June 17. THE COTTAGE GARDENER, 183 
must begin again. Pears, though covered likewise, are 
nearly all gone, and my plums on north walls, which are 
now beautiful in bloom, have perished in embryo ; cherries, 
I fear, are no better. It is my opinion that locality has far 
more to do with success than anything we can do, either in 
retarding or protecting. The gardens here are situated at a 
point where two vallies meet, one from the east, the other 
norlli-east; the latter full of springs and a small stream ; 
consequently the air is always charged with vapour, which 
the winds we have lately had make very destructive. Last 
year, it was the wet that did all the injury. The only 
peaches I had were on unprotected trees. The season before, 
in March, we had a deep snow and a severe frost, particu¬ 
larly one night, and in the morning the rime hung on forest 
trees resembling what it did in Murphy’s January. Of 
course everything here perished; even the apple-tree dower- 
buds, by applying the linger and thumb to them, could be 
made to spin ofi'like a marble; yet not two miles from here, 
on the ridge that divides the two vallies, a farmer had a 
splendid crop of apricots and gooseberries; so had every 
one that possessed them in the little town of Swaffham. 
None of them are protectors. From the 17 th to the 20th of 
April the preceding year, the frost was so penetrating that 
it destroyed the very trees themselves. I had planted the 
month previous, against a north wall, some fine cherry-trees; 
the previous year’s wood was all destroyed; some old trees 
suffered so much that they never got over it; my apple-tree 
blossom was all destroyed, while all around here, in May, I 
never saw the orchards so gay. The only good effect I have 
experienced from it was on some large fig-trees, from which 
I had removed the covering only two or three days previous; 
all the previous year's wood was killed, and it so injured the 
constitution of the trees, that the last two years I have had 
excellent crops, and the present show equally good signs ; 
they are an excellent substitute for peaches in September. 
After all this, who will be so confident in their practice, or 
presume all are laggards that cannot cope with them?—J. 
Mukdoch, Clay Hall, Swaffham. 
PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE 
MANAGEMENT OF BEES. 
By Henry Wenman Newman , Esq. 
(Continued from page 90.) 
HEAT AND COLD. 
Heat and cold are both to be guarded against by bee¬ 
keepers. In severe cold the entrances to tiie hives should 
be closed entirely, and if the hives be good ones, with their 
coverings, this will generally be sufficient. That great ob¬ 
server, Virgil, who lived in a warmer climate than Britain, 
observes:— 
“ Ipsa autem, seu corticibus tibi suta cavatis, 
Sea lento fuerint alvearia vimine texta, 
Angustos habeant aditus ; nam frigore mella 
Cogit hyems, eademque calor liquifacta remittit. 
Utraque vis apibus pariter metuenda.” 
(Whether your bee-hives are made of hollow cork sewn 
together, or of bending twigs interwoven, let them have 
narrow entrances; for winter, with its cold, coagulates the 
honey, and heat, on the other hand, liquifies and wastes it. 
The effect of botli these is dangerous to bees.) 
The advocates for ventilation will do well, in severe 
weather, to have no chinks beneath their hives; for a draught 
of air, when the thermometer gets as low as from 5° to 10°, 
will candy the honey. So, on the other hand, although 
Virgil, in an Italian climate, recommends the shade of a 
tree for hives, this is only wanted in England in such sum¬ 
mers as 18-10 ; then, a temporary shade or wet cloths should 
be applied to the hives. In June and July, 1840, I met in 
my travels with a great many cottagers who had lost stocks by 
the melting of the combs; the greatest part of the losses oc¬ 
curring where stone floors instead of wooden floors were used. 
A bee-house facing the south-east is certainly beneficial 
in this respect only, as the great heat of the meridian sun 
and afternoon are avoided. These hot summers, in England, 
are few and far between, and the bee-keeper is consequently 
not always prepared to meet them. Generally speaking, there 
is not sufficient sun ; for sun, after all, is the life and soul 
of a hive bee, and without it his life would be of little use. 
From the number of bees in ltussia, there is no doubt 
that they can stand the most severe cold. A few years ago, 
20 lbs. to JO lbs. weight of honey were cut out of a piece of 
timber at Gloucester, which came from Memel; the combs 
were entire. Many persons went to see it as a great curiosity, 
it having been mentioned in the newspaper. 
Certain it is bees always thrive better after a severe 
winter than after a mild one, and during such severe seasons 
they consume much less honey. 
(To be continued .) 
TO CORRESPONDENTS. 
Sewage. —“ An Old Subscriber who manages a public establishment 
of 700 or 80 > persons, wishes to know, if the sewage of the establishment 
equal daily to about 7000 gallons, can be profitably filtered through peat 
charcoal 7 We are of opinion that such a plan would not answer in 
practice. The peat charcoal would be required in too larpe quantities, 
and is expensive, as it must be used as a deodorizer in considerable pro¬ 
portions. If, however, “ An Old Subscriber ” would use the sewage in 
the irrigation of his land, the good effect would be certain. If he can 
pass it over liis grass land;, he will find the grass the best, the most 
profitable, and the most certain of all deodorizers. He will soon discover 
that, as the sewage trickles over the grass, it gradually becomes more 
limpid and colourless, till at last its colour, taste, and smell, entirely 
disappear. And if our correspondent once saw the luxuriance of the 
grass produced by sewage irrigation, he would not hesitate to adopt so 
certain and so profitable a means of getting rid of a nuisance, and, at the 
same time, raising annually three heavy crops of grass. Peat charcoal 
has been tried, and found too expensive a deodorizer by the Croydon 
Board of Health. 7000 gallons of sewage daily is far too valuable a 
spring of liquid manure to be suffered to escape into the adjoining water. 
Peat charcoal is most usefully mixed with rich concentrated manure, 
such as nightsoil. 
Bees—Early Swarm, their Enemies, &c.— R. W. Neuman, Esq., 
writes to us as follows : “ I find a neighbour of mine had a swarm go off 
on the 8th of May. It was taken about half a mile from the stock by a 
stranger. ‘ The Country Curate ’ had also a swarm, on the 7th of May 
in Herefordshire. I regret to say that one of my old stocks to-day shows 
symptoms of poverty, having found several grubs about a-week old 
thrown out. I have not seen the bees pressed so hard since the year 
1843, when I lost two stocks from starvation, one of which had swarmed 
in that month (May), when we had twenty-five wet days, more or less. 
The late rains and cold nights have been most unfavourable. I have 
adopted Mr. Payne’s plan, and given my bees some barley-sugar— 
a very good and clean way of feeding, as they do not get bedaubed as 
they do with honey or sugared ale. I put in a few flat cakes of the barley 
sugar. Your correspondent, ‘ Verax,* mentions Earwigs amongst the 
enemies of bees. I beg to remind him, that no bushes or shrubs ought to 
be suffered to touch the hives ; and that the hackles ought to be taken off 
and examined every three months at least. Mice are more apt to do 
mischief than earwigs. It is surprising the bees did not desert ‘ Verax’s’ 
hive. I never found Hornets annoy my bees, although I was surrounded 
by them when I lived in the Vale of Gloucestershire. I frequently saw 
the hornets attack the wasps and kill them. Amongst the traps to kill 
bees, greenhouses are bad, as, independently of the number of bees that 
perish, I find that most of the nurserymen keep a piece of lath on pur¬ 
pose to kill the bees in greenhouses, on account of the injury done to the 
flowers. A writer in ‘ The Zoologist ’ has mentioned the poor Hedgehog 
as an enemy to bees, but how is he to get at them ? He seldom appears 
in broad daylight, and is a wretched climber. I found one in a well-cis¬ 
tern on my premises, not above eight inches deep , and he made several 
attempts to get out and always failed. I released him, and placed him on 
my lawn, and after remaining coiled about ten minutes, he went off at his 
usual slow pace. On Saturday, the 29th of May, after a very wet morn¬ 
ing, about four o’clock, I found a swarm of bees in a clump of currant- 
trees ; the bees were drenched with rain, and quite quiet, about twenty 
yards from the parent hive. Let this warn young bee-keepers to search 
their bushes, shrubs, and trees every hour, all round within fifty yards, 
from eleven o’clock until five. My last swarm came out with a blink of 
sunshine of ten minutes. If a watcher turns his back only for five 
minutes, he may not see them come out. The bustle of swarming or I 
settling only lasts from three minutes to five minutes at most. I have 
killed fifty queen wasps during the months of April and May.” 
Berberis fascicularis (J. G.). — This is an evergreen which every i 
nurseryman in the three kingdoms can show you, but Berberis aquifoliu I 
is the one intended by Mr. Beaton. The EIfordRhubarb, in our opinion, ! 
is still the best for coming in earliest without forcing, but we cannot tell 
by how many other names it may be known in the country. You can 
always tell it in a tart, however, from the juice coming near to Port wine 
colour. There is only one kind of hand-mowing machine, and it requires 
two men with two hands each, to work it; or a man and a stout lad ; it 
it better than a scythe, but not so convenient, as it will only work in dry 
weather. 
Himalayaii Rhododendron Seedlings. — Q asks, “ What is the 
proper treatment for these, sown in 1850, and at pr«ent in pots, in a cold 
frame ? ”—Seedling rhododendrons of that age, and from that mountain 
range, require treatment differing for different species as much as do 
orchids and calceolarias. If they are of the arborea kinds, they would 
come on faster in a stove. If they arc of the thick, broad-leaved sorts, 
as lepidatum and campanulatum , a close cold pit, with a high summer 
temperature during the day, and quite cool at night, would suit them well; 
but if they are of the very small-leaved kinds, a very cool place, and 
away from the sun, is the proper place for their growth. 
Verbena Venosa (Vera,v ).—Transplant the March sown seedlings 
out of the pots at once, and so leave them to the end of next March, but 
throw a slight dry covering over them in winter. They are to be annually 
replanted at the end of March, and pieces of the trailing underground 
shoots, which look like roots, grow from every joint, if they arc only stuck 
in the bed, so that their propagation is as easy as that of Spear-grass. If 
we chop what are usually called the roots of Spear-grass, or of this ver¬ 
bena, with a spade, the smallest piece will grow, if it has a joint, and is 
put into the ground. 
