Dear Sir

I cut from the Times of Thursday last your letter to the Gardener’s Chronicle respecting bees and Holly berries, in order to shew it to a friend of mine M^r. Edward Walpole who is an extensive bee-keeper at Ashford in the C^o. Wicklow—¹

He says that he has no doubt of the correctness of your explanation and attributes the scarcity of bees solely to the fact that the extreme prolongation of the harsh weather last spring delayed the commencement of the bees operations— according to his recollection his bees did not, except a few stragglers, leave their hives till near the first of May after the hollies were out of flower or at least passing out of flower—

This much at all events w^d. seem certain—that the weather up to the end of April was extremely harsh, and that the bees in consequence were so unprecedentedly late in commencing their season’s work as to cause quite a consternation amongst bee-keepers—

It occurs to me that even if the holly were not out of flower—as I hardly think it w^d. be in the early part of May when the bees fairly commenced working—it might be that beginning so late as May the hollies might have had to meet a much greater amount of competition for the bees’ custom than would have been the case had the bees commenced at the usual time— besides that the absolute number of bees must have been much less than usual in May—as of course the production of young bees w^d. depend on the supply of provisions—

Excuse my thus intruding on you—but I thought, as you say in your letter as pub^d. in the Times that you do not know what caused the rarity of bees—you w^d. possibly not object to receive even so slight a contribution to your collection of facts.

The scarcity of holly-berries has been quite as striking in this neighbourhood as elsewhere—

I remain very respectfully | Yours | Fred^c. W. Pim