May 27. 
THE COTTAGE-GARDENER. 
I against wire placed in this position. An upright, with 
J horizontal perches crossing at right angles, was placed in 
| the centre of each division, upon which the birds preferred 
to roost at night in the summer time. 
This front surface was turf, though, as may be imagined, 
I it became at times very bare of verdure, but a constant 
supply of sods, turfy ant-heaps, lettuces, and spare fruits, 
blackberries, acorns, and so forth in summer, apples in 
winter, with clean fresh water, was sure to be there. The 
' other half—-which I will call the house, for distinction—was 
I in fact a substantial stone-built structure, consisting of two 
j comfortable little rooms, with the ground for a floor, or 
| more literally speaking, dry and father line loose gravel, 
| three inches deep, renewed occasionally. The roof was 
I covered in with Broseley tiles; it was sloping, lath-and- 
plastered underneath, with a gutter running the length of 
the eaves to carry off the drip; the foundation of the 
structure also was laid perfectly dry. Bound perches an inch 
in diameter were fixed across, alternating three feet and 
five feet from the ground, and about two feet apart; by 
placing them thus the birds do not soil each other, the 
lower perches offer an easier access for the young, and also 
a facility for the old birds to reach the higher roosts; a 
small ladder sloping to the high perches was also there. 
Two doors, one to each compartment, situated in the 
back wall, formed an entrance, and four wire doors, mea¬ 
suring three feet by two feet, placed equi distant in the 
front wall, served the same purpose for the birds, thus 
offering them a free ingress or egress to and from their 
inner compartments. In very severe weather these doors 
were closed, and the pheasants made to remain under cover. 
A slide entrance, the same as that described for the 
door, was formed through the bottom of the partition-wall 
that divided the inside. 
A thorough cleaning-out of the plieasantry took place 
once a week, or oftener if found necessary, and the inner 
compartments underwent a lime -washing annually. 
The plieasantry unavoidably inclined to an eastern aspect; 
south-south-by-east would have been better. Ivy covered 
the outward walls. 
When the pheasants with the wire-work were disposed of, 
the remaining part became converted into a lien house, and 
a capital hen-house it was, the trifling alterations required 
being a firm gravel floor, with the laying-boxes represented 
above, ranged against the back and bottom of the wall 
in one division, and the perches occupying the other,— 
UPWARDS AND ONWARDS. 
{To be continued.) 
OBTAINING THE LARGEST AMOUNT OF 
HONEY. 
I beg to tender to your correspondent, ‘‘A Country Vicar,” 
my very sincere thanks for his late valuable contribution to 
your columns. His plan of managing bees is most clever 
and ingenious, and looks as though it would prove extremely 
effectual to its peculiar end. That end, to quote his own 
words, is “to obtain the largest amount of honey in any one 
year from a colony of bees, with the smallest amount of 
injury to the hive.” He has taken it for granted that I 
should solve his problem in a different manner to himself— 
he advocating the non-swarming, I the swarming system. 
Now, without objecting to the correctness of his conclusions, 
I proceed to make a few observations on the relative merits 
of the two systems. To obtain the greatest quantity of 
honey in any single season from any given stock, undoubt¬ 
edly the best way to proceed is to prevent its throwing off a 
swarm, and to give the bees as much additional room as 
they may seem to require. But where the prospective well¬ 
being of any stock, or stocks, is aimed at, as well as a good 
honey harvest, then I maintain that a systematic adherence 
to the purely deprivation, or non-swarming, system (be it 
the most perfect in the world), though it may prove asto¬ 
nishingly profitable now and then, will, in the long run, be 
far outstripped by that modification of the swarming system, 
judiciously managed, which I advocate; whose extreme sim¬ 
plicity, moreover, and adaptation to the often imperfect 
intelligence of our rustic poor, is not its least valuable 
recommendation. If your correspondent will turn to pages 
135 
120 and 130 of my book, he will there find my objection to 
the depriving-system stated to be, that it “ is not so uni¬ 
versally successful as its advocates would have us believe. 
For two or three years, indeed, after the establishment of a 
bee-house, or of any individual colony, matters may go on 
well enough; but, if all swarming be prevented, it becomes 
a mere chance whether it shall succeed or fail afterwards.” 
The fact is, swarming is the safety-valve , if I may “ fetch ” a 
metaphor from “far,” of bee-management: with the very 
term is associated in the mind the idea of revivification, as 
well as of reproduction. Those, therefore, who systemati¬ 
cally repress this admirable provision of nature, cannot, 1 
am persuaded, but often meet with disappointment in the 
management of their bees. I have lately' been called upon 
to sympathise with no less than four of my neighbours, 
whose large and, in the case of two of them, highly produc¬ 
tive apiaiies, managed on the non-swarming system, have 
altogether, though gradually, failed. Their owners “ failed 
from want of foresight; they should have provided a remedy 
against the natural defects of the system,” by r letting each 
stock so managed swarm once at least every three years, or 
by abstracting the queen from the hive sometime in July, 
and compelling the bees to rear another in her place. Were 
this rule strictly attended to, all serious objection to the 
depriving-system would be much diminished;* for if this 
were thus judiciously and scientifically managed, together 
with a periodical cutting-out of comb, I see no reason why an 
apiary should not maintain a perpetual youth, and any one 
colony flourish to an indefinite period." “A Country Vicar” 
will perceive from this that I am perfectly aware of the uses 
and advantages of the deprivation, i. e. non-swarming, sys¬ 
tem, under some circumstances, provided only its natural 
defects be supplied. Yet if, in my book and elsewhere, I 
have preferred my peculiar swarming system, it has not 
been merely from the too agreeable temptation of a par¬ 
tiality for my own discoveries, but from a persuasion, founded 
on facts which have come under my immediate notice, that 
it is really the simplest, most manageable, and most profit¬ 
able that has yet been recommended to the attention of 
j bee-keepers. I am here alluding to my cottage system 
alone: that modification of it which I have in a separate 
j chapter recommended to the intelligent and practised 
[ amateur, requiring as it does some considerable nicety and 
j skill in conducting it, I do not take into consideration here. 
Your correspondent has further ventured on a remark 
which also requires some notice at my hands. So far as 
j relates to the swarm, my system, he says, “ is well,” but his 
experience does not tally with mine “about the more prolific 
character of the older stocks.” Hoes he mean here that the 
“ older stocks ” of the old system of single-hiving, according 
to his observation, are not in general more (if they are even 
so) prolific as reserved swarms ? If so, I perfectly' agree 
with him. But I cannot think he has yet had experience 
enough to say of my large breeding hives, which are allowed 
to swarm but once a year, and which consequently are never 
weakened by over-swarming, and moreover are presided over 
by the first-born, and, therefore, best developed of the royal 
brood, to say of them that they are not in general equally, if 
not more, prolific than the swarms which may have an aged 
queen! At all events, this objection attaches equally to the 
deprivation system which he advocates; for there are no 
swarms at all, but always old hives. There is but one reason¬ 
able objection which might be advanced against the sys¬ 
tematic reservation of old stocks in preference to swarms, 
viz., that the comb of the one is fresh and clean, while that 
* There is, however, yet one objection to this system, which I will 
propose in the following words:—To get very pure honey, to any extent, 
deposited in supers, glasses, or side-boxes , your breeding-hive must not 
be very large, else will the bees lay up the major part of their stores in 
the hive itself, beyond the reach of the bee-owmer ; and yet, if the hives 
are small, a less quantity of honey will be collected, because of the less 
population capable of being bred in them than in large hives. Now does 
not my method of management exactly meet this difficulty ? My breed¬ 
ing hives being large, afford room in the breeding season for the hatching 
of a most abundant population, which, migrating from the hive, natur¬ 
ally or compulsorily, just at the time when honey abounds, is located in 
a small hive, to which is superadded another of similar or larger dimen¬ 
sions, as soon as the bees have fairly begun to work in the lower hive. 
Here, then, I get the advantage of an unusually large population, and 
the benefit withal of a small stock-hive, by which I not only secure a 
proportionably extensive collection of honey, but also obtain the greater 
part of that in its purest form. The parent hive, in the meanwhile, gets 
a new queen, &c. 
