London, 12th August, 1864.
P.S. I have never had an opportunity of keeping bees in England. I shall look for your promised manual, as I hope some day I may be able to have some of my favourites to care for. I may add, my father procured our original stock from Tasmania, in the common straw hive, a bit of pierced tin fastened over the entrance. One system I do not see alluded to, which we found answer very well, when we wished, for any cause, to take the old comb and start the bees afresh. We used in the early dawn to place the full hive over an empty one, covering all with a large cloth, and then beat the top hive steadily, not roughly, with a stick. Very soon the queen would take refuge in the lower box, when a board was slipped between, and the upper old hive removed. The bees (the few that loitered behind the queen) soon left the honey to join their friends: at night the new hive was carried to the site of the old one, and turned up upon its own board. We always had cross bars of wood on the hives, upon which the swarm at first clung.
Taylor's and Wood's "Manuals of Bee-keeping" are exceedingly good. Richardson's is very full. Lardner's Treatise in the "Museum of Science and Art" well deserves the attention of the reader.
I do not profess to have struck out any original methods of constructing hives or treating bees. To the science of apiculture I have contributed nothing. All I profess to do is to give plain, practical directions for the successful management of bees, chiefly from observation and experience.
I am persuaded there has been much useful and instructive matter in my letters, because I have received a few very ill-natured communications. One of them (not the worst) I insert, as a specimen of the reception my little work is doomed to expect. But perhaps the writers may repent of their intentions, and recover the sweet temper they seem to have lost.
August 15.
Sir,—I have read very attentively the letters in The Times about bees, and am convinced that the American gentleman is right, and that much of what you say is mere old woman's twaddle. Your nonsensical rant about loyalty to the queen-bee (in these days, when loyalty to kings and queens is utterly and very properly extinct), and your raving against radical reform (so much wanted in all matters), both give evidence of anility and failing intellect.
I shall act on my conviction by ordering the American book on bees for myself and friends, and I shall use all my literary influence (which is considerable) in preventing the circulation of your poor trumpery twopenny-halfpenny bee-papers.
A Non-believer in the "Bee-master"
of Tunbridge Wells.
P.S. I am no American, but I sympathise with Messrs. Bright and Cobden. I rejoice at the downfall of the Danish monarchy; and I would not fight, under any circumstances, either for king, queen, princes, or peoples—not foreign peoples at least, I look on loyalty as rank humbug. Kings must behave better before we can respect or love them!