ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATIOX. 167 



that got ahead, and these packed bees, when they got started in May 

 on the fruit bloom, they built up and they were all ready for honey 

 flow by the middle of June, and if the honey flow did not begin until 

 say the 25th of June, they went back, and it was the medium colonies 

 that were just coming up at that time that produced the crops of 

 honey. 



A Member. — Did that last colony have plenty of honey? 



Mr. Foster. — Yes, they had stored enough. 



Dr. Phillips.^I would like to ask Mr. Foster what kind of 

 packing material he used? 



Mr. Foster. — We used oat chaff. 



Dr. Phillips. — Fine or coarse? 



Mr. Foster. — It was as fine as we could get. 



Dr. Phillips. — Anything like straw or any coarse material 

 is usually very inefficient for sealing material. And if you put on 

 wheat straw, for instance, you would hardly gain the benefit from it 

 that you would from three or four inches of sawdust. 



Mr. Foster. — We had two or three out of fifty that we examined 

 that had begun breeding, and those colonies — Well, Mr. Bartholemew 

 told me when he first looked at them he thought they might possibly 

 die. None of them died, but they were weakened from that breeding, 

 which none of the others did. ' 



Dr. Phillips. — Do you mean they bred in the winter time? 



Mr. Foster. — They began breeding, yes, in January. I think 

 they were put in a little too late, I think that is the explanation of 

 that, and they were distrubed more, they were stirred up a good deal 

 in getting them into the packing. That was the only way we had of 

 explaining why they began breeding. 



Dr. Phillips. — What time did you pack most of them? 



Mr. Foster. — The latter part of November. 



Dr. Phillips. — About two months late, then? 



Mr. Foster. — Well, we did not get our honey off until the latter 

 part of October. 



Dr. Phillips. — Mr. Chairman, I would Uke to say one word. 

 I did not get to hear all that Mr. Foster said about his experiments 

 in this, so that I can't very well discuss that, but I would Uke to mention 

 something about what Mr. Kraus has said about the upper ventila- 

 tion feature. I have been conducting some experiments along that 

 line. Now the way we test our colonies, watch them during the winter 

 time, is to put a chemical thermometer in this entrance, we use a one- 

 hole entrance, and we can just slip one of those long glass thermometers 

 right into that. Now if the temperature of that hive at the bottom 

 board shows in the neighborhood of fifty degrees, we consider that 

 the wintering is fine, that the temperature around the bees will 

 probably be fifty or more, nearly the critical temperature of 57, and 

 where we can get the bees at that temperature we expect a good win- 

 tering. Wherever it drops below that we expect condensation of 

 moisture and bad conditions generally. Now, the condensation of 

 moisture we use as a symptom as to whether or not the bees are ade- 

 quately packed. Wherever we find insufficient packing we find 

 condensed moisture. Wherever we find abundance of packing we 



