To the Editor of "The Times."
Sir,—Since my letter appeared in your columns on "the Honey Harvest," I have received from yourself various communications from rectors, vicars, curates, &c., who feel a very great interest in bee-keeping as a social and commercial question. I have also received letters addressed to me as "The Times Bee-master," which the postman, guided by some remarkable instinct, has placed in my hands. Most of these letters invite confidential and personal communication on this subject, and record a variety of questions, difficulties, and perplexities which have injured or arrested the apiarian enterprises of the writers. I prefer to answer some of their inquiries through your columns, believing that the interest and importance of all that tends to benefit the cottager will ever find a place or a defence in The Times. The most urgent questions in the letters of my correspondents refer to the hives I employ, and which I briefly described in my letter. The first I mentioned is the Scotch or Ayrshire octagonal hive. It is made of thoroughly seasoned deal, in the form of a hexagon, about eight inches in height, and sixteen inches diameter. On the top is a series of parallel slits, extending from front to back, which I open or shut by a series of corresponding deal slides. On receiving a swarm in April or May, I introduce the slides, and thereby close up the top of the box. On finding—as in fine weather I am sure to find in three or four weeks—that the box is full, I place on the top another hexagonal box, in all respects the same in size and shape, and draw out the slides, and thereby introduce the bees to the vacant upper chamber. As each box has a window, I am thus able to ascertain progress. When this upper box is filled with honey, I may place on the top of it another precisely the same, drawing out the slides on the top of the second box, and introducing the bees to a third story But usually I prefer, for the sake of the beauty of it, a bell-glass, greater or less as the season may suggest. I have found this hive by far the most successful. It seems the bees, who construct their cells in the form of hexagons, prefer the house in which they work to be very much of the same shape. A cottager may very easily make these boxes in the long winter evenings. The second kind of hive I alluded to is made of straw, and may be purchased at Neighbours', in Holborn. The greatest disadvantage is its expense, costing, as it does, thirty shillings. But it is so well made that it will last very long. I have had one in constant use during ten years, and it is still as good as when it was bought. Its top is flat, with three longitudinal apertures, closed till full with zinc slides. About the end of May, in a good year, I draw out the slides, after placing over each a good-sized bell-glass; and in July I have often had in each glass seven or eight pounds of honey. The reason of the failure of this hive is the coldness of the glass, which Neighbours' additional super straw hive or cover does not mend. But if my correspondents will get a piece of thick Scotch plaid made like a nightcap, and case each glass with this, they will find the bees use it as readily as a wood or straw hive, and there will be no moisture from condensation of the bees' breath inside.
The third sort of hive is Pettitt's, of Snargate, Dover. It is worked on the lateral system, and of its kind is a perfect gem. Two boxes are placed on one floor, with a subterranean communication between them. On stocking the box on the right, a zinc slide is introduced, which shuts off the communication. As soon as the box is full, the slide is withdrawn and the communication laid open. The bees take possession of the other box on the left, and fill it with pure honey. When my harvest comes, I shut off the communication, and remove the left-hand box full of honey. You will perceive that my principle of action proceeds on the notion that the bottom box of the Ayrshire or Scotch hive, the straw box of Neighbours', and the right-hand box of Pettitt's, are each the sacred property of my bees, which I feel it larceny to lessen or disturb, and that the surplus is the tithe or portion of the bee-master. The ruinous blunder of country bee-keepers is their taking honey from the former—honey, too, mixed with brood and bees' bread and the films of the young grubs. In this, the department I never touch, the queen presides with her ladies-in-waiting; and in any one of these, if the bees have filled the additional supers or laterals, there is abundance for all her subjects during the winter.
In some of the letters you have been good enough to send me, the expense of these hives is urged as a fatal objection as far as the cottager is concerned. Let me therefore explain my last and cheapest plan—not best, but cheapest.
Place the swarm in a common shilling straw hive. When you ascertain, either by its weight or the busy working of the bees, that it is full, take a square board, about a foot square; cut in the centre of it a round hole three or four inches in diameter; place on it a bell-glass, or what is cheaper, a smaller straw hive. Take a sharp table-knife, and go to the hive about twelve o'clock at noon, when most of the bees are out working; cut out the top of the straw hive, making a round aperture of four or five inches in diameter, and place on it the board with the bell-glass, or lesser straw super, covering the glass with its nightcap, and you have everything you can desire. If, in cutting the hole on the top of the stock hive, you hesitate or lose your self-possession, the watcher bees will attack you. Decision invariably paralyses them for the moment, and secures your safety. These glasses or supers are removed by cutting through between the board and the lower edge of the super with a zinc plate, on which you carry off the super full of surplus honey, placing over the hole at the top of the stock a flat board or an empty super. From one straw hive treated in this way I carried off eighteen pounds of honey at the beginning of July this year. I ought to add, that I keep my hives of every sort under cover of wooden sheds, accessible from behind by means of doors that let down. During the winter, I cover up the hives in the sheds each with paper, and thereby I keep them warm. As the spring approaches, I give the lightest an occasional half-pound of barley-sugar. This barley-sugar I get at Kilner's, in Hanway-street, Oxford-street, before it is mixed with scent or lemon-acid. Common sugar is of no use. To be available to the bee, to suit a lambent insect, it must have been exposed to a heat of 300° Fahrenheit, in order to reduce crystallisable to uncrystallisable sugar. As I am answering your and my correspondents, I had better add a few useful hints.
Get acquainted with your bees; they are naturally very affectionate. I have frequently hived swarms, filling each hand with clusters of bees, and rarely have I received a sting. I have sat in the midst of them for hours, and weary bees have rested on me, and have entered their homes singing a song of thanks.
They have several bitter enemies besides the wasp. I used to see toads frequently sitting under the landing-board, and only recently discovered they were there "seeking whom they could devour." On one of these ugly visitors being laid open, his maw was found filled with bees which he had sucked into his ugly jaws. The tom-tit, also, is a dangerous little enemy. He perches on the landing-place of the bees on a wet day, taps with his bill, apparently inquiring after the health of the inmates; a watcher bee comes out to reconnoitre, and is instantly snapped up by the wicked hypocrite. The spider, also, catches weary bees in his web; but the occasional use of a brush disposes of this peril. The snail, attracted by the warmth, occasionally creeps in. The bees successively attack him, but find their stings blunted and broken by the shell, as shot is by our iron-sides. Failing to injure or remove the intruder, they have recourse to a plan which indicates more than instinct They cover him up with propolis, a kind of gum which they use for stopping up crevices; and not only does he die from want of air, but he is prevented from giving forth offensive odour by the air-tight case or shroud.
The most attentive bee-master occasionally gets stung. I have discovered a cure not found in the pharmacopœia. Press a watch-key hard on the place after removing the sting—-this prevents the poison from spreading; then apply moist snuff or tobacco, rubbing it well in, and in five minutes all pain is gone. This is a never-failing remedy.
I have entered into these details, because from the correspondence you have sent me, and from letters that have reached me, it is evident that a great interest has been excited by my communication, and because it is of great social importance. Many a poor curate and ill-paid vicar, and many a cottager with time to spare and his rent to pay, may thus add to their income. My bees feed over an area of six miles, improving every flower they touch, and robbing nobody. Tunbridge Wells is one of the best bee-districts in England, and this alone is evidence of its being a healthy district. Bees never get on in unhealthy places.
Apologising for this long communication, I am, &c.,