THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, October 10, 1860. 
honey. If your correspondent tries it I shall like to hear the 
result.—D. P. B. ] __ 
Cax you tell me the cause of the following evil, and if so, 
the remedy ? . , , . 
I am an amateur Pigeon fancier, and have, until this season, 
had very fair luck breeding them. My stock is two dozen pairs, 
consisting of Almonds, Trumpeters, Barbs, Powters, Beards, 
Baldheads, and Eantails. I keep two hoppers—one at present 
supplied with tares, the other with rice; they prefer rice to 
anything. I have tried beans, peas, barley, buckwheat, and 
maise. They are kept in a loft, but fly out whenever they like 
(never fastened in). They have pump water, the same as is 
drunk in the house. The old birds all the season have seemed 
to have bad influenza colds, otherwise very healthy; but the 
young ones die at all ages with a swelling in the mouth or 
throat. It is not like canker, for it doe3 not break ; it is more 
like a tumour, quite hard, and, when cut open, yellow inside. 
Of course they are starved. The old feed the young as they get 
worse on salad. Last week I lost ten young ones, the week 
before seven, and one week in the spring sixteen—all I had. I 
have gone through all the old birds twice carefully, but can find 
nothing of the kind the matter with them.— J. S. A. 
[Poultry on board ship fed on rice have a similar disease. 
Give it up. Do J. S. A.’s Pigeons have salt? and is their water 
given them in a tin or zinc vessel ? 
Wash the old birds’ heads with a solution of borax, and let 
them have access to salt. 
The young ones are suffering from canker, little can be clone 
for them. In a few cases, perhaps, the lumps of pus may be 
picked out, and the sore place touched with caustic; but with 
young birds it is difficult. If the old are cured the young may, 
perhaps, not be attacked. 
Some fanciers assert that giving Pigeons water in a metal or 
tin vessel will cause canker, others attribute it to foul water. 
—B. P. B.] 
. The Pigeon Trade of Michigan. — We learn from 
the Grand Rapids Eagle that there have been shipped from that 
place alone—to say nothing of the large quantities shipped at 
other places in that region—5S8 barrels, or 108,555 lbs. of wild- 
Pigeons during the past season. The Ragle estimates the total 
number of Pigeons shipped from that port of Michigan at be¬ 
tween 1,000,000 and 2,000,000. The freight paid on Pigeons 
at the Grand Rapids Express office during the season amounted 
to 3488 dols. 97c., and the Pigeons sold for about 25,250 dols.— 
{Boston Cultivator). 
FEEDING BEES—BEE-BOXES. 
Every bee-keeper in the United Kingdom should lose no 
time in ascertaining the weight of all stocks or swarms intended 
to stand the winter, and immediately supply the deficiencies of 
Nature. Where these precautions are neglected no one need 
expect anything but desolate hives and a depopulated apiary in 
the ensuing spring. 
Of all the various modes of feeding bees (and I believe I have 
tried every one in turn), I find none so good as that recom¬ 
mended by M. Hermann, who says, “ The feeding is always 
done best from above with an inverted bottle, the mouth of 
which is tied over with a small piece of lace-net,” or toile, as it 
is rendered in the Erench edition. 
My bees have had above a hundredweight of food this autumn 
all administered in this manner, with a much smaller amount of 
excitement, and consequent waste, than when given in any 
other way. 
The following sketch, which is drawn to the scale of an eighth 
of an inch to an inch, shows the manner in which I have applied 
this mode of feeding to flat-topped hives in which the central 
aperture is not adapted to receive the bottle-neck. 
With straw hives, all that is necessary is to withdraw the 
cork which usually stops the central aperture, and insert therein 
the neck of the bottle, which will be rapidly emptied. If no 
aperture exists, one can be easily made with a sharp penknife. 
It also delineates the bee-boxes used by me, as well as the mode 
in which they arc constructed. 
These boxes are made of one-and-a-quarter-inch yellow pine 
throughout, dovetailed together, and the dovetails pinned 
through with No. 8 iron wire in the direction indicated bv 
dotted lines. The top and floor-boards are “keyed,” to prevent 
warping, and the former is secured to the box by four screws, 
which pass through the keys and the board itself. The holes in 
the latter through which they pass are made so large as to admit 
of the wood swelling and shrinking freely without thrusting out 
or contracting the back and front of the box. 
There is but one window, which is placed at the back, and is 
of the size indicated by the moulding (a five-eighth astragal). 
The interior dimensions of the boxes are 13 inches square by 
7 inches deep, and at the top are eight bars placed at equal 
distances from each other. 
The recent unprecedently wet season has caused a very great 
accumulation of moisture in wooden hives. I have already 
transferred most of my stocks into dry boxes, and shall pro¬ 
bably be compelled to shift the whole before long. In tliis 
respect I would recommend all who keep bees in wooden bar- 
hives to follow the example of—A Devonshire Bee-keeper. 
P.S. Six pounds of lump sugar dissolved in four pounds of 
water, and boiled for two or three minutes, form very excellent 
bee-food. 
OUE LETTEE BOX. 
Crowing Hen (Subscriber). —Your lien has become a hen-cock, and if 
you examine her narrowly you will see an increase of size in her comb and 
gills, an inclination to fall over in the long tail feathers, and unusual 
growth and alteration of hackle and saddle. Ali this is caused by derange¬ 
ment of the egg organs. She will always be useless, she will get worse 
instead of better, and will end by becoming a positive nuisance. We advise 
you to kill her. There is an old proverb, 
“ A whistling woman, and a crowing hen, 
Are worthless nuisances to men.” 
You will have seen what we said about wintering Pelargoniums and Cal¬ 
ceolarias. 
Rosella Paroquets. —“ M. G.” wishes for directions for their manage¬ 
ment, and we shall be obliged by their being sent to us by any of our 
readers. We knew a Cockatoo which left off pulling out its feathers and 
eating them, as soon as it was supplied daily with a dish filled with water 
to bathe in. 
Belgian Canaries. —“II. P. J.” is informed Mr. W. Young, 128, High 
Street, Oxford, and Mr. J. Eton, High Street, St. Clements, Oxford, are 
both Belgian Canary breeders, and would give him any information he 
needs. 
Rabbit Management ( Youngster ).—Their manure may be applied to 
rose trees, or any other garden plant if properly managed. A doe Rabbit 
will breed at five months, sometimes earlier; hut where good stock is 
wished for, six or seven months is quite early enough. A buck may be 
used at six months old. Rabbits fatten easily on oats, bran, carrots, oil cake, 
sow thistles, &c.; but to eat them in perfection, they should he fattened 
from the doe—that is, the doe should not he allowed to rear more than four 
at a time, and should be very well fed on good food, so that she may have 
an abundance of milk. The young will then be fit to kill at about nine 
weeks old, and are very superior in flavour to any others. 
Wasps (A Gardener). —The concise history of the common Wasp is as 
follows:—Such of the females, or queens, as survive the winter (having 
been impregnated duiing the previous autumn), immediately on the arrival 
of fine spring weather commence building a nest, and maxing comb, in 
which they deposit eggs which only produce workers. These as soon as 
they arrive at the perfect state assist their parent in making more cells, the 
colony increasing in strength and size through the summer. In the early 
autumn, male eggs are deposited, and some of the workers’ or female eggs 
(by a peculiar treatment which nobody has yet described satisfactorily), 
are developed into fertile females or queens, which immediately pair with 
the thin, long-bodied, and long-horned males, which are produced at the 
same period, which latter die immediately afterwards. The red-coloured 
insects found in some of the cells, are parasites known by the name of 
Ripiphorus paradoxus, which, having devoured the grubs of the Wasps, 
undergo their transformation within the cells. Should you find any more 
comb with these parasites in it, please to forward poitions of it to J. O. 
Westwood, Esq., Taylor Institute, Oxford, for his careful investigation. 
