^ 



WINTERING BEES. 247 



again to babyhood as it regards food, before the strength of man- 

 hood can be regained. Why baby-food for a starving or physically 

 weak man? Because it is the most nutritious. We all, as bee- 

 keepers, know the food of young bees differs as their age increases, 

 and that queens, during their baby days, are fed with the same 

 baby-food throughout. Why? I think this is something we have 

 yet to learn. What is this chyle food — this bee-milk fed to young 

 bees. What are its constituent parts ? Honey, pollen, water, semi- 

 digested by the nurse bees. This is fed to the young bees in a simi- 

 lar way, and for the same purpose, as young mammals are fed by 

 the dam, or, as St. Paul puts it, "fed by milk that they may grow 

 thereby." 



The Americans assert that the only food necessary to bring 

 bees through the winter is honey or sugar, and if pollen be ex- 

 cluded from the bill of fare, dysentery and other abdominal com- 

 plaints will not occur. I am not so sure of that. In the Old Land, 

 in the days of my youth, when I kept bees in the old straw skip — 

 when we used to smother a certain proportion of the stocks with 

 sulphur, leaving the rest for the next season's increase, I noticed 

 that the bees that came out in the warmer parts of the winter days 

 were those that were starving, and when these were fed on sugar, 

 as a rule, dysentery followed ; but the strong stocks that were left 

 with plenty of pollen and honey were the healthiest in the spring, 

 and gave the earliest swarms. All animals know by instinct the 

 most fitting food. Pollen to bees is nothing new. They know 

 their two principal foods, pollen and honey, and how to choose 

 the beneficial and eschew the deleterious. Bees consume honey to 

 produce heat and energy ; pollen to build vip the waste of nerve and 

 muscle. They know which to select by the dictates of Nature. So 

 in leaving the winter supply of honey see that there is propor- 

 tionately a sufficient supply of pollen. In this Colony, in winter 

 or summer, I have never lost bees by stai-vation, because I never 

 interfere with the food supply of the brood-chamber. Do not do 

 it ; there is nothing to be gained by it, but frequently a great loss. 

 Your bees will come out better in the spring; they will swarm 

 earlier, all else being equal; there will be less mortality. The old 

 and infirm will be sure to die, but the young will be healthy and 

 strong so as to commence the new seasons duties with vigour. 



The temperature: Bees can endure great exti-emes of tempera- 

 ture, even below freezing point. Francis Iluber immersed a swarm 

 of bees for three hours in water, and they revived. I once found 

 a gin-case of bees that had be.en brought down the river during a 



