THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
341 
February 26. 
of Is. 9d. each to the farmer, thus both cottager and farmer 
are benefited by the keeping of geese, and I will now en¬ 
deavour to show how others may be also benefited who are 
desirous of fattening a few for their own use. These ought 
to buy them a little sooner, when they may be purchased 
for about half-a-crown each, and if fed as has been re- 
: commended, allowing three-quarters of a bushel of oats 
1 to each goose, with a sufficiency of tho vegetables named 
above, they will be found not only much cheaper, but far 
richer in flavour, and with more firmness in their flesh than 
I the geese usually sold in the market.— Llebig. 
PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE 
MANAGEMENT OF BEES. 
By Henry Wenman Newman, Esq. 
(Continued from page 325.) 
HIVES AND BOXES. 
The best of hives for increase of stock, after all, is the 
old straw hive, so generally used by the cottager. They can 
be purchased with holes for glasses in the best bee comities. 
They should stand on wooden floors, the best mode being 
to have a fixed stand and board, with a moveable board upon 
it, so that the upper board can be removed and cleaned, 
and replaced, at pleasure. Mr. Nutt’s boxes are orna¬ 
mental, and the public are much obliged to him for them ; 
but an improvement may be made in them. His theory, 
that the queen never lays eggs in the side boxes of her 
colonies, is erroneous, as it is proved that the queen lays 
wherever there are brood combs. Probably, in a succession 
of bad seasons, the side boxes have never been completely 
filled, and the stocks have dwindled (as was the case with 
my own), which led him to suppose that the queen never 
laid her eggs in them. 
I do not recommend bee-houses; they encourage vermin 
and dirt of all sorts ; but I will allow they possess one good 
quality—probably, if the aspect is s. e., the combs may 
never be melted by the heat. Neat boxes with glasses 
are the means of saving hundreds of bees. In a good 
season the glasses will be filled twice with the purest honey. 
I shall give a description of the various hives which I re¬ 
commend ; my own straw hives are covered with earthen¬ 
ware pans, which I find the least troublesome. Hackles 
harbour mice, and other vermin, and if they are not well 
made, rain gets into the top of the hive, and the combs in 
that part will be mouldy—desertion by the bees being often 
the consequence. 
The covering I use for my straw hives is the large 
earthenware pan; between the pan and the hive there 
should be a little straw or hay. In the hot season of 1840, 
when in June the thermometer reached 88° in the shade, 
none of my hives were destroyed by the melting of the 
combs, although no extra precaution was taken. In Oxford¬ 
shire I met with a cottager who had two destroyed by the 
heat within one week of the end of June, and another in 
the adjoining parish. All three of these hives had the 
common straw hackle for a covering, but stones instead of 
boards to rest on. Bees, in seasons like that of 1840, ought 
to be shaded with boughs of trees, or covered with wet 
cloths, from eleven o’clock in the morning until five in the 
afternoon, unless they are in shaded bee-liouses. 
No amateur in bees ought to be without the show-bar 
hive; a small cast, or second swarm, is sufficient to put into 
one of these hives, but, unless taken great care of, they die in 
the winter. I have two of these hives. I have seen the 
queen lay eggs; she goes liead-foremost into the cell first, 
to examine it, she then turns round and goes backward into 
the cell to deposit her egg. By frequently opening these 
show hives the bees by degrees become accustomed to it. 
All hives and boxes should be looked at once a-day, at 
least, to guard against accidents. The entrance to a hive 
may be stopped up, or fifty other accidents may happen. 
Boxes are constantly infested with spiders, which weave their 
webs in all directions. These should be swept away, for, if 
neglected, you will generally find in them several dead bees. 
The boards should be swept about twice a year; many bee¬ 
keepers never do so at all. In a populous hive it is safe to 
do it, but only in cold weather. 
The Huisli hive is pretty, and well intended by the in¬ 
ventor ; but, unfortunately, the bees often make their combs 
in a different direction from what the owner wishes, and 
then the extraction of the combs is almost impossible. 
Boxes, which I am very fond of myself, in the winter have 
one good quality: if there be one straw hive in the apiary, 
that most impudent enemy of bees, the black-headed large 
tomtit, always prefers the straw, which he nibbles at for ten 
minutes together to worry the bee ; but I never saw him at 
a box. 
The perpetual cry of want of room in hives and boxes 
may be carrjed too far; frequently, on examination of my 
boxes, I have found the vacant space filled with cobwebs, 
and numbers of dead bees enveloped in them. How often, 
too, do we see the side boxes begin to be filled, and, when a 
wet month arrives, the side boxes deserted, and parts of a 
few combs left untenanted; yet writers persist in recom¬ 
mending the peasants in Scotland to keep as many bees as 
they do in the splendid climate of Switzerland! If we could 
bargain for a dozen summers such as 1842 and 1840, a great 
deal more might be done in Great Britain. The proof how 
the matter stands is plain : for one stock of bees kept in 
Great Britain by cottagers, there are fifty in Switzerland, 
and parts of Germany, where the climate is more equal. 
Mr. Taylor’s Hive. —Mr. Taylor (whose book on bees has 
gone through four editions) has certainly invented a new 
hive, more compact than Mr. Nutt’s. The glasses are 
placed in a very plain and simple manner, and easily taken 
off when filled with honey. These hives are now to be seen 
everywhere, and, in good seasons, are very useful as well as | 
ornamental; at the same time, no hives are equal to the 
old straw hives for productiveness, and they are more free 1 
from the vicissitudes of heat and cold. Boxes should be : 
painted a light straw colour, so as not to attract the rays of ! 
the sun too much. If hives or boxes are too small, the 
bees soon make their combs down to the board, and then it 
becomes a matter of difficulty to raise them for the purpose 
of cleaning them. Indeed, in a very populous hive, it 
cannot be done without danger and great annoyance, as 
the operator will find all the combs glued to the board. 
Mr. Milton's Hives. —When visitiug the Crystal Palace, 
I was much pleased with Mr. Milton’s hive ; he showed me 
one which was full of honey, about the 7th of June. It is 
astonishing how his bees must have worked to have filled 
the combs so full, as there is not much of the Trifolium 
repens in the vicinity of Hyde Park; probably, a strong 
honey dew on the sycamore trees, or the maple, had some¬ 
thing to do with it, and there is a considerable quantity of 
garden and nursery ground not far off. I admire the sim¬ 
plicity of Mr. Milton’s hives; they form a pleasing variety 
to those amateurs who like to have everything new. I un¬ 
fortunately did not see Mr. Payne’s hives, which, I believe, 
were there; but I saw Mr. Taylor’s beautiful assortment, 
which I have noticed elsewhere. 
THE GOLDEN AND THE SILVER PHEASANTS. 
(Continued from page 324.) 
While entertaining this strong disbelief in the dornesti- 
eability of any species which I have yet seen of the genus 
Phasianus, it is only right to state the opinion which other 
well-informed persons hold respecting birds which are as 
yet known, in their living state, to but very few Englishmen 
indeed. Mr. Edward Blyth, the very able and accomplished 
Curator to the Asiatic Society’s Museum at Calcutta, writes, 
“ From what I have observed, I should not think that the 
Polyplectrons are domesticable, but I have only seen them 
in aviaries. The Kallij pheasants ( albocristatus , melanolus, 
Horsjieldi, lineatus, erythrophthalmvs), I very strongly sus¬ 
pect, are reclaimable. The great Fireback ( Ignitus ) I have 
had extremely tame, but the pair were much too valuable to 
me to be experimented on, at least in this way.” Here are 
some brilliant subjects for trial; and if, after all, we get no 1 
new court-yard pet, we shall, at least, have introduced a 
magnificent addition to our aviaries. But, to my mind, a 
great argument that they are not reclaimable, is the fact 
that they have not been reclaimed by the natives of India. 
Even the gold and the silver pheasants have been bred 
with us for quite a sufficient number of (their) generations 
