Part 7

But may it not be preferable still to follow the course indicated by the bees? When pastures fail and turnips perish, from an extreme dry season, we feed cattle with artificial food. Why not try an analogous system with bees? Barley-sugar, I admit, is expensive. But I venture to assert, that if the caste issue not later than June, four pounds of barley-sugar, costing about five shillings, will supplement its own industrious gatherings sufficiently to carry it over the winter into spring, and a pound in spring will start it into vigorous work. If you take from it a super next June or July, weighing ten or twelve pounds, you receive good interest, and your outlay for barley-sugar is returned, and you escape the troublesome and disagreeable process of fumigation. Barley-sugar, I admit, is more costly than cottagers prefer. If you have no arrangement in your hives for feeding, you may boil a pound of common brown sugar--which may be had for fourpence a pound--in a pint of ale; pour it when cool into a soup-plate. Take a circular thin board, the size of the inner bottom of the soup-plate, pierce it with a good-sized gimlet in every direction till it is covered with holes, each through and through. Let it float on the plate. Set the plate opposite your weak swarm day after day for a week. The other bees, strong and busy in June, will rarely touch it, and your destitute family will gladly visit it. The weight of the float will make the sugared ale ascend by the holes, and the bees will sip ad libitum, without the risk of clogging their wings or being drowned. But if, what is more to be desired, you have one of Pettitt's single-box hives, you have only to fill one of his wood feeders, in which there are grooves and parallel edges of wood for the bees to walk on; place it in the drawer beneath the stock, draw out the zinc slide, and the bees will descend and feed with profit and pleasure.

If you have one of Neighbours' hives, already referred to, fill the following zinc pan with the ale and sugar. Put over it the plate of glass, and fix it on the top of the hive. The bees will ascend by the orifice A, the plate-glass cover on the top preventing their escape, while it is so constructed that without moving it you can replenish it by the entrance B.

Taylor thus describes one of his feeding-pans:--

"When there is a hole in the centre of the top of the hive, a trough may be used, made of tin or zinc, seven or eight inches square, and one inch and a quarter deep; having a circular two-inch hole in the middle of the bottom, with a rim round it, standing up half an inch, through which the bees enter the pan from below. Another circular rim or partition, as large in diameter as the square of the pan will admit, is soldered down within it at the four points where it touches the sides. It must not go down to the bottom, but a space should there be left of nearly an eighth of an inch, as a passage for the food, which is poured in at the four angles. A perforated thin wooden bottom or float is fitted loosely into the pan, between the circles, removing an objection sometimes made against the chilling effects of metal upon bees. The float should be a little raised by means of two thin strips of wood, appended below, to allow the liquid to flow beneath. A cover is made by a piece of glass, resting on the larger circle, but cut nearly octagonal in form, so as to leave the corners open. The circle on which the glass rests should be an eighth of an inch lower than the outer rim."

Ingenious bee-masters, who estimate the excellence of their treatment by its tortuous ingenuity, are sure to deride every such homely and easy treatment. But you must disregard their learned and, as they phrase it, scientific talk. In fact, the sulphur-and-match treatment is scarcely worse than the protracted torture of apiarian inquisitors, inflicted on bees by means of their ingenious hives. Experimental investigations are, of course, legitimate. But keeping up queer and twisted and zigzag bee-houses, as monuments of their talent and nothing else, is nothing less than vivisection of bees.

Should the weather prove fine, and the stock hive, as inspected by the glass window, show the honey-comb reaching downward to the floor, place a super on the top. A glass is by far the most elegant, and, of the shape recommended by Taylor, it is the most useful. It is about ten inches wide, six inches high, and straight on the sides, with or without a zinc circular perforated tube.

But it is essential to cover it with a fitting woollen nightcap, the neglect of which is the cause of the unpopularity of bee-glasses.

No additional room ought to be given after the middle of July, even in heath counties; but that supplied in the beginning of June, or toward the end of May, should be large. This is the safe side to err on. Either one good large glass, or, what is less useful, two or three middle-sized, should be used.

In the case of the Ayrshire hive, the rabbet-slides should be drawn out from the top of the bottom box, the super box being previously placed on the top.

During June and July frequently visit your bees. Stand in front of the bee-shed. Study them through your observatory windows. They are too busy to be annoyed. They love company. They are essentially social and friendly, and fond of visitors. Their music will charm your ear, and their industry delight your eye; and their wonderful work will give you many an illustration for sermon, essay, or speech.

The longest summer ends in autumn. The honey harvest comes on.

Pass your zinc plate under the full glass. Detach it, and lift it off the stock hive, of which close up the hole, or place on it a very small bell-glass, just sufficient to cover the aperture, not forgetting the nightcap. Take your glass to a little distance, let it rest for half an hour, then edge up one side, and the bees will rush home to their hive in the bee-shed. Cover the bottom of the glass, when the bees have left, with parchment or thick writing-paper.

Mr. Taylor's directions are as follow:--

"If the queen is not in the super (and she seldom is there after it is filled), the silence that at first prevailed will be exchanged for a murmuring hum, attended by a commotion among the bees; and they shortly after begin to quit the super, without attempting any attack. Should the queen be present, however, a very different scene would ensue, and a hubbub would then commence in the stock hive; though the loss of their queen is sometimes not discovered by the bees for a considerable time. In such a case, the box must be reinstated in its former position, and the communication reopened till some other day. The process might happen to be complicated by the presence of brood, for this the bees leave very reluctantly, and often not at all. In an emergency of this kind, it is best to restore matters to their previous state, and let the super remain till the brood is perfected. A little patience is sometimes necessary; but all attempts at ejection of the bees by tapping, smoking, or driving, usually do more harm than good. So long as they continue to leave the super, it may remain where it is, for on these occasions young bees are sometimes numerous; and if the super is removed, though only to a short distance, these are in part lost, not having become sufficiently acquainted with the position of their home; or, if they enter a wrong hive, they pay the penalty with their lives. This freedom from disturbance has the further good effect of preventing in a great degree the intrusion of robber bees, readily distinguishable from the others by their hovering about the box, instead of flying from it. These are strangers from various quarters, immediately attracted by the scent attending the removal of a full box or glass. Should a few of these plunderers once obtain a taste or sample of the honey, they speedily convey the good news to their associates, when large reinforcements from every hive in the neighbourhood will be at once on the alert, and quickly leave nothing behind but empty combs. Let the separated super, therefore, not be left or lost sight of, but if scented out by robbers, be conveyed into some room or outbuilding, to prevent a general battle, and which might extend itself to all the neighbouring hives. The remaining bees may here be brushed out, escaping by the window or door. Mr. Golding has sometimes found the advantage of using for the purpose a darkened room, with the exception of a very small aperture, to which the bees will fly and make their exit. Others like to remove a super at once to a short distance from the stock hive, leaving it shut up in perfect darkness for an hour or two. Its edge is then raised up, when the bees will evacuate it."

A good plan is, to take the detached super into a room with a window that closes and opens on hinges. On edging up the glass, the bees will fly to the window. Open it for a minute, and they will escape. Shut it again, and repeat the opening. The advantage of this is that wasps and strange bees are excluded, such corsairs careering everywhere in autumn.

Honey is always best preserved in its own sealed and air-tight cells. It will keep throughout the winter. If you separate the honey from the wax, cut the combs into inch-wide pieces, and lay these in sieves over glazed earthenware vessels, and they will yield the choicest honey. It drops from the comb spontaneously.

Take the combs and squeeze them through a cloth. This will yield a second-class honey, admirable for feeding your bees. Carry the remainder, or refuse, in a dish, and place it before your bee-shed, and thousands of your bees will make a good meal from it. If you prefer to save the wax, bring back what the bees have licked clean. Put it into a vessel in which there is as much water as floats it. Place the vessel on a clear fire, stirring till the combs are thoroughly melted. Strain the whole through a fine canvas bag into cold water. Mr. Nutt says:--

"Have ready then a piece of smooth board of such a length that, when one end of it is placed in the tub of cold water, the other end may be conveniently rested against, and securely stayed by, your breast. Upon this inclined plane lay your dripping, reeking strainer, and keeping it from slipping into the cold water by bringing its upper part over the top of the board, so as to be held firmly between it and your breast. If the strainer be made with a broad hem round its top, a piece of strong tape or cord passed through such hem will draw it close, and should be long enough to form a stirrup for the foot, by which an additional power will be gained of keeping the scalding-hot strainer in its proper place on the board; then, by compressing the bag, or rather its contents, with any convenient roller, the wax will ooze through and run down the board into the cold water, on the surface of which it will set in thin flakes. When this part of the operation is finished, collect the wax, put it into a clean saucepan, in which is a little water, to keep the wax from being burned to the bottom; melt it carefully; for should it be neglected, and suffered to boil over, serious mischief might ensue, liquid wax being of a very inflammable nature; therefore, melt it carefully over a slow fire, and skim off the dross as it rises to the top; then pour it into such moulds or shapes as your fancy may direct, having first well rinsed them, in order that you may be able to get the wax, when cold and solid, out of them, without breaking either the moulds or the wax; place them, covered over with cloths or with pieces of board, where the wax will cool slowly; because the more slowly it cools, the more solid if will be, and free from flaws and cracks."

To those who have a taste for very ancient drinks, Richardson's instructions will prove valuable:--

"Mead.--Some persons may feel desirous of making for themselves this once-famous drink, and I shall accordingly furnish them with simple directions for so doing. Common mead is formed by mixing two parts of water with one of honey, boiling them together, and taking off the scum.

"Fermented mead is formed of three parts of water to one of honey, boiled as before, skimmed, and casked. The cask is to be left unbunged and exposed to the sun, or in a warm room, until it ceases to work. It is then bunged, and in about three months it is fit for use. The addition of a ferment is of course necessary, taking care that it be sound, sweet, and good.

"Hops are an improvement to mead, taking from its extreme sweetness; and so is the addition of chopped raisins boiled with it, at the rate of six pounds of honey to each half-pound of raisins; also some lemon peel, a few glasses of brandy, &c.

"Metheglin is only another name for mead, altered by the addition of various ingredients, according to the taste of its preparers. These liquors may be racked, fined, &c., like other wines, and will, if properly managed, keep for years."

I have never tasted these celebrated wines. I have no doubt they are pleasant and wholesome. But I prefer the honey in the honey-comb at breakfast, and mean to recommend it to others also.

VII.--THE INMATES OF THE HIVE.

In every hive there are three distinct inmates, very easily recognised--the Queen-Bee, the Working-Bee, and the Drone; each essential to the other, and all to the very existence and prosperity of the hive.

THE QUEEN.

The Queen is very elegant. Her symmetry of person, and relative proportions, and greater length of figure, distinguish her from the rest of the community. Her death is followed by a cessation of all labour till a princess ascends the throne. She is the creature of treatment. The egg from which she emerges seems in all respects identical with those from which her subjects issue. On the sides of the tier of comb from which drones and working-bees are developed, large vertical combs, from two to five, are constructed. Woodcuts representing these are found in every bee-book. Taylor gives the following accurate picture:--