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THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION.— November 4, 1856. 
April and May requires but common sense in supplying the 
plants ■. itli the requisites for securing a good return. 
In o'den times gardeners used to pot runners in August, 
pinch < it all the flowers the next year, and force them the 
second, tailing care to give them 8-incli or 10-inch pots. 
These old-lashioned modes, thanks to the gardening press, 
have long been abandoned, and, within the course of eight 
or nine months from the time of the formation, we can make 
a runner yield as good a crop as we may wish for. 
But which are the chief points we keep in view for getting 
the Strawberry into perfect order for next year's work? 
Why, to secure runners as early as possible, and, by 
pushing them on with all the speed of a high culture, to 
induce the plants to form thick, firm crowns as big as a 
nut, as Mr. Errington says, and elaborate as much sap 
within their cells as there is room, in order to make them 
push up strong flower-stems, and, consequently, a crop of 
numerous, good-sized berries. 
One of our best Strawberry growers says, “ It should be 
kept constantly in mind, that no treatment at the fruiting 
period will secure excellence, unless strict attention is 
paid now (June) to the preparation of the plant. The 
forcing period, in a great measure, only developes the 
stores which ought now to be laid up.” 
To attain this purpose, I lay them in large 60’s (3-inch 
pots), for the size less is too small, and the young roots 
are too apt to get matted; for who can always find time 
to shift them just the very day they want it, and have 
them transferred into their fruiting-pots (6-inch) before 
July goes out? There is no better period all the year 
round than “ to set them a-going" about the first days of 
August; they have then fully two months time to make 
their leaves and crowns, and by the latter end of September 
they look perfect pictures of health and vigour. Only turn 
one of your pots out at that time, and see if they are not 
perfectly pot-bound, and a thick net of innumerable rootlets 
running through the whole ball. 
Granted, then, that an abundant crop is certain, if due 
attention has been paid to their wants, how is it that we 
have all been labouring in the dark, and that thus to 
prepare runners on the very best of principles is pronounced 
to be so much waste space and trouble, and ought to be 
ranked with the practice of bygone years? I ask this, because 
we were told in a contemporary, in Juue last, that results 
have been obtained such as give our crops no chance of 
rivalship, for double and triple the quantity of fruit has 
been gathered from 48’s—numbers that were perfectly 
astonishing; for while most growers consider from twenty to 
thirty good-sized berries a very fair return in 36’s, thinning 
out all the others, and assisting twice a week with weak 
liquid-manure, we are told that, under similar treatment, 
not less than fit'ty-six, and, in one instance, off the Black 
Prince seventy-nine berries were gathered, “ many of them 
equal in size to those of the open ground, yielding a large, 
abundant crop of excellent fruit” in such thimbles as 4-inch 
pots. Surely there is a nut too hard to crack; for it 
appears to me a perfect riddle how it can be possible to 
gather fruit in such wonderful numbers from so small a 
compass as a 4-inch pot, while many considered from 
eighteen to twenty-four Keen's Seedling, and, perhaps, thirty 
Black Prince , everything one may reasonably expect. 
As to watering these nut-shells in the bright days of March 
and May, sometimes scorcliingly hot, when cold currents 
put a stop to a free ventilation, I think we had better slip 
over the question: we might as well engage an extra hand 
to attend to the two or three thousand pots that are annually 
forced in our great establishments. What advantages, 
therefore, are gained by changing the 32’s for 48’s, with an 
increase of watering, and a corresponding waste of time 
and expense, I am unable to see; for it is to the liquid- 
manure that the seventy-nine hungry berries have to look, 
the nourishment in the soil having been pretty well swal¬ 
lowed by roots and leaves a long time before; and such, 
we are told, are the advantages gained over practical Straw¬ 
berry culture. 
With every desire for progress, I, for one, shall continue 
my 6-inch pot-culture, for I cannot help following this 
sudden leap into the 48’s with rather a suspicious eye.— 
Frag aria. 
BEES SWARMING WITHOUT A QUEEN. 
Although Mr. Wighton, in the last paragraph of his 
remarks on “ Swarms without Queens,” page 461, says, “ I 
did not say your bees swarmed without a queen,” yet the 
first sentence of his reply to a Kilkenny correspondent, 
page 335, legitimately bears that interpretation; and why 
not? An “ Old Bee-master,” page 371, says, “The theory of 
bees swarming without a queen is a novel one, which I must 
disbelieve till certain proof is afforded of its truth.” Till 
within the last two years I also held this opinion, simply, 
however, through never having tested its accuracy; but if 
the experiments I have since made with this view are worth 
anything, I can endorse that theory no more. That bees 
will swarm and settle permanently without a queen is not 
asserted; but that they will swarm and settle temporarily is 
what is affirmed, and I cannot doubt it, even at the risk of 
being held an innovator not only by one “ Old Bee-master,” 
but by many. I must believe what my eyes have seen 
until I can be shovm that my experiments are based on an 
erroneous principle. I have had, in my time, many hives 
which to-day would swarm and settle, and be hived too, | 
which, on inspecting an hour or so after, I have found 
to contain not a single bee; to-morrow, an hour or so earlier, 
they would swarm again, and repeat the same manoeuvre; 
next day, still somewhat earlier, swarm, settle, and in their 
hive remain. This sort of work is, to the owner, immensely 
troublesome, to the stock grievously impoverishing, and to 
the apiarian who holds the old, but fashionable belief that 
queens accompany every swarm or flight, most discouraging, 
for to him no remedy can appear. So much annoyance and 
perplexity did these abortive flights create me, that I began 
to doubt the common faith, and say, If queens were in the 
flights the first and second day, why, then, not settle on either 
day, as upon the third they did ? I resolved, in short, to 
find the cause and cure if possible, and this is what I did. 
When a first swarm was coming off I knedt close down 
beside the alighting-board, and, with a small wine-glass in 
my hand, waited with anxiety most intense the appearance 
of her Majesty. See, there she is; look how she runs about 
upon the board, all loath to leave; mark how the working 
bees urge her outwards ; what a lovely thing she is ! But a 
truce to admiration ; catch her, and, placing the wine-glass 
over her, I drew her gently into my hand. Where are the 
bees ? There, upon yonder tree, in a black cluster, hanging. 
But with the queen here the cluster hangs not long, but 
diminishes apace. I now return her Highness to her throne, 
and now from that black heap upon the tree the bees come 
crowding down. Next day I took my part of yesterday, and 
captured her as then. The bees clustered on a Plum-tree 
branch. I placed her Ladyship among them. Did they 
settle? Yes. For why? The queen was with them then. 
I have also captured the queen on the first day, and retained 
her until the bees began to return, then placed her among 
the remnant left, and these returned not. 
Furthermore, I have remarked, while it has happened not 
unfrequent.ly that I could not observe the queen, all such 
flights invariably have returned; and long before I ever 
even thought of these experiments I never saw a queen 
leave with a swarm, and yet that swarm returned. 
In bee matters it holds good, as it does in our most im¬ 
portant concerns, “ to prove all things, and hold fast that 
which is right;” and the most timid operator, with a little 
coolness and quickness of sight and hand, may prove this 
matter for himself. Par parenthesis, this capturing of the 
queen may be turned to good account, over and above tend¬ 
ing to prove a point. By so doing we may make the bees 
hive themselves, if I may so say. When the rush has ter¬ 
minated remove the parent hive, and in its place set an 
empty one; place the queen therein ; the bees, on returning, 
finding her at home, take possession, and the thing is done. 
Any other inference deduced from these observations than 
this—that swarms, when accompanied by a queen all through 
their flight, and when they settle never return, must be 
strained and unnatural. Certainly, the fact mentioned by 
an “Old Bee-master” of stvarms sometimes issuing twice 
the same day, and queens, from their inability to fly, being 
from the ground picked up, if it proves anything, proves 
more for than against me. 
The cause of the old queen not leaving at all times when 
the bees swarm may proceed from her contented disposition. 
