May 20, 1386. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
411 
frame, if they are not in this position, where they will receive plenty of 
light without being fully exposed to the force of the sun. The atmo- 
■sphere about them should be kept moist, and not allowed to sutler by an 
insufficient supply of water at their roots. At the same time the soil 
must not be saturated, or the leaves will turn yellow and fall. When 
growth has been completed they should be plunged in a sunny position 
outside to thoroughly ripen their shoots, then flower buds are certain to 
form at the extremity of every one. 
Tree Carnations .—The earliest-struck plants of these will be well 
■established in 3-inch pots, and ready for transferring into others 3 inches 
larger. From this stage they should be grown on cool in a cold frame, 
giving them plenty of air on all favourable occasions. Directly they are 
rooting freely into the fresh soil they should be carefully hardened and 
plunged outside in an open position. Failure is certain if these plants are 
■drawn up weakly in a close atmosphere. Cuttings fiist rooted should be 
placed in 3-inch pots and allowed to become established in gentle heat, 
then hardened to cool frame treatment. Cuttings may still be struck 
from plants that have been growing in a cool airy place. They will root 
reely under handlights in a warm house if kept air-tight and shaded 
trom the sun. Three or four cuttings at this season should be inserted 
ogether m small pots, and then shifted without disturbing them. 
inV 3 - U P^ an ^ s we d a compost of fibry loam three parts, the 
c j r ° ein j’ composed of leaf mould and sand. To this about one-seventh 
or decayed manure may be added. 
Chrysanthemums .—Plants required for the production of large blooms 
•or good-smed bushes should now be ready for removal from 6-inch pots 
snto 10-inch pots. They should be thoroughly hardy, so that they may 
with safety be turned outside as they are placed into their largest pots. 
■Provision for a time should be made for shielding the plants from cold 
•cutting winds, or their foliage will be browned and very much cut, and 
the plants seriously checked in consequence. Late-flowering varieties 
such as Princess of Teck and others may be transferred into 6-inch pots, 
■and occupy the frames for a time from which the earlier plants have been 
removed. A good quantity of different sorts, especially Pompons, may 
bow be rooted, and these will make capital decorative plants in 7 and 
£-mch pots. A number may also be rooted for planting outside to yield 
-strong robust cuttings in July for fl iwering in 3 to 6-inch pots. For this 
purpose select free-flowering varieties such as Elaine, James Salter, Mrs. 
If xon, Soeur Melanie, and others that are certain to flower well. 
INTRODUCING QUEENS. 
- r „.^ d * EN y e consider the life-history of the bee it is sometimes 
cimcult to know which to admire most—its wondrous wisdom or its 
tatai tolly. At times it would seem to possess the power of 
reasoning, at other times it seems deprived of the slightest evidence 
•°t instinct. Take for instance the behaviour of bees when deprived 
, ! lr , ? Ueen - ' 0ne wouId im agine that they would only be too 
ankful to accept the first one offered to them ; but, on the con- 
M-ary, they will frequently sting her to death, or suffocate her by 
xi ling, even when she has been caged for forty-eight hours. It 
■sometimes happens in the early spring, if we have not been careful 
to see that we have none but young queens, that the exertion of 
has proved too much for the queen after her winter’s 
rest, and she dies worn out, or becomes a drone-breeder. 
Now if this happens before drones have been hatched any 
Attempt on the part of the bees to rear queens must prove abortive, 
ut even then they sometimes will not accept a strange queen ; and 
the older the bees, especially those who have hived through the 
™“i ime more difficult it is to introduce a queen. 
With newly hatched bees there is much less difficulty, as they 
seem to take more readily to a strange queen ; and when we have 
a valuable queen we find it most advisable to make an artificial 
swarm, place this on a new stand some distance away from the old 
stock, when the larger number of the old bees will return to it, 
eavmg the young bees in their new abode. We place two or more 
bars ot brood with the swarm, and then cage the queen for forty- 
eight hours, when the young bees will gladly welcome her. This 
delay seems a loss to the hive of egg-laying ; but as the bees have 
^ore Ume to devote to the eggs which have been laid, and the brood 
is hatching out while the queen is caged, the original stock is not 
depuved of such a large number of bees, as a 3 lb. swarm with two 
Dars of brood is often as good as a 5 lb. swarm without. 
The modes of introducing queens may be divided into two 
•classes—(1) direct, (2) indirect. 
In the first the mode of procedure is as follows :—If there is a 
queen which we wish to remove we take her out of the hive, and 
then insert the new queen with her attendant bees on a bar in the 
middle of the brood-nest of the hive from which we have taken the 
■queen, then close up the hive with the carpets, &c., and the 
operation is completed, the theory being that the queenless bees 
take to the new queen and her workers, because they are not excited 
or nervous, but seem thoroughly at home. 
If the queen to be introduced is on an odd frame we must first 
put her on a frame of the same size as the hive in which she is to be 
placed, and if we want to introduce her and her workers it is 
advisable to let them be in a nucleus for a few hours, and especially 
if they have come any distance. They will soon get quiet, and 
then can be introduced as before, or the queen can be introduced 
on a comb by herself if there is any uncapped honey or syrup. 
In fixed hives the bees must first be all driven out, as in arti¬ 
ficial swarming, a little syrup sprayed over the combs, the old queen 
removed, and then the bees are shot down on to a board ; and as 
they ascend to the hive, which has been raised from the floor¬ 
board, the new queen is allowed to go up with the crowd. 
In the indirect mode of introducing, the old queen having been 
first removed, the new queen is caged on some unsealed honey, and 
then placed in the middle of the brood-nest, a pipe-cover cage being 
used. This is made of a piece of perforated zinc, about 1£ inch 
wide and 4£ inches long, the ends being soldered together ; one end 
of the tube has a circle of perforated zinc 2 inches in diameter 
soldered over it, and the cage with the queen is twisted into the 
comb till it reaches the midrib. There are various other kinds of 
queen cages, but the pipe-cover is the one we always use, as it is 
very inexpensive and effectual. 
Unless obliged we do not attempt to introduce queens either in 
the early spring or late autumn. When breeding is going on, and 
honey coming in, with proper precautions queens can be safely 
introduced, and though we have had sometimes to cage and recage 
a queen for seven or eight days, as a rule forty-eight hours is quite 
long enough, and with young bees twenty-four hours ; and we 
generally release the queens late in the afternoon. Bees are kittle 
cattle, no method as yet has been found to be infallible, and we 
have often introduced a dozen queens successfully, and then though 
taking the same precautions lost the next two or three.— A Sukrey- 
shiee Bee-keeper. 
PLACING AND REMOVING SUPERS. 
Notwithstanding! the extreme cold the bees have been very 
active collecting water, but entirely neglecting peameal since the 
two good gathering days on the 6th and 7th inst., thus proving bees 
are not the stupid creatures, gathering more pollen than is necessary 
to their wants, as is accredited to them by some. On the other hand 
I think them very wise insects when allowed to follow their own 
course, and the fool has to be searched for somewhere else than in a 
hive, although he may be found near it, 
I have said the cold weather has been disastrous to the bees, they 
lie dead in great numbers near their hives; but as I provide my bees 
with water near them they may not have ventured far away, and the 
loss may be all visible. Those who do not attend to keeping their bees 
supplied with water near their hives must have lost many bees. 
I observe that although most of my bees have been bu3y collecting 
water these cold days, not a pure Carniolian has ventured out. Some 
may think this a defect in these bees, but I am inclined to think it a 
property ; because if the preserving of bees is the way to success, the 
Carniolians seem to possess this property naturally. 
With all the drawbacks of the season, I am looking forward to 
the time, which is near, when supering will have to be attended to. 
In districts where Plums are plentiful a week hence will com¬ 
mence the season, if fine, for both swarming and supering. The 
former subject need not be discussed here whether it or the non¬ 
swarming principle is most profitable. That depends to a great extent 
on whether the bee-keeper desires to increase his stocks, and whether 
the season will be a short or a long one. If the former, then the non¬ 
swarming system will undoubtedly be the one to carry ou*. If the sea¬ 
son is promising, full-sized tiering supers will give the greatest return. 
These and every other sort should be kept close and well wrapped up. 
Small supers with divisible combs holding about 5 lbs. each are what 
I can sell easiest, and cost little or nothing for packing for market, 
and are more easily managed in every respect than sections, and the 
bees take to supers more readily than they do sections —an important 
matter in bee-keeping. 
Many plans have been devised for placing sections in hives. In 
1876 I exhibited at Edinburgh a crate similar to the Benthall 
crate. In 1877 I sent out a great number of hinged frames for 
sections and some thousands of crates in no way different from the 
Benthall crate. I have about a dozen inquiries regarding the 
invention of bee appliances and their inventors. One of these is 
from my friend Mr. A. Cameron, Blair Athole, and I observe at page 
141 “ J. H." supports that gentleman’s opinion that he was the first 
to think of the crate in question. I will not dispute it, because Mr. 
Cameron and myself were often meeting and exchanging ideas, and 
he was the first to order a quantity in 1877, so in the absence of 
more proof he deserves the honour. 
