A gentleman residing in St. James's Place, has for some considerable time past kept bees in his garden there. He uses our improved cottage hives, and his bee-keeping is decidedly successful as he generally takes some fine glasses of honey each season, besides leaving sufficient as winter store for the bees. For a London situation, St. James's Place is a very favourable one; the gardens behind the houses pleasantly face the Green Park, so that the bees have an uninterrupted flight to start with. They are also within easy range of the richly flowered gardens of Buckingham Palace and those of the nobility and gentry who reside around the Parks. To those gardens the bees of St. James's Place resort, without waiting for any license or certificate from the royal and noble owners of the honey yielding preserves. Being within a short distance of our establishment, when this gentleman's bees swarm he generally sends to us for assistance in hiving them.
The neighbourhood of St. John's Wood, and indeed almost all the suburbs of London, are favourable for the production of honey. We mention St. John's Wood because, from the fact of having kept bees there ourselves, we are able to prove by our experience that they do well in that locality. We have several customers on nearly all sides of the town, who have each had this year a considerable surplus of honey in their "supers," after leaving sufficient for the bees themselves in the lower or stock hives.
We exhibited in our window last autumn a super of fine honey from the apiary of Shirley Hibberd, Esq., the proprietor and editor of the Gardiner's Weekly Magazine. It is a box containing 20 lbs. nett weight of honey, and was produced at Stoke Newington, only 3¼ miles from the General Post Office.
The Times "Bee-Master," whose letters from Tunbridge Wells have awakened so much interest in this pleasing pursuit, also commissioned us to exhibit a "super," produced under his own management in that locality. A friend of ours at Exeter had upwards of 400 lbs. of honey, of excellent quality, though one of his apiaries is quite within the city.
The last has been an excellent honey yielding season; our own bees, at Dorking, in Surrey, have produced us large quantities, and the accounts from nearly all parts of the country coincide in stating that the bees have in the year, 1864, enjoyed unusual opportunities for accumulation. In not a few localities, the season of 1863 was even more abundant.
WASPS AND MOTHS.
Bees have few enemies more formidable than wasps. The most effectual method of checking their invasion of hives, is to have as narrow an entrance as the bees can do with. If a stock be not very weak in numbers, the bees will be well able to guard a small aperture, and can repel the attacks of those insidious and merciless robbers. On this account, the entrance to our No. 5 hive as described at [page 31], may be used.
The bee-keeper is interested in preventing the increase of wasps; it is, therefore, a good practice for him to set a price on queen wasps in the spring, the death of one of them at that time being equivalent to the destruction of a whole nest.
Should nests be found in the neighbourhood of an apiary, their annihilation must be accomplished either by blowing them up with gunpowder, an operation well understood by most country lads; or any other effectual method. The late Mr. Payne recommended that a small quantity of gas tar should be put into the mouth of a wasp's nest, and if then covered with earth, the total destruction of the wasps will be accomplished without further trouble. But to use blazing straw for the purpose is always dangerous in country districts. We have lately heard of a very ingenious and successful mode of entrapping and killing wasps. Place some sugar or strongly sweetened compound on the ground in a garden, and place over it a square hand glass, wedged up an inch or so all round. On this glass, which should have an opening at the apex, lodge another, but a sound one. The wasps, attracted by the sweets, will soon crowd under the lower glass, and when they have well feasted, will ascend into the upper one; there, between the two, they soon become scorched and perish by the heat of the sun shining on the outer glass.
The season of 1864 was most productive for the increase of these prime pests of the apiary, and many hives have severely suffered by their depredations. When once wasps in any number have gained an entrance into a hive, the bees can seldom eject them, and the invaders generally remain until they have freely regaled themselves from the luscious store. They not only consume the honey, but cause a good deal of worry to the legitimate inhabitants of the hive, as well as killing the foremost defenders of it. Wasps being of so much superior strength, it requires, at least, three bees to master one of them.