Aiisusf, l!ii:i. 



271 



American Hee Journal 



it 



Apiarv House of G. W. Perry. 



rtew northwest. I followed them in 

 the same manner about one third of a 

 mile into the attic of a farm house, on 

 the bank of the Farmington River. 

 They were Bying around the end of 

 a mountain rather than over it, and out 

 of a straight line at least one-third of 

 a mile. 



Another time I started some bees on 

 the east side of a high, steep rocky 

 blufif. They flew north about 200 rods, 

 then turned to the leftabout 20 de- 

 grees to where the blutt was not half 

 so high. Here they made another turn 

 to the left down through an open pas- 

 ture into some hives in a man's back- 

 yard. 



Bees, in crossing from one mountain 

 to another, will go down into the val- 

 ley to cross, I believe, on account of 

 the wind they encounter so high up. 

 My obervations lead nie to think that 

 bees do not like to get too far from 

 earth. Bees foraging at one end of a 

 valley with their home at the other, if 

 the valley is narrow with mountains on 

 either side, will keep in line with the 

 valley, however crooked. Do bees fly 

 in a straight line ? In a level, open 

 country, on a still day, they fly practi- 

 cally straight, but we need to give the 

 ^radically a good wide margin. 



I will say in conclusion to those 

 who believe bees fly in a straight line 

 only, that the test of the pudding is in 

 the eating, and if they will equip them- 

 selves with a bee hunter's box, a field 

 glass, a pocket compass, and " hike " 

 for a country that is all chopped up 

 with mountains, hills, valleys, rivers, 

 brooks and timber, and hunt bees, they 

 will get a lot of pleasure, some sur- 

 prises, some knowledge, no boodle, 

 and they may change their mind. For 

 the love of our little friends, should 

 you find their home in some tree, be- 

 fore you rob them, unless you can give 

 them another home, step to one side 

 and talk to yourself. If you are a lover 

 of Nature, and of the music of the 



millions of voices that sing the praise 

 of that Deity, you will have an outing 

 that is hard to beat, and have a better 

 knowledge of the flight of bees than 

 you will get in a long time by going 

 into a level open lot and sitting on the 

 fence to hear and see a few bees fly 

 past. 



Litchfield, Conn. 



Some Things About Cellar- 

 Wintering 



BV PR. C. C. MILLER. 



FROM a source not lightly to be 

 refused comes a request that I 

 should tell all I know about cel- 

 lar-wintering. The task might 

 not be a very heavy one if I 

 should confine myself strictly to what 1 

 really know. Josh Billings says : 

 "What's the use of knowin' so much, 

 when so much that we know ain't so ?" 

 And too often some of the things we 

 think we know we afterward find " ain't 

 so." There are things I thought I 

 knew a few years ago that I don't feel 

 so sure about now. 



CHOOSING BETWEEN OUTDOOR WINTERING 

 AND CELL.\RING. 



One of the first things to decide 

 about wintering is whether it is better 

 to winter in cellar or outdoors. One 

 might think a degree of latitude should 

 be found, north of which all bees 

 should be cellared, and south of which 

 all should be wintered outdoors. But 

 it doesn't work out very clearly in that 

 way. Isothermal lines are not entirely 

 coincident with parallels of latitude. 

 Indeed it is not certain that isothermal 

 lines, or lines running through points 

 of equal temperature, can be at all de- 

 pended upon. 



I am located in northern Illinois, in 

 latitude 42 degrees, and I am pretty 

 sure that the cellar is better for mv 



bees than outdoors. But it does not 

 necessarily follow that a man a hun- 

 dred miles directly north of me should 

 winter his bees in a cellar. I am located 

 where winter winds are fierce, and 

 where they keep steadily on their job, 

 hours and hours at a time. And that 

 " hours and hours " is a matter of more 

 consequence than the fierceness of the 

 wind. The man 100 miles north of me 

 may have a much lower temperature, 

 but not afilicted with such winds, and 

 his bees may be all right outdoors. 



Up to 40 degrees of latitude it is safe 

 to say that outdoor wintering is the 

 better way, but when we get north of 

 that a little ways it begins to be a ques- 

 tion. The beginner may do well to 

 rely on the experience of older bee- 

 keepers. For myself, if the thing were 

 at all in the balance, I would lean 

 strongly toward outdoor wintering. If 

 there were no other reason, a strong 

 one is that one with an ordinary cellar 

 cannot go from home for a great many 

 days while his bees are in a cellar. I 

 may not actually enter the bee-room 

 for days, or even weeks, at a time, but 

 I must be on hand to open or shut 

 doors when there are material changes 

 in the weather. So I envy the man 

 who can leave his bees outside. 



TIME TO CELL.\R BEES. 



Just when is the right time to put 

 bees in cellar is largely a matter of 

 guessing. If one could know all about 

 the weather a few weeks in advance, it 

 would be an easy thing to lay down a 

 reliable rule. It can be given in a few 

 words: Cellar your bees the clay aflcr 

 lluy take their last Jlight before zrinter. 

 The guessing comes when you try to 

 decide whether the bees will have an- 

 other day when they can fly. I have 

 known it to happen that a good flight- 

 day came rather early in November, 

 and then no chance for another flight 

 until the following spring. Suppose 

 bees have a flight Nov. 20, and you cel- 

 lar them the next day. Then Nov. 30 

 comes another flight-day. You have 

 subjected your bees to 10 days' un- 

 necessary confinement. That's bad. 

 Then suppose the next year the bees fly 

 again Nov. 20. Remembering your e.x- 

 perience of the previous year, you wait 

 for them to fly 10 days later. 



But when Nov. 30 comes, the ther- 

 mometer is fooling around the neigh- 

 borhood of zero, and you take your 

 bees in without waiting longer. The 

 confinement to the hive begins just the 

 same in the 2 years, only in the first 

 case the first 10 days were spent in the 

 cellar, and in the second case outdoors. 

 In that 10 days outdoors the bees will 

 load their intestines very much more 

 than they would in the cellar. In other 

 words, leaving the bees out 10 days too 

 long will do more harm than taking 

 them in 10 days too soon. 



The chances are, however, that if you 

 wait until Nov.'^SO, and no flight comes 

 then, you will keep waiting and waiting 

 for a warm day, and if no such day 

 comes you will finally take in the bees 

 after they have been out many days too 



130 TiT^Ts FDR LEWIS BEEWARE 



Send for Annual Cntolofj; which will toll 

 you who is your nearest Distributer. 

 G, B. Lewis Company* Watertown- Wis, 



^ 



