"In Yorkshire," says the Rev. Mr. Cotton, that prince of bee-masters, "it is the regular custom of the country to send the stocks to the moors for change of pasture in August and September. Cotters, who have a little garden by the moorside, take in dozens every year, and get a shilling a stock for their trouble. The trouble is a mere nothing—at least not one shilling's worth in all—and the pleasure is surely very great; for what can be a greater pleasure than to have ten additional stocks of bees on a visit to your own, and to cheer you with their glad music whenever you are walking in your garden? To say nothing of the pleasure you must feel at their honied stores, by playing the part of a kind host to these busy bees; and then, what is more, you may have the still greater pleasure of showing your friend (for all bee-masters are, or ought to be, friendly) how to take up his bees who have been your guests so long, as I trust you do your own, that is, without killing them. You and he may do so, if you try; and I, a bee-master like yourself, beg you most earnestly to try. What I have found a very good way with my bees you cannot find a very bad one. The stocks are taken up in the old way as soon as the heather goes out of flower. I hope many a man will learn by my letter to take them up by the fingers, instead of the sulphur match, that ready instrument of bee-murder. In France they put their hives into a boat, some hundreds together, which floats down the stream by night, and stops by day. The bees go out in the morning, return in the evening, and when they are all back and quiet, on the boat floats. I have heard they come home to the ringing of a bell; but I believe they would come home just the same whether the bell rings or no. I should like to see this tried on the Thames, for no river has more bee food near its banks: willows, the best bee food in spring; meadows, clover, beans, and lime-trees, in different places and times, for summer. A handy man, who could make his own boxes, though not up to hard work, might, I am pretty sure, gather through the mouths of his many thousand bees enough to fill his own one mouth, though it be somewhat larger. He might float softly down the river, as the flowers go off at one place and come on at another; and any bargeman would be glad, for the small price of one pound of Thames honey, to give him a tow up when he wishes to go back. I should like to see it tried."
But all this is supererogatory at present, and temporary removals are undesirable, unless where surrounding pastures entirely fail in August. It is, at best, supplemental.
Taylor, in his useful Bee Manual, says:—
"It is almost needless to say, that in the nature and extent of the vegetable production following in succession in the immediate neighbourhood of an apiary, must mainly depend its prosperity. After every care has been bestowed on all points of housing and management, it is in vain to expect a large harvest of honey where Nature has limited the sources of supply, or restricted them to a particular season of the year."
Payne observes:—
"I have always found the advantage of planting in the vicinity of my hives a large quantity of the common kinds of crocus, single blue hepatica, helleborus niger, and tussilago petasites, all of which flower early, and are rich in honey and farina. Salvia memorosa (of Sir James Smith), which flowers very early in June, and lasts all the summer, is in an extraordinary manner sought after by the bees, and, when room is not an object, twenty or thirty square yards of it may be grown with advantage. Origanum humile, and origanum rubescens (of Haworth), and mignonette may also be grown. Cúscuta sinensis is a great favourite with them; and the pretty little plant anacampseros populifolium, when in flower, is literally covered by them. Garden cultivation beyond this, exclusively for bees, I believe, answers very little purpose."
IV.—THE BEE-HOUSE, AND HOW TO PLACE IT.
