February, '21] merrill: winter protection 113 



when the fact is taken into consideration that during the fall and the 

 spring of the previous year this colony gained 24S44 bees, and this j^ear 

 it onl}- gained 3700, it can be seen that something was radically wrong. 

 A clue to this condition is found in the fact that the one-story unpacked 

 hive had five frames of brood, while the packed colony had only three. 

 This would account for the weakened condition of the hive. It is a 

 well known fact that when the hone\' flow stops, most queens cease 

 brood-rearing, or at least let up in the number of eggs deposited. From 

 the results obtained this }'ear, we see that a very similar condition is 

 brought about in the hive Avhen the stores are becoming exhausted. 

 The queen slows up in her egg-laying to such an extent as to greatly 

 weaken the colony, yet not enough but what it will appear to the casual 

 obser\'er to have wintered satisfactorily. If the hone\' flow should 

 begin early enough, this colon 3^ will then go ahead and develop into a 

 strong colony before the season is over. However, the opportunity of 

 gathering a large surplus that year has been lost, because the colony 

 would not be ready at the time the honey flow began. As an indication 

 of the amount of food that the bees consumed during the winter of 

 1919-1920, it might be stated that one colony between October 4th and 

 May 19th consiuned 52-' 4 pounds of honey, six pounds of sugar, and two 

 Langstroth frames partially filled with hone}'. When the difi^erence 

 between the packed hives and the unpacked hives is taken into considera- 

 tion for the first two years, then it would be a mere matter of arithmeti- 

 cal computation to obtain the number of bees that would have been in 

 the packed colonies this year had they been as well provided with stores 

 as the unpacked hives. 



Some valuable lessons ma)' be drawn from the results obtained in the 

 spring weighings, among which are: (1) When a colony has insufficient 

 stores, even though it may appear to winter well, it will not be up to its 

 full strength at the beginning of the honey flow, owing to the fact that 

 the queen ceases brood-rearing when stores in the hives are becoming 

 scarce; (2) it emphasizes the fact that although packing is very valuable, 

 too much emphasis should not be placed on this feature alone, and (3) 

 the windbreak was again found to make a great difference in the ntmiber 

 of bees in each colony at the beginning of the honey flow, but, as before, 

 this result was not as noticeable in the packed hives as in the unpacked 

 hives. 



When considering the question of wintering bees, too much emphasis 

 should not be placed on any one feature alone. We know that we must 

 have a large number of young bees ; that we must have plenty of stores, 

 and also that if we can give our bees the added value of a windbreak 

 and winter protection, it will well repay us, but no beekeeper should 



