems 
have died down they should be plunged in frames to save watering them 
and to prevent the soil becoming dry. Plants that have rooted well from 
the base of the bulbs will, if treated as described after flowering, have a 
mass of active roots before top growth is visible. 
FRAME HIVES. 
The golden rule of bee keeping is, Keep all your stocks 
strong; but this is too often forgotten, and bee-keepers, old 
and young alike, are apt to have more stocks than they can 
properly manage, and it cannot be too strongly insisted upon 
that one or two hives full of bees will be more profitable than 
the same amount of bees in five or six stocks. The two 
chief commercial products of bees are swarms and honey, 
and whichever of these two we find more profitable, we shall 
have to constantly bear in mind the golden rule; and it is 
one of the great advantages of the frame system that with 
a little care we can take advantage of the fact that the frames 
are interchangeable. Whether or not the standard frame is 
adopted, every bee-keeper will have a standard frame, for 
unless his bars fit any of his hives he will not be able to get 
the full advantage of the frame system. 
For instance, he may want to increase his stocks or sell 
some of them. In the fixed system all he could do was to 
get a swarm either naturally or artificially, and then feed 
the bees for ten days or a fortnight till they had filled the 
Five with comb. As the process of comb-building is very 
exhaustive, and as no young bees would be hatched to supply 
the place of those which had died for three weeks at least, 
unless the swarm was an early one and the honey glut in 
his district occurred after this three weeks, he would get 
little or no super honey. In the frame system a different 
plan is followed. We get a swarm as before, but instead of 
■allowing them to start fresh and be without any brood hatch¬ 
ing for three weeks, we give them one or more bars of brood 
from those hives which can best spare them, and so the 
swarm is practically a stock. 
The stocks from which the brood is taken, having been 
supplied with whole sheets of foundation, soon make good 
their temporary check, and this deprivation also helps to 
prevent them swarming. Again, we need not take so many 
bees away from the parent stock if we supply the swarm 
with brood; and a 4-lb. swarm with two bars of sealed brood 
would be superior to a 6 lb. swarm without any brood. On 
May 30th we made an artificial swarm which weighed lbs. 
and gave them one bar of sealed brood and three bars filled 
with foundation, and the bees were confined to these four 
bars and carefully fed. As the foundation was worked out 
the outside frame was put in the centre of the brood nest, 
and another bar with foundation put close to the division 
board, and so on till all the ten bars were worked out and 
filled with brood, and on July 6th a crate of sections was put 
on. Just at the time blossom was coming out, which in this 
part of Surrey is, together with the Sweet Chestnut, our 
chief honey harvest. 
If we could have spared two more bars of brood doubtless 
the hive would be even stronger than it is at present, but 
as the sections are being rapidly worked out there is not 
much reason to complain. 
But the tocsin of warning has been sounded, and the 
woeful experience of Mr. Woodbury having infected the whole 
of his apiary with foul brood brought forward against this 
system. It was the abuse and not the use of this system 
that caused the ruin of his apiary, and he must have been 
very much left to himself when he made this mistake. If 
a bee-keeper does not know whether he has foul brood in any 
of his hives, and then calmly goes and puts bars from an 
infected hive into his healthy hives, he has only himself to 
thank for his mistake, though having so sinned ourselves we 
are tolerant of others having done the same. 
Some years ago, very much against our better judgment, 
we were persuaded to take two bars out of a very strong 
healthy hive, put them into a nucleus, and take them to a 
bee show. In the evening the bars were returned and the 
queen caged for a day ; but the brood had got chilled, foul 
brood ensued and in a very virulent form, and despite all 
remedies—salicylic acid, menthol, &c., the bees gradually 
died. Moral—Save me from my friends.—A Surreyshire 
Bee keeper, 
BUYING SUBPLUS BEES FOR THE HEATHER—A WORD 
FOR SEEPS AND EXTRACTED HONEY. 
“A Lanarkshire Bee-keeper,” in tHe issue for July 9th, favourably 
criticises my scheme of buying surplus bees from the south after the end 
of their harvest, on purpose to increase my own at the moors, and takes 
a slight exception to the mode of packing, &c. 
When I said in 8 lb. lots in “light” packages, I did not moan small 
packages ; the person who will put them up and send them has sent me 
many swarms before and knows what he is about, and says that ventila¬ 
tion has not so much to do with success as plenty of room. Still I hold 
that if two sides of the package is cheese or wire-cloth a smaller one 
would do as well. The idea of your correspondent to put pieces of board 
in the box is a valuable one ; at the same time, I think pieces of cheese¬ 
cloth tacked from side to side and left a c’ear 2 inches from top and 
bottom would be better and lighter. 
Each package should be made for at least 8 lbs. of bees for two 
reasons—first, if the stock of bees have been working in supers there will 
be this quantity, and it would be highly inconvenient to divide them on 
the stands they had been working on ; secondly, as the expenses of 
transit must be kept down by using large boxes, a greater internal 
capacity can be had from the same weight of timber. Perhaps the most 
convenient box to use is what a hundredweight of Tate’s cube sugar is 
put up in, with bottom and lid replaced either with cheese or wire-cloth, 
with cloth tacked across 4 inches apart. Thus prepared, 12 lbs. of bees 
will travel safely in it during the hottest weather. The cloth top and 
bottom should be the sides in travelling. 
If only one or two packages are to be sent, the passenger train would 
be the best means of transit. If this is decided on all the packages should 
be fastened together, or each one will be booked separately, with a 
minimum charge on it; but if many are to be sent, 1 lb. or so of candy 
should be run in the four corners of the box and sent by goods train. 
The charges by goods train will average 2s. per cwt., while by pas¬ 
senger the charge will be about 14s, The only drawback to “goods” is 
they are a little longer on the road. 
The question of migrating bees has occupied much attention both in 
this country and America, and I have paid considerable attention to it. 
Bee-keepers over ten miles from the Heather cannot make much profit on 
ten or less stocks, while it is impossible for those at a great distance to 
attempt it owing to the numerous difficulties ; but by selling bees from 
an early to a late district at a price to be mutually agreed on, and the 
buyer to make what profit he can out of them, makes the plan simple and 
feasible. If the buyer used the same sized frames as the seller the price 
might be returned in sealed store combs of Heather honey for wintering ; 
but this I cannot advise, on the one hand because it might spread disease, 
on the other I should prefer to have all honey stored in supers, when it 
would command a better price, and only get sufficient honey in the brood 
combs to winter the reduced number of bee 3 . I mention this because the 
idea will be sure to suggest itself to many. 
I am pleased that your correspondent has given the same or similar 
idea in the pages of your valuable Journal which I had not seen. I am 
also pleased to see him speak a good word for the despised skep. Some 
