V*rch SI, 1887. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
259 
Stocks, combs, and bees together may be purchased 
either in autumn or in spring. In autumn they are less 
expensive than at any other time; in spring they are 
more valuable. In purchasing a stock in autumn the 
following points need special attention:—1, The queen 
must be in her first year, 2, The comb must be regularly 
built and new, 3, The less drone cells there are the 
better. 
The strength of the stock and the amount of food it 
contains is not so material in autumn as in spring. By 
adding driven bees and giving a supply of food according 
to instructions which will be given in due course these 
defects may be easily remedied. I do not mean to say 
that a wretchedly poor stock should be purchased, but if 
the stock fulfils the three above conditions the purchase 
may be concluded, but lues and food must afterwards be 
added. The stronger a stock is, and the more honey its 
combs contain, the greater is its value and cost. How¬ 
ever, if for a first venture the bee-keeper prefers to pur¬ 
chase a stock ready in all respects for wintering, the two 
following points must also be regarded as essential in 
addition to the other three, if the stock is purchased in 
the early autumn—4, The hive must contain at least 
25 lbs. of honey. 5, The bees must cover at least nine 
standard frames. 
If a stock is to be bought in spring all these five points 
must be observed, modified only in that 12 lbs. of honey 
will be sufficient for a stock to contain on the 1st of 
March, and if there are four or five large clusters of bees, 
each cluster divided by a comb, the stock is in good con¬ 
dition. Such a stock in the early part of March is worth 
from 25s. to 30s. Again I would advise a resort to a 
first-class dealer rather than to a friend possessing but 
little practical knowledge of bees and bee-keeping. The 
third plan, and as I think the most preferable one, is to 
feed driven bees into stocks in early autumn. Such 
stocks winter well, and from them early swarms wdl 
issue unless the bee-keeper prefers to keep all the bees 
at work in supers. The cost of a sugar-fed stock is never 
more than ill, and in districts where there is a surplus 
of driven bees often very much less. This expenditure 
consists of the following items :— 
£ s. d. 
30 lbs. of sugar at 3d. ... ... ... 0 7 6 
10 lbs. of bees at Is. 3d. ... ... 0 12 ft 
£1 0 0 
A stock so formed is not expensive, and success in the 
future is ensured. The most timid man may thus build 
up a stock, and no particular knowledge or judgment is 
necessary. It may be done by “ rule of thumb.” The 
sugar must be made into a syrup, according to a recipe 
which will be given in a future issue, and supplied to the 
stock at the rate of about 6 lbs. a day. If foundation is 
used we might, if we adopted the statement that 20 lbs. 
of honey is required to produce 1 lb. of wax, knock off 
20 lbs. of syrup at least, or a quantity in proportion to 
every pound or portion of a pound of foundation used in 
the hive. Such an idea must not be carried out,'but if 
1 lb. of foundation is used 25 lbs. of sugar will be suffi¬ 
cient instead of 30 lbs., and so in proportion to the weight 
of foundation used. In those cases where bee-keepers 
obtain their driven bees by “driving” or “bumping” 
cottagers’ skeps, a sugar-fed stock will only cost 12s. fid , 
but in every case an addition to the cost must be made 
in respect of trouble and time expended in feeding up 
such stocks. If, again, stocks are. .purchased, there will 
be an equal charge in most cases for “ carriage,” so that 
this additional expense does not give a great advantage to 
either means of starting the apiary. For certainty, 
safety, and economy I recommend those who have not 
done so in the past to try next autumn to build up a 
sugar-fed stock, and if they carry out the instructions 
here and in a former issue given upon this point, they 
will have reason to be glad that they made the attempt, 
and will probably repeat the effort in the future when 
they desire either to increase the number cf their stocks 
or to renew old worn-out comb.— Felix. 
APIARIAN NOTES. 
SPRING FEEDING—HIVES. 
To all hives likely to be short of food I have given syrup, some 
of them have taken 4 lbs. in twenty-four hours. I will give them at 
least 6 lbs., which with that and what they have will tide them over 
till the fruit blossoms yield both honey and pollen to meet the wants 
of the bees and the wishes of the bee-master. 
This is the proper season to investigate both properties and defects 
of hives, taking a note of both, extending the former and remedying 
the latter. Of these, in my own apiary, I observe one hive, but one 
only, having more dead bees than I care to see. The cause of this 
is, I observe, a sliding shutter in the floor warped so as to admit a 
current of cold air. With this exception all the rest of my hives 
have few dead bees, ranging from about two dozen to a hundred or 
two. Single-cased hives covered with straw, and the sides with cloth 
or felt, and a sheet of galvanised iron over all, are perfectly free from 
damp, and the bees are healthy, having fewer dead bees than any 
other hive. The only other defects in the whole apiary are one or 
two of the double-cased hives bare of paint, through which the damp 
has crept and spread to a distance. This will be remedied the first 
opportunity after the weather becomes dry, painting both inside and 
outside, so far as that can be done. A sun-cracked board of an 
outside case will also be removed, as, like the two double-cased ones, 
the damp has spread considerably from where the water entered, and 
a piece of sacking on the top of the hive touching the case, has by 
capillary attraction become wet, but not to the injury of either bees or 
hive. Although of a trifling nature in my case, are not always so. 
Very often, from such little defects, hives have perished by inattention 
to them at the proper time. Beginners will therefore profit by paying 
particular attention to have everything that is likely to induce or 
retain damp in or about a hive removed. 
VENTILATING HIVES DURING WINTER. 
There is nothing of more importance to the health of the bees 
than that of removing the moisture from the hive caused by the con¬ 
sumption of food and consequent perspiration by the bees, which 
during the summer months is expelled from the hive by the entrance, 
but during the winter months is liable to be condensed on some part, 
of the hive or combs, and not unfrequently causes the destruction of 
the bees. How to get rid of all this water without unnecessarily ex¬ 
posing the bees to a greater draught than they can bear is what has 
exercised some of our minds for more than thirty years. Condensers 
on the top of the hive have been advised, I think by the late Mr. 
Taylor. “ A Renfrewshire Bee-keeper,” Mr. Langstroth, and myself 
went in for porous materials being placed on the crown of the hive 
and over the openings between the combs, because the spaces between 
the combs on the top must be open, unless where slides are used nar¬ 
rower than the opening, or thin as in the Stewarton hive, through 
which if the top is well covered the perspiration passes. Others again 
prefer enamelled cloth, the use of which must necessarily prevent the 
escape of any moisture, throwing it back upon the bees to be con¬ 
densed upon them, or upon anything in the hive of a lower tempera¬ 
ture. 
The condensing apparatus might work very well if the combs ran 
at an angle to converge in the centre, but with parallel frames cannot 
be done without having a condenser to every seam of bees, which 
would be apt’to ciuse a draught, making the remedy worse than the 
disease. So far as I have heard or seen, there is nothing to equal our 
original system of insensible upward ventilation. Since we introduced 
that system nothing has yet appeared to come near it in effectiveness 
in preserving the hive in a healthy state, but rather the reverse. But 
even with insensible upward ventilation, all the vapour does not 
pa^s in an upward direction—much of it passes off beneath the bees 
through the ventilating floor and c mdenses upon the uader floor, ready 
to rise again in a state of vapour when the tempera'ure rises ; but 
when the bottom is covered with zinc or thoroughly pointed so as to 
render it non-absorbent, the water runs off, and the bees are not again 
troubled with it. When the temperature becomes high enough—say 
to 60°—-most of the vapour passes out at the door, but when math 
