IN A CITY BEE-HIVE.
[To THE EDITOR or am "Brzaszos."] Bensusan, whose article in last week's Spectator I read with much interest, seems to have been unfortunate with -his bees.- My observation hive, also in the Temple, was constantly prosperous from May till August, when I cell:Loved it to the country, as Mr. Bensusan did. In
May the bees, which I had hoped would cover two frames, covered only one, deserting some brood on one of the others. But the queen 'laid every day and almost all the day; the bees made quite a lot of new comb, and worked out of doors even more assiduously than at the feeding-bottle. Wisely, I think, they ignored the Temple gardens, and when the wild flowers were in bloom on the Aldwych vacant building site in the Strand, they worked willow-herb, clover, black mustard, charlock, and other blossoms for all they were worth. You could tell where they had been by the colours of the pollen they brought home.
My hive is home-made, and the spacing was a trifle incorrect. The bees had to build a comb to bridge a space of nearly an inch between two combs before the queen could get up. When she did, she laid it full of eggs in about three days early in July, and this comb was a picture to delight a. bee-keeper when I took the colony down to the country in the first week of August. By that time they had begun a queen cell, and I was sorry to have to end the summer's experiment at so interesting a stage. I regard my Temple bees as a success, and shall try them again.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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