September 10, 1885. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
239 
Used ; if cane sugar, rather thin than thick at this season, 
without either salt or vinegar. Thirty pounds at least is 
necessary for a hive to stand the winter, and it is better to 
let a hive have the whole frames than contracting them too 
much. Cushions filled with chaff are not nearly so good for 
covering hives as long grass thoroughly dried, or even straw ; 
either of the two are superior to cloths or chaff cushions. 
REARING QUEENS. 
“ Basil” wishes for some information about raising queens. 
This is best and easiest done with moveable-combed hives. 
With straw hives a great deal of cutting comb and fitting 
into little frames is necessary, which cannot be carried to 
the same extent as with frame hives. The best hive for 
raising queens is the sectional hive, but it is best in the hands 
of an expert. To raise queens to supersede old and unfer¬ 
tilised ones, a good hive containing a prolific queen should 
be selected and pushed forward, so that swarming will take 
place some weeks earlier than is usual. After it has been 
swarmed artificially, or has done it naturally, leave it alone 
until the queens begin to pipe, or till about the tenth day 
after swarming; then have in readiness either little boxes 
to hold three frames or hives, having two to four entrances, 
with divisions between each lot of bees. In my own case I 
have hives which I keep for transferring frames and bees to 
from more bulky hives when taking to the Heather. These 
hives have two, and some four entrances, which open and 
close with a slide, and of course division boards are necessary 
for the number of nuclei, which is simply one frame with 
bees and queen cell dropped between other two frames 
filled with foundation. If there are not royal cells enough, 
two or more frames must go together. The centre combs 
have usually sufficient brood and bees, but the outside ones 
are commonly deficient of brood. These I place near the 
original site, thus equalising the strength of nuclei. With 
favourable weather the whole of the young queens in about a 
week or less after hatching will have commenced laying, so 
that plenty of young queens are now ready to take the place 
of queens in stocks that have swarmed, and from which a 
frame of brood with queen cell should be taken and given to 
nucleus deprived of its queen. A dozen of such nuclei will 
supply the wants of a large apiary during summer as well as 
providing young fertile queens for another season. Where 
purity of breed is wanted, removal to a distance from the 
influence of other drones is absolutely necessary. 
SUPERS versus SECTIONS. 
At page 170 in the 20th August issue, your correspondent, 
Co. Wicklow,” says, “ 1 A Lanarkshire Bee-keeper’ takes 
great trouble to prove that bees prefer ordinary supers to 
sections.” To that I reply that I have taken no trouble to 
■do so. The greatest tyro in bee-keeping soon perceives that, 
unless it be those who do not exercise their own judgment in 
the matter. I am glad to see “Co. Wicklow” agrees with 
me that sections are a mistake, but he misses the mark 
entirely when he attempts to say that supers are unsaleable, 
while he must be very unwise who sells super honey at the 
same price as the contaminated honey from brood combs. 
All hive dealers do not sell more sections than supers ; and 
as for the demand for supers in preference to sections, I 
simply gave the evidence and wants of some of the largest 
honey merchants in Scotland, and singular to say my 
inquiries were made in order to supply querists—many of 
them from Ireland—with the price likely to be obtained for 
honeycomb in sections, as it was a drug in the sister island. 
Your correspondent has, therefore, an opportunity of assist¬ 
ing his bee-keeping brethren in Ireland by making it public 
where merchants will give Is. per lb. for section honey. As 
for myself, I have an open market for a large quantity of 
small supers, which I can supply, but for sections there is no 
demand. If “ Co. Wicklow ” will read my published articles 
he will see that I never recommended large supers unless 
they were divisible ones, while I have also shown that they 
are cheaper and more easily prepared and sent to market 
than sections proper, while the fact that bees fill supers 
quicker is an important item in their favour.—A Lanark- 
sbire Bee-keeper, 
THE IDEAL HIVE. 
“A Cambridgeshire Bee-keeper” had, in an article somewhat too 
acrid to gain the earnest attention of men who desire to prove by argu¬ 
ment and not by ugly inuendoes the value of the hive they champion, 
entirely missed the mark, and has not even touched the point at which 
the contest for superiority really begins. It is well perhaps that ttie case 
should be as clearly as pos-ible put before the minds of those apiarians 
who are as yet undetermined in their verdict as to the value of the 
different systems for obtaining honey now in vogue amongst practical 
bee-masters. 
There are, in reality, but two schools of heeists—the lovers of the 
moveable frame hive and the lovers of the straw skep. Now, before 
even entering upon the various merits and demerits of these respective 
systems, let us consider the real object we have in view. Is it to gain the 
greatest amount of honey from each stock ? The answer, to my mind, is 
Most certainly not, and if this answer be the true one—and that it is so I 
shall eadeavour to prove—the whole foundation upon which the article 
of “ A Cambridgeshire Bee-keeper ” is built at once collapses. What the 
object is may very briefly be stated, and a definition of the hive required 
may be concisely given as follows :—“ A hive from which, with the least 
possible expenditure of time and money, the greatest nett profit can be 
obtained.” What matters it if 150 lbs. can be taken from a hive if the 
trouble and expense is so great as at once to bring down the nett return 
to a sum easily realised by another hive of simpler construction, of easy 
management, and of a description needing a minimum of manipulation ? 
At present, the question whether a larger amount of honey can be taken 
from the moveable-bar hive than the skep may be left unconsidered. 
Let me ask a question, and let someone answer it from the notes and 
accounts, which are doubtless carefully kept by all, of their expenditure 
and of the time taken up in the varied manipulations their system re¬ 
quires to gain a full measure of success. How long does fixing founda¬ 
tion take ? How long does the periodical “ spreading of brood,” so 
strongly advocated, occupy the apiarian P How long does the operation 
of extracting from the bars, taking sections as they are individually 
finished and inserting new ones, take to perform 1 Probably the time- 
honoured “ few minutes,” which if at the end of the manipulating season 
were added together, would, in even a moderately sized apiary, amount, 
doubt'eis to the surprise of the owner, not to hours only but to days and 
sometimes weeks. Again, the outlay or purchase of an “ extractor,” 
the continued upsetting of the domesticity of the hive, and the inter¬ 
ference with the industry of the bees at most important periods, trifling 
in themselves, are of no small moment, when added to them is the danger 
of losing the queen or injuring her, and giving an impetus, especially in 
the late summer, to robbing, which is so easily started that a whole 
apiary may be put into a state of frenzy by even the opening of a hive, 
not to speak of any of these delicious manipulations. Now for a very 
brief summary of the skep. The outlay is small to begin with, the swarm 
is hived into it at once and not transferred, the material is most conser¬ 
vative of bee life, most inimical to damp, the place of foundation can be 
taken by a little extra syrup, besides the amount the bar-framists advise 
being given to the swarms supplied with expensive foundation. Why, 
for the price of foundation sufficient to give to a swarm, as generally ad¬ 
vised, lull sheets, syrup enough can be given not only to fill a paltry 
bar hive—ten or twelve standard frames, a size most generally in use— 
but to fill a large 20-inch by 12-inch Pettigrew skep, and in addition to 
filling it with comb give such an impetus to egg-laying as to make the 
hive ready to gather surplus with larger number of workers than the 
swarm to which foundation and a little syrup only was supplied. 
“ A Cambridgeshire Bee-keeper ” admits the probability of swarms issu¬ 
ing from i-keps. He means, I imagine, that the stocks are ready to swarm 
naturally or to be swarmed artificially at least seven days earlier than 
the stock in the more elaborate hive. Seven days earlier ! time enough to 
gather, in good weather and in favourable localities, 20 lbs. of honey. He 
admits this I say, and yet has ejected these valuable early swarms from 
his apiary in favour of hives at least a week later. In some years a week 
is a most important time, not merely a paltry seven days of no special 
value. Again, is anything simpler than to swarm the Pettigrew skep ? Is 
there any hive from which so magnificent a swarm can be taken ? Does 
any hive lend itself more readily to supers, sections, or any other vehicles 
for obtaining surplus honey ? Is there any hive from which more honey 
can be taken in addition to the surplus honey from the top ? I have a 
fine swarm hived in an 18-inch Pettigrew from which a glass super has 
been taken, and the stock weighs 95 lbs., showing a prodigious amount of 
labour, considering that June was in my district a poor month, and. that 
Clover was nearly over in the third week in July. But this result is but 
poor to what would probably have been obtained in a good season and 
with a May swarm. The swarm, I may say, came from a bar hive ; for 
although a strong believer in the skep, I am not so bigoted as to eject 
from the apiaiy a hive whose merits are not perhaps sufficiently appre¬ 
ciated, as I have no time to spare in useless manipulation. If, then, it 
can be shown that after the time spent in manipulation, the extra expense 
incurred both on capital, outlay, and current account, a yield of honey is 
given by a stock managed by a bee-master of average intelligence, so great 
