265 
THE COTTAGE GARDENEIi AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, July 24. 1860. 
locality. Some allowance must also be made for different 
seasons. Last year the honey harvest was early. This year it 
may probably be equally late.] 
THE BEE SEASON AND ITS PROSPECTS 
IN 1860. 
I can sympathise with your correspondent “B. & W.,” on 
the untoward nature of the honey season. We have not had so 
j unfavourable a time for about lifteen years, when we had at that 
time about twenty-six wet days in May, and the results were 
| ! late swarming. Many stocks and swarms died from starvation, 
and, indeed, a beggarly account “ of empty boxes” and hives. 
June, I860, had more wet days and nights than can be reckoned 
in that month for the last sixty years, and the previous months 
of March and April being both cold and frosty, it is not to be 
wondered at that “ B. & W.” has suffered. 
I will state my own case. I have removed to a new dwelling, 
but so exposed that the winds have been very annoying to the 
bees. My best stock did not throw off a swarm until the 18th 
of June, and for ten days or more could barely exist, from the 
wet and tempestuous state of the weather. We have had since 
the 30th of June fine weather, although the sun has been 
obscured a good deal. 
From having three or four such splendid bee summers 
previous to this, Mr. Fox should not complain ; as I have found 
from long experience, we have only one very good season in 
three, in an average of the last fifty years. Of course, in 
certain favoured localities exceptions are to be found, parti- 
i cularly where a country is not fully stocked, and where there is \ 
plenty of the white Dutch clover, heath, and other favourable j 
pasture for bees. Nevertheless, the month of July, in 1856, 
1857, 1858, and 1850, has been without precedent in heat and 
drought coming consecutively. July generally being every third i 
! year a wet and unsettled month. 
F.vidently Mr. Fox inhabits a most favoured locality, and no ; 
doubt is a most attentive bee-master, for 1 know of no such a 
honey harvest in Gloucestershire as he talks of. If Mr. Fox 
would condescend to read my numerous letters on the subject 
in the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth volumes of The 
Cottage Gardener, ho will see at once that I have never 
lived in so favourable a district as his. 
As to the rage for Ligurian bees, my advice is, keep them 
distinct, and in time they may become, with great care, a useful 
addition to our F.nglish apiaries ; but the “ Alp ” bee will never 
surpass our old British black bee as long as England exists. 
My apiary a few years ago numbered twenty-six stocks.— 
II. W. Newman, Hillside, Cheltenham. 
APIARIAN NOTES.—No. VIII. 
MY APIARY. 
( Continued from 'page 236.) 
Since writing the first portion of this paper a salutary and 
most timely change has taken place in the weather, which has 
proved most exliilirating both to bees and to ourselves. It has, 
however, come too late for us to expect much in the way of honey 
deprivation ; but I hope there is now a fair prospect of the stocks 
and new swarms being able to fill their hives sufficiently for 
standing the winter. But, to resume the subject of my last 
communication. 
No. 8.—A straw hive of four, if not five, years old, which, so 
far as I know, has never swarmed. Two years following I have 
left it for swarming; but although in each case very crowded 
with bees, none having issued by the second week in June, and 
by that date, having had from my own hives and by purchase 
sufficient for all my requirements, a nadir in the old fashion was 
given to it, with the result only of a very small quantity of honey 
and some empty combs. At all times this hive has been very 
strong, and while placed over the nadir the adjoining hives were 
making rapid progress, so that I am convinced that no reliance 
is to be placed on nadiring as a means of obtaining honey. 
This season I determined to force a swarm from the hive, and 
sacrifice the old stock. In the first week of May it showed every 
symptom of being about to swarm. Preferring a swarm issuing 
hi the natural way to one obtained by driving, I waited a week 
or. two. For several days following the bees would rush out in 
an excited manner, play about a particular tree, and return to 
the hivo. No doubt on one of these occasions the old queen was 
lost. My patience being at length exhausted, I proceeded to 
drive the bees into an empty butt, and in three minutes nearly 
every one had ascended. Taking this to the usual stand, I re¬ 
turned to inspect the old combs ; there was no brood of any age 
visible, except a few square inches of sealed drone brood, proving 
that there had been no fertile queen in the hive for some little 
time. While thus engaged a most beautiful young queen, almost 
as yellow as a Ligurian, made her appearance, evidently having 
taken the opportunity of escaping from her confinement during 
the commotion. There were only two royal cells to be seen, 
both of which were not long vacated; it is probable that an 
elder princess had already ascended with the expelled bees, but 
I quickly caught the one now scampering over the edges ol' the 
combs, and conveyed her to the others; she went in directly, 
and all remained quiet. In the evening the bees were knocked 
out, and transferred into a large nine-bar octagon box, which 
they nearly filled ; and they must have weighed between 5 lbs. 
and 6 lbs. Although occasionally fed during the late unpropitious 
weather, they did not thrive, and their numbers became seriously 
diminished until another swarm was added as detailed in my 
last (No. 6). 
I should state that the old hive was placed a few yards from 
its former stand ; whether a royal cell or a small portion of brood 
escaped my observation I cannot say, but many bees found their 
way back to it, and have continued to work since. In time they 
will be driven out, and united to some other stock. 
No. 9.—A flat wooden-t.opped straw hive (after Taylor, like 
No. 4) three years old. This, a fine stock, is filling an octagonal 
super thirteen inches by nine deep. Last season it gave me 
40-J- lbs. lias not swarmed since first peopled. 
No. 10.—A common straw hive, treated similarly to No. 1, 
purchased of a cottager in 1858. Last season it filled a bell- 
glass of 15 lbs., and threw off a fine swarm. This year it com¬ 
menced work in a super, but again swarmed on the 23rd of May. 
The swarm was discovered clustered on the branch of a cherry 
tree about six o’clock the following morning, having previously 
escaped observation. In hiving it the greater portion of the 
bees fell on my shoulder, but did not cluster there long; the 
queen having fortunately fallen into the butt with tlio lesser 
number. As soon as they were tolerably well settled the old 
hive was removed, and the swarm put in its place, thus securing 
a goodly number of bees for the new population of my adjuster 
box. The old stock very soon showed symptoms of swarming a 
second time; but the weather becoming unfavourable soon after, 
it has not done so. 
Some writer has remarked that a depriving hive which once 
chooses to swarm in spite of the owner’s precautions, is very 
likely to do so in succeeding years ; and there may be some 
foundation for the assertion. 
No. 11.— A common hive, similar to the foregoing and No. 1, 
from which, last season, I obtained, first, a glass octagonal box 
of 28 lb3.; and subsequently, a smaller one of 17 lbs.—or in the 
whole, 45 lbs. of pure comb, and this in a town garden sur¬ 
rounded by high trees and houses. The stock-hive weighed 
upwards of 35 lbs., and until March the bees were very numerous. 
About this period they became inactive, though pollen was occa¬ 
sionally carried in. I suspected that all was not right, but did 
not inspect them until the end of May, when, after driving out 
the bees, finding that there was no queen, nor sign of brood, I 
knocked out a fine swarm, and placed the stock over it. Again, 
as in the previous instance of No. 7, there was great slaughter, 
chiefly, I presume, of the old bees, which were few in number 
compared with the new population. This fighting is contrary to 
my usual experience, having seldom lost many by the union of 
two or more swarms, or by joining to established stocks. 
When it is intended to unite a swarm to a stock-hive I think it 
is always advisable to drive out the bees from the latter, then in 
the evening knock out both clusters together on the ground; 
when on placing the stock above them the bees become mixed 
indiscriminately, and but little fighting is likely to occur. 
No. 12.—A common straw skep of similar character. A pur¬ 
chased May swarm of last season, which afforded a glass box of 
25 lbs., remaining most amply supplied for the winter. This 
May work was commenced rapidly in a super, but it threw off a 
splendid swarm on the 24th of that month. A cast also of very 
large size issued on the 10th of June, or seventeen days after— 
an unusually protracted interval. 
No. 13.—Another common hive, also a swarm of last season. 
It was both a late and a small one, but managed to fill its domicile 
