52 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



and acted upon it would drive cellar win- 

 tering far into the Northwest. Mr. Root 

 makes the further assertion that: "When 

 the temperature out doors is above freez- 

 ing it is very difficult to keep the bees 

 inside (\vi\Gt.'" Whether that is true or 

 not depends, of course, largely on the 

 character of the cellar containing them. 

 Though the temperature here has been 

 above the freezing point outside a good 

 share of the time since I put my bees in- 

 to the cellar in November, I have had no 

 difficulty at all — not so much as to cause 

 me to open a door to let in cool night air 

 — a thing which I may find it expedient 

 to do as the time for taking the bees out 

 of the cellar draws near. A cellar to be 

 desirable must be so protected from out- 

 side changes of temperature by being put 

 deep enough into the earth so as not to 

 be easily effected by them. 



AMOUNT OF SUPERANNUATED BEES THAT 

 DIE IN WINTER. 

 Upon the same page Mr. Root, in an- 

 swer to another question, says: "With 

 the best winter repository that has ever 

 been constructed bees will fly out on the 

 floor and die, and, if they are not swept 

 up, 75 or loo colonies in a cellar lox lo 

 may furnish dead bees before spring suf- 

 ficient to cover the floor an inch or two 

 in depth. These are probably the super- 

 annuated bees. " Look at it from what- 

 ever point of view I may I am at a loss to 

 account for the making of such a state- 

 ment. I fear it may be, to many, a cry 

 of safety, when there is no safety. A little 

 calculation will show that one inch in 

 depth on the space specified would amount 

 to somewhere in the neighborhood of 209 

 quarts, and two inches to about 418 quarts; 

 so that Mr. Root's statement is equiva- 

 lent to saying that colonies of bees in a 

 cellar may lose anywhere from 2yi to 5 

 quarts of superannuated bees a colony 

 during the winter. It would require, one 

 would think, pretty active winter breed- 

 ing to replace so much loss. But I pre- 

 fer to suppose the facts have been exag- 

 gerated. In my own cellar the dead bees 



seldom come anywhere near covering the 

 floor from sight, and about a pint to the 

 colony would be a fair average loss. The 

 only winter in which the dead bees ap- 

 proached an inch in depth, I lost a large 

 percentage of my colonies; and what were 

 left were not of much value. 



Lapeer, Mich., Jan. 30, 1900. 



EDITORIAL 



fferings. 



The Canadian Bee Journal comes 

 out with new type, new paper and a new 

 cover. Our bee journals are becoming a 

 delight tpographically. 



Daniel WuRTH, formerly of Falmouth, 

 Ind., has moved to Merigold, Miss., tak- 

 ing with him So colonies of Golden Ital- 

 ian bees, which he will use the coming 

 season in the rearing of queens. 



«H«^*«rf«*^ll^ 



H. Rieno\v& Son, of Praire duChien, 

 Wis., write that their advertisement in 

 the December Review was a good thing 

 for them. It has brought lots of corres- 

 pondence; and some orders are coming in 

 as a result. They say that if they get orders 

 from half of those with whom they are 

 in correspondence, they will be obliged 

 to run their little factory night and day. 



1i»Xt»li^>M»UF»» 



Home-Made Buzz-vS.wvs can often be 

 made to do excellent work. I have seen 

 several, including two that I made my- 

 self, that did about as good work as any 

 foot power saw could do. Mr.C. H. 

 Pierce, of Wisconsin, describes, in Glean- 

 ings, the manner in which he rigged up 

 an old bicycle so that it could be used in 

 running a saw. The back wheel is used 

 for a band-wheel and gives the saw a 

 speed of about 3500 revolutions a minute. 



