>72 



August, 1913 



American "B^ctJonrn^^ 



long. In my locality there is not much 

 danger of being caught before the mid- 

 dle of December ; but 1 never care to 

 take chances after Nov. lo, and the first 

 flight they get after that, in they go. If 

 a warm day comes soon after they are 

 in cellar, it doesn't worry me. I had 

 rather be caught that way than the 

 other way. 



TEMPER.\TI_-R1-; OF CELLAR. 



The first difficulty met in attempting 

 to have a bee-cellar of right tempera- 

 ture lies in the thermometers. Examine 

 a lot of ordinary thermometers for 

 sale in a store, and you will find them 

 varying through quite a number of de- 

 grees. Not all can be right. Not long 

 ago Dr. Phillips came along with a 

 thermometer of realiability, and I found 

 upon comparison that the thermome- 

 ter in my cellar registered 5 or li de- 

 grees too high. It was a rickety old 

 affair whose health had not been im- 

 proved by a fall which had displaced 

 the glass tube. I adjusted the tube to 

 agree with his, and was glad to find 

 that two other thermometers were all 

 right. 



We are told that somewhere about 50 

 degrees in the middle of the cluster is 

 the point at which bees are most nearly 

 dormant, and that 45 degrees is the 

 favorable temperature for the surround- 

 ing air. So with a reliable thermome- 

 ter, the beginner may think he has no 

 difficult problem. But he will find diffi- 

 culties. If he does not know for cer- 

 tain whether his thermometer is reli- 

 able, then a safe advice is: " Find out 

 at what point the bees are most quiet 

 in your cellar by your thermometer, 

 and then try to keep your cellar at that 

 temperature." Safe advice to give, but 

 not so easy to follow. 



In the first place it is not so easy as 

 might be imagined to decide when bees 

 are most quiet. There is no way of 

 measuring the degree of quietness. 

 Stand in the bee-room today and listen 

 to the murmur of the bees. Then stand 

 in the same place tomorrow and listen. 

 You can hear the murmur all right, but 

 can you remember the noise of the pre- 

 vious 24 hours clearly enough to say 

 whether it was greater or less, unless 

 the difference be very great? Another 

 trouble, especially in a very windy coun- 

 try, comes from the noise made by the 

 wind outdoors. It does not take much 

 of a wind outdoors to drown out quite 

 a murmur in the cellar. So it is hard 

 to know whether the noise you hear is 

 made by the bees or the outdoor wind. 



Another trouble is that the tempera- 

 ture is not the same in all parts of the 

 room. It is considerably colder at the 

 floor than at the top of the room. 



One might think that the ideal would 

 be to have the bees in a cellar so quiet 

 that one could never heara sound from 

 them. I never had that experience. 

 There is always at least a low murmur 

 like the sound of a gentle breezeamong 

 pine trees. Latterly I am inclined to 

 the opinion that a continued silence, 

 with 50 or more colonies in a cellar, is 

 not only unattainable but undesirable. 



An account of some observations 



Another View of the I'.xhibits at Amherst.-- See page 267 



may not be without interest. Last win- 

 ter there were in my cellar 'jy colonies 

 piled 4 high. As the difference of tem- 

 perature between the bottom and the 

 top hives amounts to several degrees, 

 I thought I could make some compari- 

 son that would be helpful. March 28, 

 at noon, the cellar door having been 

 open all forenoon, the temperature at 

 the bottom of a pile near the center of 

 the room was 43 degrees, and on top of 

 the pile 48. (That 5 degrees difference 

 was a little more than the ditTerence 

 between the two hives, as the upper 

 thermometer was on the top of the up- 

 per hive, and the lower thermometer 

 should have been on the top of the 

 lower hive. But that was not conven- 

 ient. ) I might classify the colonies 

 into 4 kinds : Those that were entirely 

 silent, from which I could hear no 

 sound until I had blown in the en- 

 trance; second, those from which I 

 could hear a low murmur by listening 

 carefully; third, those whose murmur 

 could be plainly heard ; and fourth, 

 those that might be called noisy. Here 

 is the result : 



Bottom hives: ?> silent; !l low; 9 

 murmur ; 2 noisy. 



Top hives: 4 silent; low; mur- 

 mur ; 1 noisy. 



So far as that showed anything, it 

 showed there was not much diff^erence 

 between the upper tier and th" lower, 

 which implies that the best point of 

 temperature would be somewhere be- 

 tween 43 and 48, possibly the tradi- 

 tional 45 degrees. 



I then closed the door so as to allow 

 the cellar to become warmer. At G :30 

 p.m. it was 4(1 degrees at the bottom of 

 the pile and 53 at the top. It seems a 

 bit strange that there should be a dif- 

 ference of 7 degrees between bottom 

 and top in the evening, and only 5 de- 

 grees at noon. My readings may not 

 have been made with utmost accuracy; 



certainly they were not made with the 

 greatest exactness. At any rate, here 

 was the result : 



Bottom hives: 2 silent; 12 low; 6 

 murmur ; 3 noisy. 



Top hives: silent; 6 low; 11 mur- 

 mur ; IJ noisy. 



That seems to indicate that bees are 

 more quiet at 46 degrees than at 53, 

 and leaves it still possible that the tra- 

 ditional 45 degrees is all right. But I 

 don't count that there is anything so 

 very reliable in these observations, so 

 far as they go. My ear is sufficiently 

 musical so that I can measure relative 

 pitch ; but I haven't much confidence 

 in my ability to measure relative 

 volume. 



A factor should be mentioned that 

 may make a diflference. Years ago we 

 were told that at intervals bees had 

 spells of waking up, and shifting their 

 position so as to be nearer the source 

 of supplies. Without making any spe- 

 cial observations regarding the matter, 

 I had become skeptical about it, and 

 inclined to believe it one of those tra- 

 ditions that pass current in beedom be- 

 cause no one has taken the pains to 

 dispute them. 



But I am not so sure about it. In 

 the observations at noon, just men- 

 tioned, there were 2 noisy colonies. It 

 so happened that 1 remembered w'here 

 they were, and in the evening there 

 were no noisy ones in the vicinity. 

 There were, however, 3 noisy ones in 

 the lower tier in the evening, 3 that 

 had not been noisy at noon. More- 

 over, while the lower tier was in gen- 

 eral more quiet than at noon, there 

 were more noisy ones in it in the eve- 

 ning than at noon, and no colony was 

 noisy both noon and evening. Some 

 one may say, "But didn't you stir up 

 the bees so as to make them noisy ?" I 

 don't think so. I simply moved quietly 

 from one hive to another, holding my 



30 MILLION * 100000 10 THE ANNUAL OUTPUT OF iT^^'^^^^^r^^^'^'^^^^-^^'^.X^^^r. 



N S D HIVES 10 THE LEWIS FACTORY U. B. Le«is Compaay. Waterto«n. Wis. 



SECTIOI 



