HINTS ON THE MANAGEMENT OF BEES. By the Rev. W.C. Cotton, m.a.

New Zealander, Volume 3, Issue 179, 16 February 1848, Page 3

HINTS ON THE MANAGEMENT OF BEES. By the Rev. W.C. Cotton, m.a.

Concluded. I. — bees' eniimies. There is no greater foe to bees than man. Alas ! that it should be so! What with mismanagement, what withneg'cct, what with mi&tnken kindness, the poor bee has a sorry tune of it trom him who ought to he her guardian and friend. And yet she knows full well how tofepay her master's caie, and, it I mistake not, becomes attached even to Ins person. Much of the illtreatment which the bee receives from her owner, springs doubtlesi, from ignorance — and this little manual may, I hope, go some way towards lessening the evil. Let my bee-pupil but keep these maxims conitantly iv mind— "That if he is to succeed with his bees, it must be by following nature, not by thwaitintj it. 1 ' " That one lesson which his bees teach him is worth a dozen which he can leain from this or any other Beebooks. Yoa may, if you will but use your eyes and reason, and lake advice from those who are able to give it to you, change sides a& it were, and become a bee. friend instead of a bee-enemy. But there are other foe* of the poor bee, who cannot be taught better manners, because they have no reaion to woik upon— they are their natural enemies, as an Englishman once used

to think himself of the French. And I will now give you who are on the hees' side, short and plain direc- | tions for destroying, or at least guarding against these implacable foes. I. The most deadly are the spideis. It is a piteous thin? to see a bee when it is returning from abroad, he ivily 1 iden, rejoicing doubtless at the uieasm c \\ hich it is about to add to the common stock, caught in the deadly snare which the spider has spread for her — vain are her struggles, they only serve to wind the futil meshes more closely around her, aud unless speedily extneared by a friendly hand, shepeiishes miserably. I say speedily, for even if you released the captive, unless it be done almost immediately, you will find it impossible to free her from the fetters in which she is bound, and although you leturn her to the mouth of her owi hive, which she will tiy to enter, she will be turned out by her own mates as a sick and disabled cnpp'e. Prevention, tnere f ore, is better than cure. Brus.li away fie cobwebs every time you vi«it your beehouse, and 1 assume that you aie a constant visitant). O.ily a sluttish house-wife allows a cobweb inside her house, and only a careless bee-master will suffer a <obweb to remain about his lmes. In the fiist position they are only a sign of untidiness — in the latter his children get hung up—for as such he ought to consider his bees. 11. The mouse is a deadly enemy to the bee, but not so much in this as in colder climates. When the hees are in a state of torpor during beTenil months of the year, then the mouse nukes his insidious attacks, crawling through the doorway if it be a Luge one, or else gnawing a passage through the straw , and when once within a hive, he commits fatal ravages, eating up | combs, heesj and all. Even in this mild climate the mouse-nuisance must be guarded agains*. I have lost two hives by mice m New Zealand. The way to foriily your stocks against their attacks is, to put little wedges into the doorway of your hives, during the wintei, when your bees are comparatively weak, though they have not such a total intermission of hbor in this as in 0111 Noithern land. The wedges must be so arranged as to leave free passage for one or two bees at a time, and yet they must be close enough to prevent a mouse from creeping in. As> the warm weather comes on, take out one or two of the wedges, so that the do mv.iv may be always proportionate to the bees which pa*s thiough it. 111 . The bee-moth, or ratlior the grub which springs from eggs which it lays, is a contemptible little cieatuie to look at, but does gi eat damage when it gets fiunly established in an apiary. You may often find it lurking between the edge of the hive and the bottom board, which seems to be a favourite place with the parent moth to lay her eggs in. The produce thereof is a l.itle white grub, about half an inch long, all soft and defenceless, except his head, which i-. covered with a hard case of armor, and you may be pretty sure that this is the only part of his person which he pops out of his burrow, or else the bees would make short woik of him. In America, I find, from a Bee-book which an unseen Bee-friend sent me f>om that place, this moth has | committed fearful ravages, (for I suppose it is that which they call the millst,) and has destroyed ths apiaries of whole districts. In this countiy it has not made so much head, but still the prudent bee-master had better beware of it in time. Prevention is here again better than cure. About twice a«year, in spring and autumn, shift; the bottom boards— clean them wed by scraping them or even planing them — and if theie are any signs of this grub, pour scalding water upon them. The place where they chiefly harboi is between the hive and its bottom boaid, so, the closer they fit, one to the other, the better. I have seen these hardheaded little creatures tunnelling even in the solid wood of the bottom boards. Also clean the edge of the hive before you put it down again, remembering what I said about turning the c>>inbs up in their own places, and that a few puffs of smoke blown into the hive before you move it will take away from the bees all inclination to sting. When the hive is weak, and the children of the wax moth numerous, they no longer content themselves with lying hid between the hive and its bottom board, but push their ravages amongst the empty combs, burrowing in them, and opening their nasty webs, which the bees have great difficulty to get rid of— so you must come to their aid. They themselves show you how to act, for a strong swarm gnaws away, and carries out. piecemeal, every bit of comb whii h contains any of these grubs — a weak hive seems to give it up in despair. So, to use the words of deGellien — •' the only means of saving the Colony is to imitate the Surgeon, who cuts off a diseased limb, to save the rest. Every bit of infected comb must be cut out, leaving only those occupied by the beei." This may be easily done by means of the comb-kn:fe which I have figured and described in a former letter. The odd-shaped holes which are often found in the middle of combs, in an old hive, are made, I doubt not, by the be-s having cut out an infected part. A curious point here arises, connected more with natural history, and the distribution of living creatures over the surface of this globe of our's, than with the management of bees, and yet I will not pass it altogether by. It is this— supposing this wax grub is the same as that which is the pest of European and Ameiican apiaries — how did it come to these far-away isles? Were the eggs or grubs brought in the first hive which arrived here from New boulh Wdlti ? At ail events, this question, unsolved as I am content to leave it, leads to these practical results : — Ist. That it is of great importance thoroughly to cleanse old hives into which new swarms are put, by scraping and scalding them. And 2ndly that when bbes are sent to a distant stat.on, be vciy careful to send them in cleun hives or boxes, inco which it is next to an impossibility that any grub, or egg of the beemoth, can harbor, and then it will be curious to see how long the bees remain free from the persecution of these ♦' natural enemies." IV. All the*e enemies to the poor bee are common both to England and New Zealand. With them the bees and the bee-master, their ally, has to fight in both lands. But there is another foe peculiar to New Zealand, of a very nasty nature, I mean that stinking beetle whose real name is " Kekereiu," but which has been transmogrified by Pakehas into " Cockeredoo." When a hive dwindles away to nothing, and the beemaster turns up his hive to see what is the cause, and extent of the damage, he will often find a number of these black rascals in possession of the empty combs. I do not think they ever have the impudence to push their way into a fully occupied hive, but when a swarm becomes weak, they creep in by stealth. A stock which has lost heart from the death of its Queen, and its inability to replace her, will not make any vigorous efforts to repel these intruders, though they combine for a time to woik a little in very fine weather. When at last they come to nothing, and the bee-master turns up his deserted hive to see what has been the cause of his lobs, he finds the kekereius skulking &way between the empty combs, and thinks, naturally enough, that they are to blame, whilst they are rather the result than the cause of the ruin. A 6trong stock is well able to defend itself against these intrudeis. Just drop one of them, or a spider, into an observatory-hive, and you will see them turn him out quickly enough, " band over haud," as I have heard a bailor say. But yet His

well to keep your apiary as free as posnble from these crawling stinkpots. Put your foot upon one whenever you meet him, and have as little shelter for them about yoar bee-house as imy be. For this reason I like to have my hives, even though they bs of straw, standing under one roof common to them 'all, rather than each protected by its own hackle. Nothing indeed is more sightly about a cottage, than a row of these conic.il roofs, only uaind if your hives aie protected in (his way, to litt up the hackles every now and then, to see if these bee-enemies are lurbourine; there— if you so find them, take the law into your own hands.