4 % 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ December 5, 1889. 
They will be useful for the conservatory by the time they are in flower, 
but should be gradually hardened for removal to that structure just 
before the flowers are fully expanded. If removed direct to the lower 
temperature the flowers are very liable to fall. The remainder of the 
stock, and also those of B. hydrocotylifolia, which will be more useful 
dn two months’ time, may still be kept in a temperature of 50°. They 
must be kept rather dry at their roots, the atmosphere being in the 
■same condition, and what watering is needed should be done early in the 
•day, being careful to throw no more about than is absolutely necessary. 
Nepenthes .—The points of any shoots that have been growing 
vigorously may be taken out or shortened back a leaf or two as the case 
imay be. If done now they will soon start again, and they will again 
form pitchers freely. It is a mistake to allow these plants to extend 
:above four or five leaves before they are pinched. Those which have 
been allowed to extend upright several feet in length should not be cut 
■ down for another six weeks, when cuttings can be inserted with some 
• certainty of rooting them. Brown scale will infest these plants, and 
must be removed with the sponge. Thrips are sometimes troublesome 
■at this season. The best means of destroying them is to syringe the 
•plants over a tank with a weak solution of tobacco water. Less water 
will be needed at the roots, but be careful the soil is not allowed to 
become dry. Syringe on favourable occasions. 
Cleaning Plants .—Every attempt should be made to clear plants 
from insects at this season of the year. They bear stronger insecticides 
mow than during the growing period, and if every opportunity is devoted 
do this important work endless labour during the busy season of the 
year will be saved. Plants are often ruined or disfigured when cleaning 
■is too long postponed. Merely cleaning them and then leaving them 
•until they are infested again is no method of eradicating insects. They 
-should be thoroughly cleaned, and then examined and syringed, as the 
•case may be, at intervals of a fortnight or three weeks until every trace 
-has been destroyed. It is surprising what labour is saved in the end by 
*the adoption of energetic measures for a few months in succession. 
Wmm BEE-KEEPER 
Jr 
QUEEN REARING IN RELATION TO HYBER¬ 
NATION AND WINTER DYSENTERY. 
(Continued from j>age 476.) 
Heddon, as I have said, contends that all his queens are reared 
In a “natural” manner. How he can assert this, and yet keep 
moving his old stock hive about to get rid of the bees puzzles me, 
.-as the old stock hive is never moved when bees are existing in a 
■state of Nature. I am sorry to say that it is the fashion in the 
States to make any statement that appears to floor an antagonist, 
iand I am afraid that some of our bee friends are not always quite 
proof against its influence, notwithstanding their good intentions, 
which I admit. 
D vmpness, bad ventilation, bad food, and cold have all been 
•described as prime causes of winter dysentery ; but wherever it has 
broken out I have been able in most cases, by learning how the 
•queens were reared, to note that cheapness of production rather 
than high quality had been the ruling guide, Heddon placing the 
value of a queen as capital in a hive of bees as low as two cents., 
-and Mr. W. L. Hutchinson, editor of the “ Bee-keepers’ Review,” 
who teaches nearly all that Heddon advances, and is almost always 
a heavy loser from winter dysentery, says “one queen is as good as 
another in a hive if she has descended from the right stock.” He 
•contends that the manner of rearing has very little to do with it, 
though he seems to incline to the view that cells, reared on the 
swarming impulse are the best to depend on for fine queens- 
Neither he nor anyone else who practises queen-rearing in America 
Relieves that after the cells are sealed it makes any difference where 
they are matured. The cells are nearly always cut out and hatched 
in the weakest nuclei, or they are hatched in “ nurseries,” which 
are of two kinds ; one is heated by a lamp, and the other is a number 
® £ 1 tie boxes covered with wire cloth, in which a sealed queen 
cell is fixed. These boxes are fitted in a frame, and then hung in a 
have of bees for the heat of the bees to hatch out. As the bees 
cannot get near the cells, the only heat they get is what is diffused 
in the hive, which I have proved is never equal to the temperature 
■of the cluster on the brood (90°), but is often 10° to 20° below, to 
sipy nothing about the chilling the cells get while being cut out 
and fixed in these cages. If we were to ask many of the people 
who rear their queens so to deny their cattle, chickens, or other 
young stock of all the warmth and shelter possible to give them 
they would laugh at us, and yet these do not require nearly so high 
a temperature for their full development as does an embryo bee. 
In the natural course of things queens are reared in a hive; 
first, when the old queen is to be superseded ; second, when pre¬ 
paring to swarm ; and third, when the old queen dies or is killed. 
When the first takes place the stock is mostly very strong, and as 
they do not swarm the cells get thoroughly developed and 
matured, the first queen hatching killing the rest. If such a 
stock has not swarmed that season it does not do so until the 
next, and it proves to be a wonder in results. How often has it 
been noted that the best stock of a season was one that had not 
swarmed the year before ? It was this one fact that led me to 
study the matter, and to think that the way the queens were 
reared had more to do with the matter than was suspected. Let 
us note the old stock hive after it has thrown three or more 
swarms, how often do the bees die of dysentery, or it is remarked 
that it has “swarmed itself to death.” Let us now consider what really 
takes place. We all know the shape of a queen cell, how it always 
stands out away from the comb, and hangs downwards even when 
reared on worker larvae on the middle of a comb, and how the 
bees prefer to build them in passage ways, &c , where they can 
cluster round them. Has no one ever suspected that Nature 
designed that they should be reared in that way, so that the bees 
could cluster all round them to keep them warm and moist, as they 
require more heat for their development than either drones or 
workers ? How, then, can they be cut out and developed in a 
lower temperature without weakening the constitution of the 
queen ? 
After the first swarm, if the weather sets in cold, and nearly 
always after the second swarm, many of the queen cells are prac¬ 
tically left unprotected, the development of the queens in them 
is therefore retarded, a worthless queen being the result. The 
same takes place when a cell is hatched in a nucleus, nursery, or in 
a hive depleted of bees, as by the Heddon system. Therefore I 
have laid it down as an axiom, that nothing but a worthless queen 
will result from any cell cut out, no matter how hatched, on 
account of the variation of temperature while it is being cut out, 
nor can queen cells be lifted up out of a hive for examination 
without chilling them. 
In this Journal for July 18 th I explained how queens were to 
be reared, and I also showed that though queens were required 
in large numbers, they could be had in any quantity two days old 
without cutting out a cell or opening the stock hive to get them, and 
that by giving the old stock hive fresh eggs from time to time, a 
supply of queens can be had all through the season, which was 
the result of a discovery I made in 1887. 
I will here make another definite assertion—viz., that if good 
queens are required, or queens whose bees will always hybernate, 
the first swarms must always be returned at once to the old stock 
hive, having first removed the old queen (which, with a few bees, 
will make up a nucleus, and if early, they will build up into a good 
stock for winter), to look after and develop the queen cells, whether 
increase of stocks are required or not. Such a stock will swarm 
again with a young queen, possibly a dozen, all of which can be 
used if required, if able to fly. If these queens are put at the 
head of good colonies, their bees, after the second generation, will 
surely hybernate, no matter what kind of food there may be in 
their combs, if it is their own storing. The form or degree of 
hybernation will be equal to that of wasps, which, like hedgehogs, 
always show signs of life if touched ; nor will they, while hyber- 
nating, eat any food ; so that they practically winter on nothing, 
but being in full vigour and vitality, they consume their stores in 
brood rearing in the spring. 
In the United States very many people are specially engaged in 
I rearing queens for sale, hence in that part of the world they are 
