any

In feeding bees, we have all our life long tried to do the work simply and rapidly. Necessity is the mother of invention. When we have one or two dozen of old hives needing food, we do not call to our aid feeding-troughs of kind. The old stage-coach and even the parliamentary train are rather too slow; we like to go by "express." We simply pour the sugar-and-water amongst the combs and bees, and can easily give 20 lb. of sugar to fifteen hives in half an hour. In doing this, we dose a hive well with the smoke from corduroy, turn it up, hold it, say, towards the east at an angle of 45 degrees or thereabouts, the combs running from north to south. From a pitcher or jug with a spout the syrup is gently poured first along one comb and then another, till all are gone over; then turn the hive towards the west, with combs slanting as before, and pour the liquid on the reverse side of the combs in the same manner. Owing to the slanting position of the combs, the syrup runs into the open cells before it reaches the crown of the hive. Thus one hive after another is fed; and, if necessary or convenient to give more, each hive can receive three such doses every day. The liquid thus poured amongst the bees does them no harm, as they lick it off one another quite clean in a few minutes.

This wholesale mode of feeding is perhaps the best, when we in autumn find it necessary to give some of the hives a considerable quantity. By giving it rapidly, 3 or 4 lb. a-day, the bees store most of it up, and then settle down into the quiet of winter life. If the feeding continues for some days or weeks, the bees are kept in a state of excitement, and may consume as much as they store up. They may be induced to commence breeding at an unfavourable season by feeding long continued. In the spring and summer months, when the weather is unfavour

able, constant feeding is the best, because it keeps the hives full of glee; but in autumn, the more speedily it is done the better.

Sometimes hives have not been fed enough in autumn; and the bees in them may be found in the dead of winter starved nearly to death, so cold and hungry that they will not leave their combs for food. What should be done to save them? Take them indoors, into some house, and pour amongst them a little warm syrup. They will revive in a few minutes, and sing a song of gratitude. Of course the door of the hive should be closed while they are in the house, unless the place be in complete darkness.

The practice of exposing refuse honey, or hives and combs wet with honey, to all the bees in a garden or neighbourhood, cannot be too strongly condemned. Honey thus given to bees is like blood to a tiger: they will have more, and make earnest attempts to rob other hives. And there is great danger of making bees of different hives too familiar with one another in a "mixed congregation" thus brought together. Bees should be fed at home, and never tempted to come in contact with those of another family.

IS SUGAR SYRUP CONVERTED INTO HONEY? 157

CHAPTER XXX.

IS SUGAR SYRUP CONVERTED INTO HONEY BY BEES?

THIS question is put in order that we may animadvert on a fraudulent practice of some bee-keepers, confined chiefly, as we believe, to one district or county of Scotland. We have already lifted our voice against the practice in a letter which was published in a very respectable periodical of the day. The bee-keepers referred to will not, we hope, fancy that we are their enemy because we speak plainly. Though we wish "the trick" to be practised no more, we have no wish to hurt the feelings of those who have been doing it quietly for years. Sugar never becomes honey, though swallowed and disgorged twice by bees before they store it away or lay it up in their combs. "Sugarcomb" is not honeycomb. To sell the one for the other knowingly is a trick and a deception. If people will sell syrup for honey, or syrupcomb for honeycomb, what are we to think of them? Are they at all acquainted with the golden rule of treating others as they wish others to treat them? Do they act on this principle when they palm off a trashy article for a real one? Is he an honest man, and fit to be trusted in society, who would wittingly give a bad shilling for a good one? And are those who sell spurious honeycomb, manufactured from sugar by bees, any better? If they are honest people, they will openly tell the buyers that the comb they offer for sale is

not honeycomb, but a kind that is artificially manufactured. Honest folk are not guilty of trickery and fraud.

I have reason to believe that this trick is doing a great deal of harm in the honey-market. If not speedily stopped it will soon be rather difficult to sell clear honey in one large town in Scotland. The heather-honey there is now quite as saleable as flower-honey, because that cannot be manufactured. But if our friends will at once abandon the evil practice, the confidence of the public will soon be gained -a ready sale and high prices will return. The Scotch palate, nationally considered, is fond of sweets; and genuine honey will ever be a saleable article among Scotch people, if the imposition of the syrup-mongers were to come to an end. It is in the interests of honest beekeepers that we venture to lift our voice against the cunning but dishonest practice of sending to the market comb made from, and filled with, sugar-and-water.

Does it pay; is the trick a profitable one? This question has been put elsewhere. We answer by asking, Is it profitable to cheat, and lie, and be dishonest? Is wrongdoing the highroad to wealth? No; honesty everywhere and in everything is the best policy. We shall not stoop to discuss the question of profit in the manufacture of sugarcomb, believing that no reader of this work will ever countenance the practice.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE DISEASES OF BEES.

AMONGST the few distempers of bees, dysentery may be named. It is of very rare occurrence; but doubtless it is caused by unwholesome food, or a cold damp dwellinghouse in winter. Damp hives are very destructive of the lives of bees in weak hives during the winter months. To-day (January 17th) some of our hives were examined. All were found quite dry save a few that were eked with riddle-rims. Even the hives of these were perfectly dry; but the insides of the wooden ekes were as wet as water could make them. How strange it is that some men will recommend wooden domiciles for bees!

For dysentery, loaf-sugar and water boiled is a safe and certain cure.

FOUL-BROOD is the great and incurable malady of beehives. From some cause or other, and in some seasons more than others, larvæ, or half-hatched bees (or brood), perish in their cells, and become a putrid pestilential mass in a hive. Prosperity departs from a hive whenever this happens, and sometimes the stench of it has driven the bees wholly out of the hive, and made them build fresh combs underneath their boards; and sometimes they have gone off as swarms, abandoning their hives in utter despair and detestation. An experienced bee-keeper can smell this disease outside the hive, long