Ootober 8, 1885. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
327 
we would cage her some days before the deposition of the reigning 
one. Raising plenty of queens in so fine a climate will be very easy, 
but they should be reared from a tolerable strong stock, and divided 
into Duciei just before hatching. The Cyprian and Syrian races are 
"capital wax-workers as well as producers. To produce the most wax 
the hive should be 3 feet high, and having eight or nine frames with 
intermediate bars not more than 9 inches apart ; less by 2 inches 
might be preferable, because large slabs of comb are liable to collapse 
during warm weather. A number of the hives might be kept for 
breeding purposes to strengthen the main stocks. Every effort should 
be used to have strong stocks and plenty of them, and when near the 
m n 6 D * ne mont ^ 8 ’ honey season an entire renewal of queens 
should be made. Although a frame hive has been advised as being a 
good one for raising queens, the Stewarton type of hive will be found 
^°'if vf Wer P ur P 0Se we lP Block and tackle mounted on a frame 
will be required for enlarging and handling these hives, because the 
top ones should be those removed, and often must be enlarged from 
beneath to keep up the breeding. As the honey is taken it should be 
immediately fed back (or when the bee 3 will take it, and the weather 
is favourable not to interrupt outside gathering). This system of 
feeding back honey to produce wax should be rigidly carried out 
towards the close of the outdoor gathering. Having plenty of bees at 
the end of the season to work wax from the honey gathered through¬ 
out the year will be a means to that end. though it may not be the 
solution of the problem. 
The centrifugal extractor should not be used, or if so, as seldom 
as possible. The Lanarkshire Presser (35s.) is a capital machine for 
•expressing all honey, about 5 per cent, only being left, leaving the 
wax in firmly compressed cylindrical cakes ready for extracting the 
wax in its pure state, either by solar heat or by steam extractor. The 
divisional hive has been recommended because the honeycombs which 
nave the most wax can be removed and pressed without touching the 
brood, which should be left intact. Feed back the honey at every 
opportunity, and continue the pressing when sealed is the best way of 
reducing the honey to wax. The extracted wax from the pure comb 
will lequire little or no bleaching. 
“ The best- hive in creation,” for all purposes and climates, and 
particularly for wax-raising, will be described in an early number of 
this Journal.] J 
NOTES ON BEES. 
“ Cambridgeshire Bee-keeper,” I am afraid, lacks the necessary 
"f, x P e ^ ieilce criticise our Lanarkshire friend. My advice to him is, 
Gain more experience in the bee-keeping art that it may make him a 
sadder and wiser man. I have gained much information from your 
correspondent, “ Lanarkshire Bee-keeper,” and have proved his teaching 
to be sound. When I first started bee-farming I had a half-starved 
swarm given me that I might try to keep alive for the winter. Soon 
after an old stock was given me for the diiving, which I accomplished 
almost to the last bee. These I united with the swarm. I had seveial 
mishaps from first to last, especially in the feeding. On one occasion I 
gave the bees syrup in a cracked jar, and thus I lost hundreds of bee?. 
Ihis occurred while I was a reader of the British Bee Journal. Soon 
after I commenced reading the correspondence in the Journal of Horti¬ 
culture on bee-keeping, and I there found the first hint on perforated zinc 
flooring, and made a hive myself with a perforated floor. I have had 
another mishap with the syrup since, but thanks to the perforated zinc 
the bees had a better chance of recovering than before. Perforated zinc, 
however, is not only useful in mishaps with syrup, but it lets the debris 
through, and withdrawing a slide is a very simple expedient for keeping 
a clean hive without the expense of surplus floorboards, drying, and the 
trouble of removing them. 
My first hive was a tea-box. which cost a shilling, with a moveable box 
for the body hive manufactured by myself on the principle of the instruc¬ 
tions found in the third number of “ Amateur Work,” with the difference 
that I made a moveable box instead of fixed sides. I gave my stock 
plenty of room in April, and supers (2 lbs. each) with narrow bottom bars 
in June, but it did not do very well, possibly from the fact that I was too 
fond of examining and manipulating them. I am afraid that if I had 
booked all my time in attending them I should show a very heavy deficit 
in my cash account. In June of this year I bought a swarm which 
issued from a straw skep, and set it to work on ten frames of foundation ; 
and having fed them (slow feeding) for a few days I put on 2-lb. 
sections, and it was from this swarm that I got the greatest profit. I 
have now the old stock fed with over 30 lbs. of 2£d. loaf sugar, the 
swarm as a stock, and another stock composed of two driven ones. The 
•old stock I have put into a body box 61 inches deep from the top to the 
perforated zinc floor with ten frames of foundation, and although the 
frames are shallow I have added a bottom bar, and I purpose to make 
another body box the same depth filled with frames and to put it under¬ 
neath the one they are now in about April next. I say underneath, 
because I shall make it without angled tin for slides, having the angled 
tin and slides on the box they are now in, and then on the top of these 
two boxes I shall put supers wrought by the manufacturer recommended 
by “ A Lanarkshire Bee-keeper,” provided the latter will purchase them 
at a fair price. After the removal of the supers I shall extract the honey 
in the top box and remove the same, leaving the bees one box to winter in, 
as at present supers and 2-lb. sections will not sell here ; in fact, people 
want something less than even pound section?. 
Your correspondent, “ Hallamshire,” seems to think that stocks in 
skeps and swarms in bar-frames are best. Will your correspondent tell 
us what he does with stocks in the skeps after swarming, and also with 
the swarms in the bar-frames after the honey harvest ? Any information 
in these matters will be pleasant reading for the long nights of winter. 
I find it difficult to keep my smoker going when manipulating ; in 
fact, as soon as it is set down it goes dead. I can remember when I was 
a boy that I dipped brown porous paper in a saltpetre solution for the 
purpose of forming a fuse to ignite fireworks at the end of a kite tail whfen 
in the air. Would paper thus dipped do any harm to the bees ? 
I find the specimen supers of “ Lanarkshire ” with the glass give the 
end view to the combs. I think it would be preferable if they could be 
made to give a side view of the outside comb. Can any of your readers 
give hints on preventing wasps entering hives besides contracting 
entrances ?— Basil, 
THE HONEY MARKET. 
The numerous complaints constantly reiterated on all sides by bee¬ 
keepers who have honey to dispose of in either large or small quantities, 
are a sign that in the near future, if the time has not already come, the 
price of honey will be so low that the question of production will engage 
the thoughts of all having an interest in the industry. It is no use 
disguising the fact that comb honey in large supers is an absolutely un¬ 
marketable article ; at any rate it is so in the city where I dispose of my 
surplus, and also in other towns where I have endeavoured to sell large 
amounts of comb honey at aoy price whatever. True, the Honey Company 
offered me for a large glass, some 40 lbs., the magnificent sum of 6d. 
a pound, nett weight, and also stipulated that I was to take all risk of 
damages and pay carriage, thus reducing the price to about 51. a pound. 
I may be told that it is easy to sell such honey when it has been run from 
the comb at an extra price on account of its purity and freedom from 
taint of brood or other contaminating influences. My objection to this is 
that the trouble of running is not inconsiderable, then the wax has to be 
rended down, there is also a great loss of weight, and after all so little do 
many of the grocers and Italian warehousemen with whom I have to 
deal appeciate the diffirence between the purest of honey and the inferior 
article, that they will only give the same price for honey run from supers 
as they offer for honey run from the combi which have been used for 
brood and other purposes, which depreciate the flavour of the honey 
afterwards stored in them. 
If small supers could be sold at a reasonable price there would not 
be so much ground for complaint; but this season I have had supers of 
glass, and wood and glass combined, of weights so varied as 6 lbs., 10 lbs., 
12 lbs., 20 lbs., and 40 lbs., and bave not been able to di-pose of one, but 
have been compelled to run the whole, and b ttle in 1 lb. jars. The sale 
of 1 lb. sections is to some extent more satisfa dory, the prices they have 
realised this year being Is. 2d. and Is. 3d. per section, in quantities of 
two dozen and upwards. Run honey also in large quantities can be sold 
neatly labelled ani in good clean glass jars at Is. to Is. 2d. per bottle, 
according to the quantity sold, but the majority of bee-keepers have had 
to sell at prices very much below this, although some have, on the other 
hand, obtained Is. 6d. per lb. for their samples sold to the neighbouring 
residents in small quantities. 
That there has be;n a great amount of honey produced during last 
year and this I am willing to allow, but it lends very small support to the 
statement often heard, that in a bad season honey will rise again to its 
old value, and there is this additional drawback that the constant im¬ 
portation of foreign honey will absolutely prevent there ever being so 
great a scarcity in England as to have the effect of sending up the price 
to a sum large enough in a bad season to pay better than a smaller price in 
an exceptionally good year. It is not well to jump to conclusions, and it 
is satisfactory to see that in Scotland supers meet with ready sale pro¬ 
vided they are of convenient size ; but notwithstanding, judging from 
what can be seen and what can be heard from those who deal in honey 
and sell it retail in large towns, the days of comb honey are fast giving 
place to a time when run honey only will be acceptable to the consumer, 
and it is the wants of the consumer that the apiarian is bound to consider. 
If, then, this is the case, some other plan of obtaining honey must be 
adverted to than supers. For these reasons supers are expensive and are 
troublesome, less honey is stored in a super than in an enlargement given 
below, and more care and attention is required in the production of fine 
quality honey in supers than the difference in price between the finest and 
the more inferior qualities seems to warrant. These are suggestions only— 
thoughts thrown out to thinkers—that from these thoughts practical results 
may be evolved by the numerous talented apiarians who are constantly 
endeavouring to scheme some plan to meet the ever-changing requirements 
of the most fickle of consumers—the honey-eater.— Felix. 
TRADE CATALOGUES RECEIVED. 
Messrs. Morle Co., 102, Fenchurck Street, London.— Catalogue of Dutch 
Bulbs. 
Ketten Freres, Luxembourg.— Catalogue of Boses. 
Richard Smith & Co., Worcester.— Catalogues of Trees, Shrubs , Boses 
Bulbs, Alpine Plants, <fc. 
