The apiary; or, bees, bee-hives, and bee culture [1866]: Being a familiar account of the habits of bees, and the most improved methods of management, with full directions, adapted for the cottager, farmer, or scientific apiarianNeighbor, Alfred
Science
The apiary; or, bees, bee-hives, and bee culture [1866]: Being a familiar account of the habits of bees, and the most improved methods of management, with full directions, adapted for the cottager, farmer, or scientific apiarian
the summer be not too far advanced, they will work more honey-comb in
it.
The removal of the end boxes is a somewhat similar process, but they
should on no account be taken away, at the same time as the glass, or,
indeed, at a time when any other hive is being--_robbed_ we were going
to say, for it is robbery to the bees: they intended the honey for
their winter food, and are much enraged at being deprived of it. First
shut down the dividing tin; the bees in the end box are now prisoners
separated from the hive; keep them so half an hour, and then take
away the box bodily to another part of the garden, or into the dark
out-house, as before recommended.
It may not be out of place here to say something respecting the
enthusiastic inventor of the collateral hive--Thomas Nutt--who was an
inhabitant of Spalding, in Lincolnshire. Having been disabled during a
considerable period by rheumatic fever, he devoted all his attention to
bees, at a time when bee-culture was but little valued; and, although
it must be admitted that two boxes were used side by side long before
Mr. Nutt's day, still it is due to him to state that the adoption of
three boxes was entirely his own idea, and that, so far as he then
knew, the collateral system was his original invention. His statements
have been severely criticised, and it does appear almost incredible
that the weight of honey which he names could have been produced in one
season. But as in the district where he lived there is grown an immense
quantity of mustard seed--the flowers of which afford excellent forage
for bees--the honey harvests there would, doubtless, be very large. If
Mr. Nutt has given his little favourites too much praise, it will be
only charitable now to account for his statements by an excess of zeal
and enthusiasm in this his study of bee-culture. It may be that the
golden harvests he spoke and wrote of have been so far useful that they
have induced many to commence bee-keeping, some of whom, whilst they
condemned his statements, have themselves written really useful and
practical works on the subject, which otherwise might possibly never
have appeared. As the monks of old kept the lamp of religion burning,
however dimly, until a more enlightened age, so Thomas Nutt may have
assisted in a somewhat similar manner by energetically propounding his
views, and thereby causing other apiarians to rise up, whose names are
now as familiar to us as household words, and whose works posterity
will value. The writer of these pages has often accompanied Mr. Nutt on
his visits to his patrons in the neighbourhood of London, and seen him
perform his operations regardless of the anger of the bees, and free
from all fear of their stings. He often expatiated on the cruelty of
the brimstone match and suffocation, denouncing the barbarous custom
in the following terms: "You may as well kill the cow for her milk, or
the hen for her eggs, as the bee for its honey; why continue to light
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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