Hugo 24, lc£6. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
519 
queen would have been stored in the body of the hive. By 
following these directions the delicate super comb is obtained, 
and the hive is at the same time, by extra breeding, being 
put into the best condition to stand unharmed the severest 
and most protracted winter that we have ever experienced in 
this country, and will be far ahead of those hives having had 
all the attention and nonsensical manipulations advised by 
inexperienced teachers, and will collect a much greater quan¬ 
tity of honey. 
Smokers are sometimes useful in the apiary. Those 
giving a great volume of smoke are held in great repute by 
most bee-keepers; but smoke injures the bees and brood, 
taints the honey, and is disagreeable to the bee-keeper, so 
my desire is to banish it as much as possible from the apiary. 
I have seldom used a smoker, not for many years. Carbolic 
acid is preferable, and is beneficial to the hive if the 
bees are not smeared with it, being fatal to them if that is done. 
A little care in its use will prevent any casualty of that 
kind. 
The foregoing instructions will be found useful both by 
bee-farmers and the bee-keeper proper. However, the former 
pursuing the art wholly from a commercial point of view, 
may perhaps lose patience and fail to adhere strictly to my 
instructions, thinking that it is impossible to manage bees 
with profit without adopting the notions which I have pointed 
■out as being so detrimental to successful bee-keeping. Time, 
however, will convince them of their error. It is not, how¬ 
ever, to them so much as it is to the latter class I have 
endeavoured to impart the information. The bee-farmer will 
insist that extracted honey is the most profitable. That 
depends entirely upon the price obtained for it. The main 
question at issue is the quality in the first place and quantity 
after. The rules I have laid down secure both with least 
labour and expense, insuring strong stocks at all times. 
There has always been, and will always be, a great diffe¬ 
rence in the quality of honey. Honey thrown out by the 
centrifugal extractor is always thin, oft9n so much so that it 
will not candy. Fermentation is sure to set in sooner or 
later, and then parts with all its qualities that constitutes 
good honey. Good samples of drift or pressed honey 
become solid and hard, but there is no extracted honey that 
has the delicious flavour that comb honey has. Honey being 
composed of different sugars and other substances which are 
required to form good honey, are also of different specific 
gravity; so that whenever honey is canned the proportions 
separate—the densest falls to the bottom and the lighter 
goes to the top. Thus the richness of the honey caused by 
the natural blend is destroyed. The honey must be retained 
in the thoroughly sealed combs. Any artificial process 
to ripen honey or mixing it with foreign ingredients destroys 
it. A mixture may be made to please certain palates, but 
no art will improve either it nor the industrious workers 
that gather it.—A Lanarkshire Bee keeper. 
INTRODUCING QUEENS. 
It was my intention to have written a special article on queen intro¬ 
duction, but after the remarks by your correspondent “ A Hallamshire 
Bee-keeper,” at pages 475, 476, there remains but little for me to add, 
provided bee-keepers will bear in mind “ That when bees are queenless, 
and have no means of rearing one—that is, have no eggs, unsealed brood, 
or queen cells in their hive, they will invariably accept a fertile queen at 
the flight hole, or dropped in from the top, provided they hive been 
queenless for forty-eight hours,” and may I add, no fertile worker present. 
All that is necessary for the bee-keeper to do is to remember the above 
and act accordingly. 
There has, no doubt, been much nonsense written upon the intro¬ 
duction of queens direct and otherwise, which has rather baffled the bee¬ 
keeper than make the work plain and easy to understand. After bees 
have been queenless for months, and sometimes for only two days or so, I 
have caused the bees to follow me, and even enter my pocket after a queen 
I had presented to them in a cage and then withdrew it. There is no 
better sign than this that the bees will accept a queen directly if offered. 
It is when bees have eggs, larvse, queen, or royal cells containing what 
will emerge a queen in due course therefrom, or a fertile worker, that 
there is a difficulty in introducing a strange queen, or even a ripe queen 
cell to. Caging the the alien queen then becomes necessary for the pur¬ 
poses of reconciling the bees to her, preventing the latter starting royal 
cells, for if one is allowed to remain in the hive or be raised, in almost 
every case the introduced queen will be killed. Many queens are lost by 
being introduced when in an excited or frenzied state ; when so the bees 
will ball her, or she will leave the hive and be lost. It is therefore desir¬ 
able when introducing a queen to close the doorway, so that it is im¬ 
possible for her to escape. 
In addition to what is stated above, I make it a rule to depose the 
queen exactly eight days before I introduce an alien one. The only pre¬ 
caution required is to make sure that every queen cell commenced is 
destroyed. I then put the queen into my safety cage, and place it over 
the bees on the top of the hive. These cages are about 3 inches square and 
11 inch high, having an apartment for the queen, and another for the bees 
ot the hive to come up and fraternise with the queen. A few minutes 
decide whether I should draw the little slide and let her free. This 
cage is, I consider, a great improvement upon what is termed the Benton 
cage. The latter, I may say, was used by me more than twenty years 
ago, and an acquaintance from the north of Scotland told me the other 
day he had st'll the one I sent him eight years ago. I only mention the 
fact in consequence of the British Bee Journal having spoken so highly 
of the Benton cage, which I quite agree with ; and to prevent anyone 
thinking me guilty of the mean practice of appropriating others’ ideas, so 
common amongst bee-keepers of the present day. In this instance I am 
rather proud to see the enterprising Benton hit on my own plan without 
having heard of it. The frame cage I mentioned lately as being similar 
to the one described by Mr. Blow, I use to preserve the bees forming 
the nucleus, not the queen. I hope these supplementary remarks to “ A 
Hallamshire Bee-keeper” will be sufficient to guide any inexperienced 
amateur how to introduce queens successfully. 
While on the queen question I observe the British Bee-keeper's 
Record says that bees often use the royal cells for raising queens, a thing 
I never have seen. It is against the nature of the queen to lay an egg in 
a queen cell, and it is yet to be proven that bees transfer eggs from worker 
to queen cells, or from one cell to another. 
Mr. W. W. Young, Perth, asks me to do justice and put the matter 
right regarding who was the first to cause the bees to work ornamental 
designs. This request is due to the fact that Mr. A. MacNally, Glenluce, 
claims the invention, although only four or five years a bee-keeper. I 
would have preferred in this case to have seen the discussion carried out 
against the erring individual in the journal where it appeared. I cannot say 
who was the first to start < rnamental designs in honeycomb, but I know 
that there appeared in this Journal many years ago a woodcut of an 
ornamental glass of honeycomb supplied by “ A Renfrewshire Bee-keeper.” 
Twenty-five years ago Mr. John Craig, Stewarton, carried out the system 
largely, and about the same time I tried my hand, and was very successful 
with some designs. But in justice to Mr. Young he exhibited at the 
Caledonian Apiarian Society’s Show, held in Perth some six or seven 
years since, the arms of Perth, together with the motto in reading, 
prettily wrought out by the bees. It matters not to bee-keepers who the 
inventor of anything relating to the apiary is; but when persons claim 
the invention of anything not their own for mercenary purposes it is 
wrong, and ought, I think, to be corrected. 
A case in point with myself is that of a dealer in supplies—viz., Mr. 
Abbott—claims to have won a silver medal for the best frame hive at the 
Kibble Show held in Gla c gow by the Caledonian Apiarian Society in 1876. 
There were no silver medals awarded at that show. The first prize was 
awarded to my hive, not to Abbott’s ; but I agreed to the suggestion of 
the judges that as Abbott had come so far to the show to encourage him, 
would I agree, although first, to share the honours with him, to which I 
agreed. It would have been different, however, had Messrs. George 
Neighbour & Sons’ exhibits been forwarded in time. The goods sent by 
that firm were too late in arriving to be judged. 
At that same show I exhibited a sunshade attached to the hive, which 
for a hot season or climate was a decided improvement. Somebody before 
the judging thought it worth their while to lay down upon and break it. 
I showed it to one of the judges as best I could. A few weeks after the 
show, the Editor of the British Bee Journal said, 11 No one had as yet 
thought of shading hives.” I have done so for forty years.—A Lanark¬ 
shire Bee-keeper. 
PLACING SWARMS INTO STEWARTON HIVE. 
I HAVE a swarm of bees in a straw skep which I should like to 
transfer into a Stewarton hive or hives. I am not particular about 
increase of stock, but I wish to get the most honey possible this season. 
To insure this would it be best to place them into two hives as they 
swarm, and at the end of twenty-one days from issue of first, drive the 
old stock and unite it to one of them ; or, at the end of fourteen days after 
a natural swarm, drive a second, and after twenty-one days drive all out, 
and put the whole together ? The queen is two years old. If I put them 
all into one hive should I destroy the old queen, or chance the fittest to 
survive ? And if 1 should destroy her what would be the best way to 
manage it ? W6 have a long honey season here. The bees are working 
on the white Clover at present, and before it is quite past the Heather 
will be in bloom.—J. E. 
[Place your first swarm into two Stewarton body boxes, fitted with 
comb foundation. In ten days after place on a super and cover well. Do 
not attempt to kill the old queen unless you have a fertile one to supersede 
her. As the queen is two years old, it is not unlikely that the first swarm 
may have a young queen. This occurs very often, and bee-keepers would 
be doing right if they never kept any but young queens. Place the 
second swarm into a single body box and the driven bees from the old 
