BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
I cannot close this preface without acknowledging myself to be under the greatest obligations to the Rev. T. Clark, of Gedney-Hill. But for his assistance the following work would not have made its appearance in its present form ; if indeed it had appeared at all. He has revised, corrected, connected, and arranged the materials of which it is composed ; and he has, moreover, gratuitously added much that is original and valuable from his own rich stores of knowledge. To him I am indebted for the selection of the Latin nottos. As an apiarian he is one of my most not read one single book on Bees ; nor had I then one in my possession. Whatever my practice may be, it has resulted from my own unaided experience and discoveries. To books I am not indebted for any part of it : may, had I begun to attempt to improve the system of Bee-management by books, I verily believe, I never should have improved it at all, nor have made one useful discovery. _The bees themselves have been my instructors._ After I had so far succeeded as to have from my apiary glasses and boxes of honey of a superior quality, to exhibit at the National Repository, where, with grateful thanks to the Managers of that Institution for their kindness to me, I was encouraged to persevere, Bee-books in profusion were presented to me, some of them by friends with names, some by friends whose names I have yet to learn. I have read them all : but nowhere find, in any of them, clear, practical directions, how honey of the very purest quality, and in more considerable quantity than by any of the plans heretofore proposed, may be taken from Bees, without recourse to any suffocation whatever, or any other violent means ;--how all the Bees may be preserved uninjured ;--and how swarming may be prevented. These are the grand features in my plan ; and minute directions for the accomplishment of these most desirable objects are laid down in this book.
I by no means maintain that my system of Bee-management is incapable of improvement; but I do think that the principles upon which it is founded _are right ;_--that the foundation is here properly laid,--and that every apiarian who may hereafter conform to, or improve upon, my practice, will be instrumental in contributing a part towards raising the superstructure--namely--an asylum or sanctuary for Honey-Bees.
I cannot close this preface without acknowledging myself to be under the greatest obligations to the Rev. T. Clark, of Gedney-Hill. But for his assistance the following work would not have made its appearance in its present form ; if indeed it had appeared at all. He has revised, corrected, connected, and arranged the materials of which it is composed ; and he has, moreover, gratuitously added much that is original and valuable from his own rich stores of knowledge. To him I am indebted for the selection of the Latin motto. As an apiarian he is one of my most improved and skillful pupils, and bids fair to become an ornament to the science of Beemanagement. As a mechanic he is ingenious enough to make his own Bee-boxes, and has actually made some of the very best I have yet seen. To his knowledge of mechanics it is owing that the description and explanation of each of the different boxes, of all the other parts of my Bee-machinery, and of my observatory-hivc, in particular, are more detailed, clearer, and more intelligible than they would have been in my hands. As a scholar there are passages in the following work that afford no mean specimen of his abilities. I have only to regret that the reward for the pains he has taken with it must be my thanks--that it is not in my power to remunerate him for his kind labours more substantially than by this public acknowledgment of the obligations I am under, and of my sense of the debt of gratitude that is due to him.
and more laudable motive, is still existent in the public mind. Thus cheered on, thus, as it were, _encored,_ it has become his duty to the public no less than to himself, to proceed forth with to the publication of a new edition.
Previously, however, to stating what alterations, emendations, &c. have been introduced in order to render the work, as far as I am yet able to render it, worthy a continuance of public patronage, I consider it to be my duty to record my grateful thanks for the success and encouragement I have already received.
To the scientific and literary press, and to the several gentlemen of scientific attainments connected therewith, who, by their influence and kind professional assistance, and promputude in the furtherance of my interest, have greatly contributed to my success, my best thanks are due, _and are hereby respectfully tendered :_ amongst these I have sincere pleasure in particularizing Dr. Birkbeck--the talented President of the London Mechanics' Institution,--Dr. Hancock--Fellow of the Medico-Botanical Society--a veteran of high and esteemed attainments,--and Mr. Booth--the popular Lecturer on Chemistry--a young man of first-rate abilities.
To J. C. Loudon--the erudite editor of the Gardeners' Magazine,--to E. J. Robertson, Esq.--the able and ingenious editor of the Mechanics' Magazine,--to Richard Newcomb --the editor and publisher of the Stanford Mercury,--and to the several editors of the Metropolitan and Provincial Press, who have made favourable mention of my labours, my public thanks are justly due,--and particularly to the editor of the Cambridge Quarterly Review, for a highly commentary notice of my work, evidently written by a practical apiarian, and with competent knowledge of his subject, which appeared in No. 3 of that Review, published in March 1834. Also to my long-tried, worthy _Friend--George Neighbour--it is gratifying to me to have this opportunity of offering my sincere thanks for his valuable services in my behalf;--and to the conductors of those excellent and useful institutions--the National Gallery of Practical Science, Adelaide Street,--and the Museum of National Manufactures, Leicester Square, London, I gratefully acknowledge myself to be under no slight obligations for the advantageous opportunities which I have there possessed of extending the knowledge of my system, and of exhibiting, year after year, to thousands of visitors, the products of my apiary.
With the view of making "The Humane Management of Honey-Bees" more interesting, the dialogue, which formed the introductory chapter in the first edition, has been withdrawn, and in its place have been substituted some valuable remarks of Dr. Birkbeck, Dr. Hancock, and Mr. Booth, respecting Bees, honey, wax, &c. of course _the first chapter is new;_ as is chapter X. giving an account of the apiary of the Most Noble the Marquess of Blandford, at Delabere Park, which can hardly fail of being interesting to every reader: it is principally from the able pen of Mr. Booth. Chapter XVIII. on Apiarian Societies, is new also. And, besides these three entire chapters, not short paragraphs merely, but whole pages of news matter have been introduced interspersed by my most respectedfriend--the Rev.T. Clark of Gedney-Hill, who has revised, corrected, and re-arranged the whole ; and who has not only bestowed much time and pains upon the improvement of my work, but in the kindest and most disinterested manner has, in super-intending this and the former edition through the press, actually travelled upwards of _eight hundred_ miles. The friendly performer of services so generous, so laborious, and so perseveringly attended to, without any stipulation for fee or reward, merits from mc, and has from mc, every expression of my gratitude, and, were it in my power, should have _one expression more_.
Preface after Preface may perhaps savour of pedanty ; or, if not, may require an apology : that apology the following preface will amply furnish.
Some things there are relating to almost every edition of a work that the author deems it to be his duty to say, and that he cannot say so appropriately anywhere as in a few prefactory pages. His hopes, his fears, his motives, objects, expectations, and, if it be not his first appearance before the public, in the character of an author, the treatment, encouragement, patronage he has experienced, are matters that come under this description. Now, _this little work_ having in the short space of four years passed through three editions, unscathed, and unattacked, save only by _an anonymousproser_ in a weekly periodical, who somewhat hypercritically commented upon certain passages--particularly upon the Introductory Chapter of the first edition, _after_ the publication of the second edition, in which the said chapter had been superseded by another, which, it was thought, would be more generally interesting; and which even Mr. or Mrs. Anonymous has not, as far as I know, ventured to assail, I cannot usher into the wide world this _fourth edition_ without expressing my thankfulness to the _real critics_ for their forbearance hitherto. And though I still feel conscious that I have nothing to fear from fair, legitimate criticism, yet would not I rashly, or willingly let slip one word to evoke so mighty a power as that by _real critics_ wielded; and if the worthy editor hath dropped an expression * that may be construed into a political meaning, he has authorized me to state explicitly that he will esteem it an honour to bear all the blame that can be attached to it.
For the patronage I have all along received, and am still daily receiving, I must plead my inability to express my gratitude--I candidly acknowledge that I have not words to do it. From a list (far too long for insertion herein) of names of great respectability, 1 select and subjoin the following as a fair average specimen of the whole
The Marquess of Blandford
Lord Willoughby de Eresby
Lord Charles S. Churchill
Lord King
Timothy Abraham Curtis, Esq. Deputy
Governor of the Bank of England
Richard Ellison, Esq. Sudbrooke Holmes,
George Ridge, Esq. Morden Park
William Everard, Esq. Lynn Regis
The Honourable Brook Greville, Fulhau
Sir John Owen, Bart. Wales
R. Davies, Esq. Regent's Park
John Allcard, Esq. Stratford
Countess Galloway, Hanpstead
Mrs. Tced, CANDden-House, Kensington
Major Lardy, Eghan
John Dobinson, Esq. Eghan
William Forbes, Esq. Sleaford
William Pratt, Esq. Woodnanstone
Mr. Daniel Decastro, Wafield
Mr. John Sholl, New York, America
The Rev. George Kent, Scawthome
The Rev. Thomas Clark, Gedney-Hill
And upwards of one hundred Clergymen of the Church of England might be hereto added.
As an accompaniment to these good friends, and as showing the opinion -- may, as the highly valuable testimony of a gentleman, whose scientific attainments no one will be disposed to call in question, I have sincere pleasure in hereby making public the following kind, encouraging letter, with which I have been lately honoured by Dr. Birkbeck.
38, Finsbury Square,
April 16th, 1837.
My Dear Sir,
It gives no great pleasure to learn that the public require another impression of your truly useful, practical treatise on the management of our favourite, beautiful insect--the Honey-Bee. I am very anxious that your important opinions on this subject should be extensively circulated, being fully persuaded that they are sound, and that they tend to the comfort and accommodation of the little labourers, as well as to preserve in a state of perfection the delightful saccharine product of flowers, which they so industriously collect.
When the influence of temperature to which you have so ably directed our attention, is thoroughly understood, the introduction of collateral hives upon the plan recommended by you must become universal. The consequence as to the quantity and quality of honey produced, as you have given an ample opportunity of knowing, will be most important. The work in a hive from which it is notrequisite for the Bees to emigrate, proceeds, I am certain, much more effectually ; and the condition of the honey and the combs, in the section of the hives in which from the want of sufficient warmth, the Queen-Bee will not deposit her eggs, is rendered invariably superior to the honey and the wax where storing and breeding go on together. You have thus completely attained to the art of deriving from old stocks, honey of that degree of purity which was previously supposed to be derivable only from young swarms; and which on that account was distinguished by the appellation of virgin-honey.
In the arrangements to which I have adverted, you have likewise attained to the grand object of saving the life of your busy friends, when you wish to become possessed of the fruits of their toil. As you obtain by your plan along with this advantage, more honey, and honey of a much finer quality, humanity in this case appears to be, like honesty in every case, the best policy.
When you have time and opportunity to make observations on the subject, I hope you will endeavour to obtain some acquaintance with the history of Bees, as to the duration of life and the effects of age upon their habits and powers; which in ordinary lives it would be next to impossible to accomplish. There are many points in this purely matriarehal establishment--purely I say, because the Queen is the sole mother as well as governor of her subjects--which it is most desirable to investigate, and which until we had the advantage of your ingenious contriances for Bee-management, must have been attempted in vain. What we do know of the economy of these wonderful insects is very considerable and very interesting: what we do not know is, I suspect, neither less nor less interesting. To these matters I wish to keep your attention alive; at the same time that I am most especially desirous that you should in the first place extend with all your zeal and activity through every part of this Island and through Europe, a knowledge of the important, practical discoveries which you have already satisfactorily accomplished.
With ardent wishes for your future success, I remain, my dear Sir,
very faithfully yours,
George Birkbeck.
Were a stimulus requisite, _here_ is enough to encourage me to persevere in my apiarian pursuits,--enough to cheer me on to, and in, and after, the re-publication of the following work; with which great pains have been taken to render it more complete and more worthy of the public favour. Several, I trust, interesting additions will be found in its pages : and, if I have forborne to encumber it with a detail of a variety of conflicting suggestions that have reached me, respecting the improvement of my several hives, it is from no want of respect for those with whom they have severally originated. Some recommend that my boxes be made considerably larger; others maintain that they are too large already : some would vary one thing, some another: many would dispense altogether with the under-boxes,--many think them indispensably necessary;--more would, as they fancy, improve the ventilation, which, in the opinion of several of the most successful apiators upon my plan, is already sufficiently powerful, _provided it be properly attended to:_ some advise that the dividing tins be introduced and worked horizontally; others hold-that the present perpendicular mode of working then is safer and far better: some would enlarge the communications between the middle-box and the end boxes, and vary the direction of the bars and openings; others would narrow those communications and keep the bars and openings in their present horizontal form. Among these ingenious friends, for friends I esteem then all, it would be an act of injustice not to particularize Mr. Henry Taylor, of Highgate, who has been indefatigable in his endeavours to effect improvements. His hints have not been thrown away upon me; and I thus publicly thank him for the interest he has taken in my behalf. But, until I have satisfactory proof, that honey of purer quality (if that be possible) or of equal quality and in greater quantity, has been procured from some of the _improved_lives,than has every yetbeen procured from mine, I must respectfully decline their adoption, and adhere to my own _as they are._ Into Scotland and Ireland; into France and Spain; into Germany (where my book has been translated); into America, where (at New York) I have an active and intelligent agent for the sale of both books and hives in the Mr. John Sholl already mentioned; and even into Oude, in the East Indies, my book and my hives have already found their way: so that Dr. Birkbeck's wish is in a fair way to be realized. In short--it is, as it long has been, the study of my life to diffuse and to inculerate the knowledge of _an improved and humane system of Bee-management;_ and as respects the contents of this little work, I would, in the thousandth time quoted words of the Roman Poet, say to every reader--
Si quid novisti rectius istis,
Candidus imperti: si non his utere incum.
Gedney-Hill, December 26, 1815.
## Chapter 1 Introductory matters.
The object of the generality of persons who keep Bees, is--profit : and that profit might be indefinitely augmented were Bees properly managed, and their lives preserved--were the still extensively-practised, and cruel system of destroying Bees in order to get their honey, superseded by a conservative one. Some few there may be in the higher ranks of life, who cultivate Bees from motives of curiosity -- for the gratification of witnessing and examining the formation and progress of their ingenious and most beautiful works, and with a view to study the instinct, habits, propensities, peculiarities, or, in one word, the nature of these wonderful, little insects, in order to improve their condition, and to gain additional knowledge respecting their natural history, hitherto, it must be confessed, enveloped in much uncertainty, and very imperfectly understood. To this class of Bee-masters and _Bee-friends_ the system of management to be explained in the following pages, will, it is hoped, unfold discoveries and imparti facilities and improvements hitherto unknown in ajarian science. And they, whose sole object in keeping Bees is _profit_, may derive incalculable advantage from conforming to the mode of management, and strictly attending to the _practical directions_ hereinafter to be detailed : because as their profits are expected to arise principally from honey and wax, it evidently must be for their interest to know _hove_ to obtain those valuable Bee-productions in their purest state and in the greatest quantity. The quantity obtained in a good honey-year (viz. 1826) from awell-stocked and exceedingly prosperous colony was so considerable, and so far beyond anything ever realized from a common straw-hive colony, that my statements respecting it have been doubted by some, and totally discerdited by others,1 unacquainted with, or prejudated against, my (I trust I may say) _improved_ system of Bee-management. With respect to the purity of the honey taken according to my plan, and the general properties and medical virtues, and, of course, _value of honey when pure,_ I have much pleasure in being enabled to submit to the reader the opinions of the late Dr. Birkbeck, of Mr. Abraham Booth, Lecturer on Chemistry, and of the late Dr. Hancock ; because, as eminently scientific men, their opinions may safely be considered as unimpeachable authority on this subject, viz. the uses and medical virtues of _pure honey_.
Footnote 1: In the foremost rank of these doubters and disbelievers may be placed Dr. Edward Bevan, who has published a Work on Bees ; and of whom something more will be said by and by.=E\({}_{
m D}\).
In some observations on the effect of the tcpareature of Bee-hives on the quality of honey, published in a scientific journal, Mr. Booth observes--"notwithstanding the adequate justice which has been done to Mr.Nutt's improved and admirable system of Bee-management, there is one point which does not appear to have elicited much attention--the superiority in quality both of the honey and the wax. It does not appear to me that the whole of this superiority consists in freedom from extraneous animal or vegetable matters, a point of very great importance, however, as its dietetic purposes are concerned; but that it greatly depends upon the modified degree of temperature at which the Bees effect their labours, and which is insufficient to produce any chemical changes in the constitution of these substances; whereas under the old system, the continued high temperature of the live is sufficient to induce those changes which impart the colour that so materially deteriorates the quality as well as the value of the products. _From Mr. Nutl's hives we obtain pure honey, as it is actually secreted by the Bee,_ which cannot be ensured by any other mode of management."
To my late, lamented friend and steady patron, Dr. Birkbeck, whose uniform liberality and kindness, from the infancy of my pursuits, I have reason to appreciate, I am indebted for introducing this subject in a Lecture * at the London Institution, Moorfields, on the application of the oxy-hydrogen light to illustrate the economy and structure of the insect world. In the course of his observations, on referingto the tongue of the Bee, the learned Doctor made copious allusions to my system, and the advantages which would in his view result from its general extension. He observed that "'so small is the supply that we derive from the labours of Bees in this country, that the production of wax does not even more than equal its consumption in the simple article of lip-salve. Under this improved system, we may however hope that the advantages of Beeenangement may be more generally diffused throughout the kingdom,--that Bee-hives will be multiplied, and that the choicest flowers of the field and forest will no longer 'waste their sweetness in the desert air.' In a dietetic point of view, it is of great importance that a saccharine, secreted by one of the most curious processes of nature, should be substituted for one produced by the most imperfect and complicated process of art, whilst the more salutary properties of the former would recommend it as far more eligible for use. He could not but hope that in this view the system would soon receive that extension in practice to which its merits fitted it.""Some very important observations on honey, in a medical point of view, are those which were contained in a paper written by my late very learned and highly valued friend, Dr. Hancock, and read before the Medico-Botanical Society at their sitting November 26th, 1833.*
An abstract of this important paper + I shall communicate for the information of my readers.
**"** The great objects which recommend Mr. Nutt's plan, consist in the great improvement in quality and augmentation of honey produced, and that without destroying the Bees--a discovery equally creditable to Mr. Nutt, as a man of benevolent mind, and to his industry and indefatigable research.
which I cannot suffer to pass unnoticed. When a boy, he was accustomed to cover his hand with honey, and go to the front of one of the lives in his father's garden. His hand was soon covered by the Bees, banqueting on the proffered sweets, and the whole of it was speedily removed. The Bees appeared to recognize the learned Doctor ever afterwards when he appeared in the garden, his hand being always surrounded by them in expectation of there finding their accustomed boon.
* For a copy of the first edition of this work, with specimens of honey, &c. the author received the thanks of the Society; and he has since been honoured with a diploma, which constitutes him a corresponding member thereof.
* An abstract of the paper was published in the Lancet and several other journals.