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THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, March 20, 1860. 
Hebrew and Chaldee, Deburah and Debra, are derived from a 
root which in those languages refers to the admirable order and 
conduct by which the bee is led in its various works. 
The earliest notice of them in the Bible refers to their irritability 
and their swarming. “ The Animates came out against you and 
chased you as bees do.” “ The bee that is in Assyria, shall come 
and shall rest in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the 
rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes.”—( Deutero¬ 
nomy i., 44; Isaiah vii., 19). Homer has a similar comparison 
when describing the Grecian forces issuing from their ships.— 
(Iliad ii., 1. 87). 
“ As from some rocky cleft the shepherd sees 
Clustering in heaps on heaps the driving bees, 
Rolling and black’ning, swarms succeeding swarms, 
With deeper murmurs and more hoarse alarms ; 
Dusky they spread, a close embodied crowd, 
And o’er the vale descends the living cloud.” 
But we do not purpose dwelling upon the notices of the habits 
of bees, our object being to place before our readers, in chrono¬ 
logical order, the directions given by practical bee-keepers for 
the management of the apiary. We think that many of our 
readers will be surprised to find that some of our most skilful 
practices are the same as those of 1800 years since. 
The fii’st work we shall quote is the “ Husbandry ” of Lucius 
Junius Moderatus Columella , written about a.d. 50.* In the 
ninth book, after describing various kinds of bees, the plants to 
be cultivated for them, the construction of an apiary facing the 
south, with a good supply of water, and a store of spare hives ; 
he gives a chapter upon the construction of these, and here let 
us quote somewhat of what he says :—“ We may make very use¬ 
ful hives of the bark of the cork tree, for they are neither ex¬ 
tremely cold in winter, nor excessively hot in summer. Of 
fenuel-giant ( Ferula communis) hives are woven equally good, 
as they are of the same qualities as the bark. Some persons 
employ willow twigs, weaving them like weavers’ work. If these 
cannot be had, the hives must be made of the trunk of a tree 
hollowed out, or sawn into boards. Ilives made of pottery are 
the worst, for the summer heats scorch them, and they are frozen 
by the winter colds.” 
Yet let no one suppose that glass hives, or observatory hives, 
or hives capable of enlargement, are modern inventions, for Pliny 
tells us, “ Many persons have the hives made of mirror stone 
(Lapis specularia, a transparent talc), for the purpose of watch¬ 
ing the bees at work within.” Eor the same purpose, he also 
relates, “ a man of consular dignity, near Rome, had his hives 
made of transparent lanthorn horn. By this means it was ascer¬ 
tained that the young bee was developed from the egg in forty- 
five days.”— (Nat. Hist., xxi., 47, and xi., 16.) The cover of the 
hive should be made to move up and down from behind, so that 
it may be lowered inwardly if the hive be too large” (Pliny), and 
“that the bee-master may take the combs.”-— (Varro, de re 
rustica, iii,, 16.) 
We will not pause over the directions for placing the hives, 
nor over the signs of approaching swarming, nor over the descrip¬ 
tion of “ the king ” of the bees, for the Romans mistook the 
monarch’s sex, though all is consonant with our own knowledge ; 
but we must quote some passages from the chapter on uniting 
swarms. 
“ Sometimes the king must be put to death, when the old bee¬ 
hive has not a sufficient number of bees ; and its want of numbers 
must be supplied by some other swarm. Therefore, when, in 
the beginning of the spring, a numerous young brood has been 
hatched in that hive, the new king must be squeezed to death, 
that the multitude may continue to live with their parents with¬ 
out discord. But if the honeycombs shall have produced no 
progeny at all, you may bring the commonalty of two or three 
hives together into one; but they must be first sprinkled with 
sweet liquor : then afterwards you may shut them up, and, 
having placed meat for them, you may keep them shut up 
almost for the space of three days, leaving small breathing-places 
for them, till they accustom themselves to converse familiarly, 
and live together. 
“ But the paucity of the bees may be remedied with less 
trouble in those domiciles which labour under any pestilential 
distemper: for after the havoc and destruction of the hive, 
* Virgil wrote his Georgic concerning bees before this date; but 
Columella is more practical. There were still earlier writers upon agri¬ 
cultural matters mentioned by him, such as Hyginu3 and Celsus. Pliny 
also mentions Aristomachus, of Soli, who for fifty-eight years devoted 
himself to the pursuit; and Philicus, of Thnsos, who passed his life in 
deserts tending his bees, All their writings are lost, 
reduced to a small number, is known, you must examine and view 
what honeycombs it has : then, afterwards, from the wax which 
I contains the seeds of the young bees, you must cut away that 
; part wherein the offspring of the royal kind is animated : for this 
I is easy to be seen; because at the very end of the waxworks, 
i there appears, as it were, the nipple of a pap rising higher, and 
of a wider cavity than the rest of the holes are of wherein the 
young bees of vulgar note are contained. Celsus indeed affirms, 
that, hi the utmost honeycombs, there are transverse pipes or 
cavities, which contain the young royal progeny. Hyginus also, 
following the authority of the Greeks, denies that the captain- 
general is formed of a little worm or maggot (as the rest of the 
bees are) ; but that in the circumference of the honeycombs 
there are found straight holes, somewhat larger than those of the 
plebeian seed, filled, as it were, with a sordid substance of a red 
colour, out of which the winged king is at first immediately 
formed.” 
The treatment of the diseases of bees, and a calendar of opera- 
! tions are next detailed. Swarming began “from the rising of 
the Pleiades to the solstice, which falls in the latter part of June,” 
and directions are given for preparing the hives by rubbing their 
interiors with fragrant herbs ; for feeding the bees in winter, 
“ in little troughs within the entry of the hives, either with dried 
figs, bruised and moistened with water ; with the rob or boiled 
juice of grapes; or with sweet wine; wool must be soaked in 
the liquids, that the bees standing upon it may draw up the 
liquids from it.” 
We all know that in Devonshire, the lowlands of Scotland, 
and elsewhere, it is customary, at the close of summer, to convey 
hives to the vicinity of heathy districts where the bees may 
enrich their stores from the ericse and other flowers of such 
localities. This is no new practice, for Pliny relates, “ There is a 
village called Hostilia, on the banks of the Po, of which the in¬ 
habitants, when the food fails the bees in the vicinity, place the 
hives in boats, and convey them about five miles up the river 
during the night. In the morning the bees go forth to feed, and 
return to the boats ; their locality being occasionally changed, 
until, at last, the boats sinking deeper by degrees in the water, 
it is ascertained that the hives are full, and they are then taken 
back to Hostilia, and the honey extracted.”— (Natural Hist., 
xxi., 43.) 
That the bee was cultivated extensively and profitably by the 
Romans, we have the testimony of Varro, who says that “ he had 
two trustworthy soldiers under him, who were brothers, and 
from the country of the Ealisci (between Rome and Tuscany), 
who had a small villa left them by their father, with land not 
larger in extent than an acre; round this they formed an apiary. 
In the garden they grew thyme, cytisus, and balm. Eor the 
honey of that apiary they usually received no less than 10,000 
sesterces” (equal to about £80 of our money).— (Varro de re 
rustica, iii., 16.) 
We might multiply our extracts from Columella, Pliny, Varro, 
and Palladius, until we formed a volume of sound practical 
directions for the apiarian ; birt we will pass on to more modern 
authors, remarking only in conclusion, that Palladius is the 
earliest author of a calendar in which he directs in every month 
\ what is to be done in the Earm, Garden, and Apiary.— G. 
(To be continued.) 
BEES PILLAGING THEIR NEIGHBOURS. 
I HATE five hives, three wooden and two of the common straw 
hives. To keep all sheltered, I had a stand with a cover made, 
containing two shelves ; the entire stand 3 yards in length, and 
about 7 feet high, 3 feet deep. Last summer several bees were 
scattered about, dead—working bees ; and now again they have 
been fighting and killing each other, though I do not think 
them closer than when unprotected under a wall. What, would 
be the best remedy, and what the best aspect for the stand ? I 
never noticed any fighting when the bees were along the wall; 
in which situation it was, however, very inconvenient to keep 
the hives, as people were obliged to pass constantly, and were 
liable to be stung. If safe, and not calculated to produce fight¬ 
ing, the stand would be the most convenient place.— An Old 
Subscriber. 
[It is not a very unusual thing in the spring for bees to attack 
an adjacent hive, sometimes impelled by hunger, and at others 
from a disposition—too often common to men as well as bees— 
