A Bee-master.
Tunbridge Wells, July 27.
Bees and Bee-hives,
To the Editor of "The Times!"
Sir,—The letters that reach me addressed to "The Times Bee-master" are legion. I can now form some idea of the weight of the load that must press on your shoulders every day; but I confess I had no notion of the extent of the interest that these letters prove to exist in apiarian culture. I select such difficulties from the letters before me as I have not disposed of, and these I would endeavour to overcome.
A very often repeated question is—What is the best way of hiving bees or securing a swarm? Let me at once state that the old and inveterate habit in Kent of beating a kettle, striking the tongs with the poker, and raising similar discordant sounds, is utterly absurd. They do not affect the bees. In swarming, the old queen abdicates and heads the swarm, and a young queen mounts the throne in the hive. The outgoing queen, followed by five thousand or six thousand bees, either ex proprio motu, or guided by pioneer scouts, selects a rose-bush, or a cozy opening in a laurel-hedge, and all her subjects hang on, forming a cluster of bees as large as the largest bunch of grapes. As soon as they have nearly all settled, take your empty hive or bee-box, which must be thoroughly dean, as bees hate dirt and slovenliness; turn the hive or box bottom upwards, hold it in your left hand under the cluster of bees, lay hold of the branch on which the bees hang with your right hand, and shake down the swarm into your empty hive. Place the hive bottom downward on a bee-board laid on the grass close by, raise up the edge by inserting a wedge or stone about two inches in size, and cover the top of the hive with a cloth or a few branches to keep off the sun heat. If the queen is inside, which is usually the case, the bees will steadily enter and remain. If by your awkwardness you have left her in the hedge with her ladies-in-waiting, the bees will return to the hedge, and you will have all to begin anew. As soon as they are comfortably housed, carry the hive to the shed under which it is to stand, and do not look at it or touch it for three days.
You need not be afraid of stings unless you rudely and violently meddle with the queen. If you thus interfere with her, the watcher bees will sound the alarm, and a thousand stings, like swords, will be unsheathed; but, otherwise, they are so absorbed with her majesty that they do not fly at a prudent and fearless bee-master.
A very important inquiry, repeated in several letters, is, on removing the super, whether of glass or straw, how are the bees to be expelled, that the honey alone may thus be secured?
All the plans of tapping, beating, and smoking are bad. Tobacco-smoke, and smokers generally, bees have a mortal hatred to. Bees have other personal antipathies, but the horrid scent of a tobacco-pipe in a visitor's pocket either induces them disdainfully to shun all acquaintance, or provokes them to make an attack.
Your best way of removing a super full of honey, with bees, of course, in the spaces not full of comb, is to carry it about one hundred yards away from the hive. Wedge up the glass on one side from the zinc plate on which you have carried it, and the bees will leave in the course of an hour or two, and fly home. They very soon discover their separation from their queen, and under this feeling they lose all courage, and give up defending the very property they would have died fighting for when connected with the parent hive. The exceptional case is where there may be, what is very rare in a super, a portion of young brood—always in such cases drone-brood. This they refuse to desert. They do not attack, but, as if placed sentries by their queen, they insist on continuing at their post. The only course in such a case is to cut out the brood cells and put them away, as they are not likely to be wanted, and the bees will then return to the stock hive, report, I suppose, and receive future orders. In removing a super in August, when the bee ceases to accumulate in Kent, you must take care not to do so on the windward side of your hives, as the scent of honey will bring your visitors from every hive, who will rob you of all.