April 15, 1886. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
301 
queen may live four or five years, and may still lay a large 
number of eggs, but in large liives she is generally useless 
after the second year, and unless she is of some particular 
strain, either English, foreign, or hybrid, we always get rid 
of a queen at the beginning of the third season. In a small 
apiary queen-raising hardly pays, as it is cheaper to buy 
young queens, or, if we can get the chance, the second swarms 
or casts. 
But as our apiary consists of some twelve to twenty hives, 
we always rear our queens in the following manner. Having 
carefully selected the strain or strains we wish to perpetuate, 
we place bars containing sheets of foundation in the centre of 
the brood nest, but not before tho middle of May, or even 
later if the weather is cold. We then select one of the 
strongest of our hives, have a small artificial swarm, and 
remove the old hive to a new stand, giving the swarm two or 
three bars of brood from the old hives or from others. 
The queenless bees immediately start several queen cells, 
and on the fourth day after they have been deprived of their 
queen we cut out all the queen cells and place in the centre 
of the brood nest two or more bars of selected brood, and in 
order to induce them to make queen cells make slits in the 
new comb containing the eggs and grubs. Some of the 
Italian queen-raisers carefully remove alternate eggs, but 
we have never tried the plan, though, no doubt, it is a good 
one, as the economical bees do not, unless driven by stress of 
hunger, destroy eggs. If there are as many queen cells as 
are wanted, we do not add any more brood for queen-raising, 
but keep the hive populous by giving them another bar or 
so of brood. Sometimes it happens that only a few queen 
cells are started, and in that case we give the bees another 
bar or so of selected brood, and so get the required number of 
queen cells. 
When ten days have elapsed from the time the queen was 
taken away, we proceed to make small nuclei, either by 
making artificial swarms without a queen but with brood, or 
by putting the nuclei on the stands of the old hives and, of 
course, giving them some brood. In two days time we insert 
a queen cell in each nuclei, taking care to cut quite clear of 
the queen cell. In the course of a few days the young 
princesses will be hatching out, and great care has to be 
taken that the bees do not follow them in their nuptial 
flights. Still if tin nuclei have brood, it does not often 
happen that all the bees leave the hive, but if they do the 
swarm has to be taken and replaced. 
During the course of the next few days we examine the 
nuclei occasionally to see if the young queens have begun to 
lay, which is carefully noted in a diary. The fertile queens 
are then introduced, but we will defer the method of queen 
introduction to a future article.—A Surreyshire Bee¬ 
keeper. 
THE EFFECTS OF WINTER ON BEES. 
The present is perhaps a most fitting time to lay before your 
readers the effect the protracted winter has had upon bees, and so 
give them an opportunity of comparing the results of their own 
experience with ours, thereby enabl ng them to rectify evils or to 
pursue and establish a system based upon common sense, which 
they have found to work s itisfactorily towards preserving bees and 
to the profit of the bee-keeper. Although it is now the 2nd of 
April there has only been two days that the temperature was high 
enough to feed bees with safety without causing loss, owing to the 
cold and windy state of the weather. The two days mentioned 
were occupied and required by the bees to thoroughly air them¬ 
selves. None of my stocks required feeding, therefore was not in 
the least put about, relying upon the arrangements I made in 
autumn and past experience, which, I am glad to say, have no 
apprehensions but that they are safe and will continue so for weeks 
yet without any assistance. 
I have had one death only. It was a pure Syrian, a nucleus 
containing very few bees ; but several nuclei of Carniolians with 
fewer have wintered well and aro promising well. Another pure 
Syrian lost most of its bees, but is busy cleaning out, carrying 
pollen—or rather pea meal, for as yet few flowers are out, while 
others from the extreme cold refuse to shed their pollen or open 
up their anther cases. The pure Syrians apparently cannot stand 
our climate. The crosses do, and seem no way impaired for their 
work by the accident. 
With the above exceptions all the rest of my hives have 
wintered well, with less loss than I have witnessed in milder winters, 
every one without exception having bred since the end of the year, 
and every one has much of the youthful element and in a fit state 
to store surplus honey, appear when it may. Those in deep hives 
as usual remained quietest during winter, most of them never 
sought out during the snow. Had the spring been earlier I should 
have reduced the size of my Stewarton hives by removing the under 
box, but already they occupy the two upper ones, and to lessen the 
hive now would be courting failure. 
Much stress is put on double cased hives by some. With me 
there is no difference ; if there is, the single-cased hive3 are the best 
when well protected. Deep hives, having always the honey above 
in the natural warm strata, it never suffers from cold and damp as 
it does in wide flat hives, bence the bees have always a meal of a 
proper heat of wholesome honey, having access at all times to it 
through a congenial atmosphere ; never requiring to creep aside to 
the outer combs in the cold where death awaits them, as is the 
case with those on the combination principle ; not requiring to 
travel round the combs or having “ winter passages ” artfully cut 
through them before they can reach their stores, as the flat hives 
have ; and the bees, from the excitement brought about by their 
attempting to raise the heat, by eating cold honey and entering a 
cold atmosphere, fly out every feed they take or movement they 
make. Thus bees in flat hives are decimated or die from starvation 
when they cannot travel to the adjoining combs for honey, while 
those in deep hives are safe and healthy. 
From'time immemorial bee-keepers in Scotland have always held 
that hives to be healthy must have their combs at right angles to the 
entrance ; and Mr. Woodbury, than whom there is no better authority, 
put this to a thorough test many years since, and recorded his expe¬ 
rience in this Journal to the effect that bees to be healthy ought to 
have their combs situated at right angles to the entrance. In all 
he said on that subject I agreed with him, and thought it a foregone 
conclusion. But a new era in bee-keeping dawned upon us, and we 
were told we were on the wrong track, and that to be successful 
hives having their combs, parallel to the entrance should be used. 
In order to satisfy bee-keepers and prove the contrary to them I 
had several hives with their combs so arranged, but just as Mr. 
Woodbury explained, and in accordance with my previous experi¬ 
ence, the bees refused to live healthy during winter, so I abandoned 
the idea for ever. 
There has been a great mortality amongst bees this year, and I 
have exerted myself a little to get at the facts, such as what condi¬ 
tion were the hives in and of what sort were they. The first news 
of disasters reaching me were the bees were located in combination 
hives, the bees had suffered from dysentery, and now all were dead. 
I have several hives of that sort under my superintendence for an 
acquaintance : they, too, have paid the debt of Nature prematurely. 
Other casualties arose from keeping the bees on a stinted allow¬ 
ance of food, so that the “ orthodox ” plan of stimulative feeding 
and spreading of the brood should be carried out, but the bees 
had succumbed for want before the weather was favourable for 
feeding. Others having hives similarly provided saved the bees 
from dying inside by feeding them, and thereby bringing them out 
to perish amongst the snow. Whether these salutary lessons will 
prevent their erring again remains to be seen ; but one thing is 
certain—had they taken my advice to put their bees up in autumn 
with 30 lbs. of honey there would have been fewer deaths amongst 
them than has been this arctic winter, and we have no assurance 
that the like will not occur again. We have experienced similar 
winters before, and we may expect them again. 
There is still another singular notion bee-keepers have in regard 
to the size of the hive and its condition. I read lately the cogita¬ 
tions of an advanced bee-keeper, “ Ideal of a stock when ready for 
supers is that it should be filled with brood or eggs from side to 
side and top to bottom, excepting at most a few days’ supply of 
food in case of a serious reverse of weather.” To my mind this is 
the rock many bee-keepers wreck themselves on. A hive should 
never be in such a state. It should be large enough to hold at 
least 30 lbs. of honey and at least one comb, and better two, of 
pollen over and above what will hold 60,000 eggs or larvae, with 
additional space for water and unsealed honey, which every healthy 
and progressing hive has. Such a hive as that, containing a healthy, 
fertile, and prolific youthful mother, is our ideal of the only hive 
that will give satisfaction. 
The same writer too, as well as others, seems of the opinion that 
whenever you have a sealed comb in the hive it ought to be un¬ 
capped and placed in the centre of the hive to be filled with eggs. 
But why all this waste and labour ? Surely it would be far better 
for all purposes to keep the queen from the supers, keep the bees 
breeding, and allow no waste of eggs, &c., by having the hive of a 
