COTTAGE BEE-KEEPING.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2154, 20 January 1881, Page 4

COTTAGE BEE-KEEPING.

[" Gardener's Chronicle."] It is now many years since a course of direot instruction to oottage bee-keepers has found a place in this journal. Since then so great a stride has taken place in our knowledge of bees, and suoh great improvement in their management, that it seems only fair and Teasonable that our humbler neighbours should have the benefit of them. I purpose, therefore, during the winter months to write a aeries of papers with tho above heading, in the hope of re-awakening an interest in this branch of domestio economy (as it may fairly be called), and helping our cottage friends to make bee-keeping a success. The last year has been no fatal to bees everywhere, in Ireland and Scotland as well as in England, that a general discouragement prevails among oottage bee keepers. Many have lost every hive they possessed, and not a few looking back on the ill luck that has attended their management of bees for several years back, seem in despair, and feel inclined to relinquish bee keeping. What if our farmers generally, who havo had too much reason to complain of the bad times, wero to resolve to act in like fashion ? We should ■oon be in difficulties for the saving of dear life, famine would next winter be at our doors. But I cannot see that my farmer neighbors are taking less pains with their grainsowing or dairy management than in former years for all the heavy losses they have sustained. They are taking care to supply their lands with manure, and their flocks and herds with good roots and hay, in faith and hope of better times. Why should the beekeeper be less hopeful, or allow himself to give Icbb attention to his boos 1 If indeed ill luck has visited him and nothing worse he has only himself to blame. 11l luck is usually but another word for utter neglect and carelessness. Why did his bees din ? Why did he let the summer and autumn pass, and take no pains to help his bees by feeding them as he ought to have done, and as he fed his other live stock ?

I begin, then, with this piece of advice to all intending bee.keepers. .Resolve from the first that you will not keep bees at haphazard, and do not expect them to pay if you take no trouble about them. Make up your mind to fail sooner or later if you will not help them with sufficient food to carry them through the winter and early spring after a bad season suoh as that we have just passed through. A very little trouble and a trifling deduction from the profits of a successful season will be sufficient to save your bees from destruction, and to guarantee you a superabundant harvest of honoy at no distant time more than sufficient to recoup you a hundred per cent, on your outlay. Just imagine the vexation of many a bee-keeper next summer, when, as is probable, if it should turn out a propitious season, he sees his more careful neighbours' bees yielding hundredweights of golden honey, himself being out in the cold, and having nothing to show but a beggarly array of empty and decaying hives. " Feed me well," then, is a fundamental rule in keeping bees.- Not less important and essential tp success is the other half of the verse, "Keep me clean." How to feed I do not •top novfeto show. That will come presently, as uteojipw to keep bees clean. I will only ■ay here with regard to the latter, that the intending bee-keeper must make up his mind to attend to this as a matter of quite equal necessity. Hundreds of hives perish every winter for want of a little regard to their healthy preservation. Damp, mildew, imperfect ventilation, poisonous exhalations arising from external or internal decay or death, are fruitful causes of instantaneous outbreaks of disease inside a multitude of stooks every winter. Accumulations of dead bees on tho floor-boards, and entrances choked up by these or other things, are the direct oauses of dysentery and ruin, and most likely of foul brood, within a hive. Therefore, whoever purposes to commence or recommence beekeeping must make up his mind to give attention to theso things. Lot a new era begin, and all tho old carelessness bo for ever done away. Then there is some hope of success, and a golden tim j will come to the cottager as well as to tho wealthier beekeeper.

ThcßQ two point 3 on which I lay such stress at the Tory outaat of my papers imply, of course, that the cottage boo-kceper intends to take aa much care of his bees as of his potatoes or of his cabbages. Talk of potatoes indeed in comparison of bee-keeping, which in these days has on the wholo proved the most profitable ? Slumbers of cottagers this year have taken up actually a leas quantity of potatoes than they pub into the ground in tho soed time. Estimate the cost of labor, and the rent of the ground, and the original value of the seed itself, and balance this with the losses of any boo-keepor in the neighborhood, and whish of the two has reason to cry moat oyer his disappoin(ment ? I. will take my own case. I hare eleven hives which have given me no honey this year. They have cost me two hundredweight of sugar valued at £2 10i. Ihe eleven stocks I consider are now worth at least 30s apiece, taking no account of the hives themselves. Tlioy will probably be worth a great deal moro in the spring. This time last year they were worth 10a a-piece less. So that I have actually gained £3 on the value of the stock after deducting for the coat of food. What potato grower can show a proportionate increase in the profits of his root ventures his year ? But if I had let my bees die out or want of that £2 10s worth of sugar I

•hould hare found| myself £l3 poorer than I am now ; and if I chose to carry on bee-keep-ing on the game scale I should have to pay as much again for them next year, not to speak of the honey profit 3 I may not unreasonably expoct to get in the good time coming, A greator goose than the " penny wise " starrer of his bees could hardly be found. When will our cottagers open their eyes, and see what possibilities of improving their small incomes lie at hand and within their ;,'riwp ? I and others have lectured, and writton, and experimented before cottagers in various parts of England, but I can scarcely call to mind a single instance where a permanent success has followed the lessons given. There has been plenty of tomporary interest shown in the subject, and not a few have been induced to keep boos for a time, but with very raro exceptions failure has been the result, and for no other reason than the want of continued attention and sufficient care of the new property they have acquired. Not in any case that I can recollect has the profit been anything like what it ought to have been. It has now come to this point with myself, that I have oeased to go out of my way to induce any of my poorer neighbours to keep bees, simply because I am afraid they will only lose the outlay whioh is necessary for them to make, and oonsider me as the cause of their disappointment and loss ef money. For all that cottagers will continue here nnd there to keep bees. In some parts of England they are more intelligent than in others. It is for such I write these remarks, in the hope that they will make a note of them, and begin in earnest to mend their ways.