EXTRACTS FROM MY OWN NOTE-BOOK. 321 I concluded that most of my Bees had come home. I therefore shut up the entrance, and let the robbers knock until they were tired! I made a gimblet-hole in the top, to give them air, and next morning, when I let them out, all was quiet. 1835-Was, I should think, a good honey year. I only had two stocks. They did not swarm at all; but filled some glasses very well. 1836.—In the spring of this year Mr. Nutt's book fell in my way. It was too late to stock one of his Hives that year; but I resolved to get my apiary into good order to start fair the next year. The spring was very backward; neither of my Hives swarmed either in May or June. They bred very fast; but hung out, and covered the whole front of the straw Hive. As long as this retreat was open to them, I was sure they would not swarm. By the plentiful application of wetted nettles, we forced them all into the Hive on the even of the 30th of June. On the 31st of June I got up at four o'clock in the morning, and turned a small plaster of Paris arch, uniting the Hive to the front of the Bee-house. On the 31st they hung out in a most tremendous Twуov, or beard, extending two feet laterally. They were so quiet that I took the end of the cluster in my hand. On the 1st of July they swarmed; the whole family was out to see them. It was a piping hot day, and they filled, I may almost say darkened, the air. They settled, however, on a most inconvenient place the stem of an espalier pear tree, and did not hang in a bunch, but clustered all round the tree, extending from its top, about four feet nine inches from the ground, nearly to the bottom of the stem. A council of war was held on the occasion. It seemed impossible to sweep them into the Hive, The danger of missing the Queen was so great, that a second flight, and probably the loss of the swarm, seemed inevitable, if we attempted the usual method. A gentle method was therefore determined 322 EXTRACTS FROM MY OWN NOTE-BOOK. on; a well-dressed Hive was held over the crown of the swarm, touching the stem of the tree; some few Bees went up into it; we gradually lowered the Hive, keeping it close to the stem. It took us about half an hour to work half down the tree. So many Bees had, by this time, gone in, that I thought it would be well to put the bottom board half under the Hive. To our great joy the Bees then rapidly left the tree, and formed a cluster, partly supported by the Bees who had entered the Hive, and partly by the bottom board. They were then placed on a large garden pot, and left to themselves. In the even they had all gone in, and a splendid swarm it was. Virgil seems to have experienced difficulties of this sort; or rather, the old writers de re rusticá, from whom he borrowed his matter. His lines on swarming are worth quoting : "Palmaque vestibulum, aut ingens oleaster inumbret; Vere suo, ludetque fabis emissa juventus; Obviaque hospitiis teneat frondentibus arbos." VIRGIL. Georg. iv. 20. EXTRACTS FROM MY OWN NOTE-BOOK. 323 This swarm weakened the parent stock so much that it left off working in a large glass which was on the top. I had an idea that no Drones at all accompanied the swarm. The majority certainly stay in the old stock, as I killed 250, I think, in five minutes, the day after the swarm rose, at the entrance of the Hive; but I believe I saw one or two Drones who accompanied the swarm. This point, however, requires further examination. It would be agreeable to theory; for if the old Queen goes away with the swarm, she is already impregnated, and consequently the Drones of the next year, which are the first to be hatched of any brood, will be produced soon enough for the young Queens. But if Hüber's theory of the impregnation of the Queen be true, there is no need that every Hive should be furnished with Drones, unless they have some other office to perform. I do not believe they feed the brood; but they certainly may increase the temperature of the Hive to a great amount. This swarm weighed twenty pounds in a little more than a month after it swarmed, thanks to the lime trees. This year I had four other swarms, and one strong cast— strong in Bees, but only weighing three pounds. I transferred them home safely on the top of the carriage, a distance of two miles; some of them were in a very foul state. I smoked them with the fungus, cleaned the rim of the straw Hives, cut out all the combs which seemed infested with the moth, and set them all on new bottom boards. I united the cast to a healthy swarm of the same year, which only weighed nine pounds; I then fed them with sugar and sweetwort, unfortunately, as will be seen hereafter; they seemed to prefer this to sugar and beer. I fed them by raising the Hives on a feeding-box, into which I put a tin pan, with coarse muslin stretched over the liquor. The union Hive took up three pounds and a half in one night, and when I had done feeding them, weighed many pounds above twenty. Everything seemed 324 EXTRACTS FROM MY OWN NOTE-BOOK. to promise for a fair start on the following spring; but "O fallacem hominum spem!" I removed them to a shed which had a northern aspect, and, I thought, was tolerably dry; but I omitted to raise the boards from behind, that the damp might run out. I also confined them with a piece of perforated tin, as Nutt advises, which I am convinced is a bad plan. The winter 1837-38 was very warm, muggy, and damp. A dysentery got among my Bees, and when they came down to the entrance many perished by being squeezed against the damp entrance by those who pressed on from behind. It was mainly owing to their being confined. Had they been on their summer stands, though they would have diminished more in weight, I am convinced so many would not have died. The stench in many of them was terrible. They tried to alleviate it by fanning with their wings; I assisted them by sponging out the entrances, and as far as I could reach along the bottom, by means of a sponge tied to a piece of stick. I ought to have given them fresh bottom boards, but I did not think of it. The spring of 1837— "Came so slowly up our way," such a succession of easterly winds occurred in March, April, and May, that they could not get out to recruit themselves. Had the spring been favourable, many might have recovered; but, to make a sad tale short, only two stocks got through, and many of their combs were in a very bad state. I turned them up, and cut out several covered with a powder of a greyish green. The stock whose loss I regretted most was that of the union Hive, as it prevented my proving for myself the truth of De Gelieu's statement (though I have myself no doubt of its correctness); as it was, the union swarm, though much the strongest in Bees, did not diminish more in the autumn months than those EXTRACTS FROM MY OWN NOTE-BOOK. 325 who had only their own population. The cause of their death was a mistake which I made, misled by Nutt, in feeding them with wort and sugar, instead of ale and sugar, though they took the former much more readily up than the latter;-it fermented in the Hive. To return to the summer of 1836:-In my rooms at Christ Church, I had two stocks of Bees, which worked through a sort of cuniculus in the window sill into the open air; one was in a leaf Hive, the other in an observatory Hive (or, rather, in an octagon box, with three glass windows in the back, as they never worked up into the observatory leaves). [N.B. Bees should be put directly into the observatory Hive, without any apartment below, or else all the Bees will never be in sight at the same time.] Still, as it was, I saw many things new to me. Very few Bees worked out the first day.—Vide p. 251, Theory of Wax. Saw the Queen, May 30th and 31st: ovipositor very much distended. June 2.-About one hundred Bees killed, probably by eating putty, with which I stopped the cuniculus leading into the Hive. Mem. Never to use putty again. June 3.-Saw one Drone; which floors my theory that no Drones go off with the new swarms. June 5.-Saw a Bee with two scales of wax protruding between the second and third, and third and fourth scales of the abdomen, on the left side. The Bee remained remarkably quiet, with his belly toward the glass, holding on to the glass with his anterior legs, and at intervals shaking his body and rubbing it with his hind legs, as if to help the wax forward. He disappeared in the crowd of Bees, after about half an hour, before the wax scales had fallen, yet they had become quite imbricated. I often observed Bees hanging in the clusters shake themselves violently. Early in June I opened my Hüber's Hive, and took out a comb; eggs were laid in the cells, and much pollen stored in them. I took some out of one with the point of a Q |