October 30. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
69 
entrance so as to exclude the influence of the outer cold) 
that any extensively good results will be found to accrue 
from the treatment proposed. But the case is very different 
when, as Mr. Payne proposes, hives are located in a warm 
greenhouse, or parlour window. In this instance, the cold 
external air * may he excluded as often as is required,—say 
every night when the bees are snug at home,—while, at the 
same time, the air of the room or greenhouse, may he per¬ 
mitted to communicate with the interior of the hive, by 
means of a ventilator beneath the floor-board of the stock, 
. which must he a piece of perforated zinc. In this way the 
: bees have the advantage of a free circulation of air, without 
any danger of the young brood being starved with cold by a 
sudden change of weather, as is often the case. Few people 
have any idea of the injury which is done to a hive in this 
j way; for to this, doubtless, may be attributed the frequent 
j removal, by the bees, of dead, half-formed grubs, so often 
; seen in spring, especially on a change from cold to mild 
weather; and certainly thousands + of eggs are rendered 
abortive in this, way every year. 
I shall now instance the case of one of my own stocks, 
treated last spring in this way, which will serve to shew with 
how much reason Mr. Payne gives the advice which I have 
quoted above. The stock to which I allude, was the same 
artifically-formed stock of 1849, with whose history in 
general, your readers are already acquainted. Though it 
survived the winter well, the bees did not shew any signs of 
activity, (i.e., the queen did not begin to lay) till about the 
15th of February, full a month later than some of my other 
stocks. I did not meddle with it, however, till the third of 
March, when I shifted the box to the right of the position it 
had occupied during the winter, .replacing it, at the same 
time, with an empty box, through which the bees had to pass 
to get out of doors. A narrow tunnel through the bottom 
board, communicated between the boxes at their corres¬ 
ponding corners, as remote from the entrance as possible. 
This change in itself produced a great evenness of tempera¬ 
ture in the hive, besides somewhat raising it, and the bees no 
longer felt as before, the draught which rushed in at the old 
entrance. But the temperature was raised at once more 
considerably, and it daily increased, when I further closed the 
tunnel, which I did every night, bypassing a zinc slide over its 
mouth in the empty box. Thus, no air from without could pos¬ 
sibly reach the bees ; J moreover, all inconvenience to them for 
want of air was obviated by opening a ventilator beneath their 
box, which communicated with the warm room in which I sat, 
where a fire was daily kept till the middle of May. Thus 
the bees frequently exchanged (as soon as they were all 
returned home) an external temperature, which, during the 
night, often fell considerably below freezing point, with a 
cold wind from the east or north, for a perfectly still, warm 
air, at a temperature always 20°, and often 30° higher than 
it was out-of-doors. The good eifects of this treatment were 
soon apparent. For, though I never released the bees till 
the day was far advanced, yet they brought in immensely- 
increased stores of pollen, and the hive was speedily filled 
* I am supposing that the bees have, of course, a communication with 
the outer world by means of some tunnel-contrivance through the floor¬ 
board, which can be closed by means of a metal slide, or block. 
f A very curious instance in proof of this occurred to me this spring. 
In one of my hives, which I treated in the manner proposed, and whose 
temperature was consequently raised to about 70 ° (near the glass-window 
from which I made observations), the queen occupied almost every 
worked cell visible to me with an egg, on or about the 16 th of April. I 
then had the curiosity to omit, for a couple of nights, my precaution of 
excluding the external air. The nights being very cold, the comb pre¬ 
viously covered with bees was left deserted, and the temperature fell 
twenty, or more, degrees, but not below 50°. The consequence was that 
not one of these eggs became a bee: after a few days, though the bees 
returned to the deserted comb, the eggs disappeared, and. what was very 
remarkable, no more eggs were laid in these cells for a period of full a 
fortnight. I made a similar observation, in 1850, in another hive. From 
these and other experiments which I made, I am disposed to look upon 
the eggs of bees as very tender, and the vital principle in them easily 
destroyed. We may, therefore, form some idea of the immense waste of 
energy on the queen’s part, and the loss to the hive where, as with us, 
the vicissitudes of weather and wind, which are often so sudden and 
severe, are not properly guarded against. 
t Here I cannot but observe that the bottom boards with their 
system of tunnels and slides (which any intelligent workman will 
easily construct), as explained at pages 113, 123, and 127 of “The English 
Beekeeper,” of which I hope Mr. Payne will make trial in his green¬ 
house, are better calculated than anything I know of to answer the pur¬ 
pose of promoting early breeding in an amateur’s apiary. 
with brood. Drones appeared on the 9 tit of April; comb ivas 
first worked, and honey deposited in a glass on the 1 Ith ; the 
population, at the same time, doubling, and more than 
doubling, itself every month. The average temperature of 
the stock which, at the beginning of March was 50°, rose, 
at its close, to G7°, by the middle of April was at 76°, and 
at the beginning of ungenial May (when the mean average 
of my other stocks was about 60°, and often fell as low as 
53°,) stood at 74°, rising on and after the 8th (when a 
milder air prevailed) to 85° as the average mean. Owing 
to the miserable weather of the previous fortnight, very 
little was done in the hive; but on the 8th of May, many 
large drones appeared, and active work was resumed, so 
that on the lltli, the bees took in force to two good-sized 
glasses at once, and a few days later, commenced work in 
a side-box. 
Hitherto, everything had succeeded beyond my sanguine 
expectation; never had I seen so promising a stock, and 
that in a most backward spring, when most other stocks in 
the neighbourhood were comparatively weak. At this time, 
however, my fears destroyed my prospects. Perceiving on 
the 2lst of May that, during a short absence from home, 
the bees had laid the foundations of several royal cells, 
and seemed preparing to swarm, notwithstanding them 
abundance of room, and fearing that I should lose them if 
they went off, which (as the temperature now constantly 
remained above 90°) they threatened to do every day, I 
resolved to make an artificial swarm without delay, though 
I should sacrifice, in so doing, my hope of any great spoil. 
This was accordingly done,* aiid with great ease and suc¬ 
cess, without killing a bee, the old queen and the new swarm 
taking the place of the old stock, which, when most of the 
bees had escaped from it, was removed to a vacant place in 
a lower shelf of the same window. To test the artificial 
system, I suffered every full-grown bee to join the new 
swarm, so that the old stock was literally depopulated, save 
and except that a few young bees remained, who had never 
yet sallied into the open air. On examination, every comb 
in this stock was as full as possible of brood, for the most 
part sealed, in fact, there were very few cells with young 
larva; in them. As I have already given an account of both 
swarm and stock, I need only say here that the latter gave 
me three-and-a-half pounds of surplus honey in a glass, 
besides working comb in a side-box, and the swarm gave 
me six pounds in a glass, besides, also, working in a side- 
box; moreover, I took nearly four pounds of honey from 
the box itself in October, and .all this in spite of the nume¬ 
rous disadvantages of weather and season, which have dis¬ 
appointed many bee-keepers, besides myself, this year. Had 
the season been more favourable, I doubt not I should, 
even after dividing the population of my vigorous stock, 
have obtained an unusually large store of honey; as it is, in 
spite of all, I think I have not come very badly off 
A Country Curate. 
COMPARING NOTES. 
As comparing notes seems to be the order of the day 
just now, perhaps a few remarks upon one or two plants 
would not be devoid of interest to some of your readers; 
and as I havo lately visited Shrubland Hall, the seat of Sir 
W. Middleton, Bart., I have had the opportunity of ob- 
* For the benefit of any amateur desiring to follow my practice in this 
instance, I add the following extract from my note-book:—The glasses 
at the top of the stock-hive (in one of which I had perceived the queen 
in the act of laying drone eggs) were first of all removed on separate 
panes of glass. That in which the queen was, was next placed over one 
of the top holes on the side box, and the pane removed. The artificial 
swarm (for there were many bees in the new box) was thus made in a 
very few minutes. All that remained was now to close the communica¬ 
tion between the boxes, and, after waiting half an hour, to remove the 
ventilator below the old stock ; an immediate and continuous rush of 
bees then took place, which lasted for two or three hours, until the box 
was empty. The escaped bees at once flew through the open window in 
my room, and rejoined their companions in the new box. As soon as I 
perceived the queen to have left the glass, I removed it, replacing it, after 
a short time, with a larger glass, in which the bees worked simulta¬ 
neously with those in the new stock itself. I have only to say that I 
shifted the swarm to the right, again replacing it, as I had done the other, 
with an empty box, in which, towards the close of June, the bees worked 
four or five combs, and stored several pounds of honey, which, however, 
I did not take from them. Let me add now that I by no means advise 
that all the bees be permitted to escape, as I did in the instance here 
recorded; such a practice would, in general, be fatal, as I have myself 
experienced; at least 2000 bees should remain—Bonner says 3000. 
