366 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 May, 1899. 
to secure more honey.” All bee-keepers will say Amen! to the above. The 
swarming instinct is one of the distracting puzzles that make bee-keeping so 
aggravating and yet so interesting. Bees ought not to swarm—everything 
seems right, lots of room to work in, and flowers all around. Yet, despite all 
this, given a good season, and out come swarms from 7 lb. weight to a cupful. 
I use the Heddon hive, and no queen excluders. This hive is half the size of 
the Langstroth in body and frame, and can be built up to five or six bodies if 
desired, or 3 feet high. The two bottom bodies are rarely extracted from, 
unless the whole are being filled up with honey, leaving no room for the queen 
to lay. One of the advantages of the Heddon hive is that the frames are self- 
spaced and fit tight together, and the bodies can thus be turned upside down 
without displacing the frames. Mr. Bolton, of Dunkeld, has discovered. 
that turning the hive upside down destroys queen cells and prevents 
them from hatching. His method of preventing swarming is simply 
to keep on turning the hives upside down every eight days, while the swarming 
fever is on the bees. This is the simplest and most perfect plan yet devised. 
I should advise ‘‘ Bloodwood” to remove his queen excluders, and wedge his 
frames so that they will not slip, and trying turning his bodies upside down. 
Then a weekly examination will show whether fresh queen cells are being 
formed. Doolittle prevents swarming by caging the queen in the hive; ten 
days afterwards he removes the old queen, and places in her stead, in a cage, 
a young queen with candy at the entrance of the cage. The bees eat the 
young queen out, and she is supposed to go upstairs at once and murder her 
rivals. ‘This is not so simple, neither is it so effective, as Bolton’s plan, and I 
go for the latter. 
The final part of “ Bloodwood’s” letter I quote in full, as it is most 
interesting -—“ Is it a common occurrence for two queens to inhabit one hive 
in apparent peace and harmony? Recently I secured a swarm which had 
romped away about a quarter of a mile, and in due course expected to find 
that the queen was proceeding to increase the number of her subjects, but 
frequent observation was attended with negative results. The queen seemed to be 
well grown and as pure-bred an Italian as her parent. One day I thought that 
she had performed a very smart feat in flitting from the frame that I had looked 
over to the next that I withdrew, and eventually I discovered that there were - 
two queens in the hive. I caught one and transferred her to a queenless 
nucleus. Eggs shortly appeared in the original and the nucleus.” 
I have caught six young queens in a swarm, but I have never yet made 
as interesting a discovery of this nature as “Bloodwood” has done. I have 
read of two queens in one hive, and I believe it is a simple matter to keep two 
queens alive in one hive with queen excluders between the stories, but I have 
never gone in for experiments in this direction. Next time ‘“ Bloodwood” 
strikes a patch like that, he should leave them alone and note the result. A 
queen here or there is nothing to gain or lose in comparison with the interest 
to be derived from watching the final results of two living together. 
ABOUT BEES AND HONEY. 
For several years past Great Britain has imported annually 2,250,000 Ib. of 
honey, which, valued at 83d. per lb , amounts to about £31,000. One-third of 
this, according to the “‘ Board of Agriculture Journal,” comes from the United 
States; another third is provided by Chili and Peru, and the remaining third 
from Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the British 
and Spanish West Indies. ‘he yield of honey in the United States has been 
estimated at 553,000 ewt., and of wax at 10,000 cwt., but no returns have been 
furnished since 1890; still it is known that the production and export have 
increased since then. France produces 17,000,000 lb, from 1,623,054 hives, 
Russia 321,000 cwt. from 2,000,000 jhives; but the whole of this is retained 
for home-consumption. Canada, in 1896, had 160,076 hives, valued at 
