18113 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



9 



use of his feet he flew at the servant, kicking 

 and biting him. and pulling his hair, paying no 

 attention to his pitiful outcries, saying that he 

 could not help the wheel from coming off. 



The hated institution! If possibUs its curses 

 rested more heavily upon the whites than the 

 blacks; and it is often difficult for me to realize 

 that I have lived to see it overthrown. 



On one of her visits to her sister, my mother 

 was told that an old woman who had been her 

 nurse had walked a long distance, and was 

 waiting to see her. As soon as she caught sight 

 of my mother, crying out, "OMiss Rebekah! 

 O Miss Rebekah!" she folded her in her arms, 

 and wept over her as though she had been her 

 own child. When this scene was over, she 

 learned that an old colored waiter, who had 

 also walked a long distance, was waiting in the 

 kitchen to see her. After an exchange of af- 

 fectionate greetin5;s, he said, "Miss Rebekah. 

 don't you remember how Jim used to open 

 oysters for you, when you were a little girl ? " 

 "Oh! yes, Jim," replied my mother; "I re- 

 member it very well." Going to a table, over 

 which a neat napkin was spread, he lifted it 

 off, and there stood the oysters in their shells, 

 all ready to be opened, and the plate on which 

 they were to be eaten. "Now, Miss Rebekah, 

 you must please sit down at this table, just as 

 you did when you were a liotle girl, and let old 

 Jim open some oysters for you, before he dies." 

 My mother complied with his request, but her 

 tears fell so fast that she was able to choke 

 only a few down. 



Yes, there were masters and mistresses who 

 did all they knew how to do for their slaves, 

 and who, no doubt, would have set them at 

 liberty, at any sacrifice, if they could have been 

 made to see that this would better their con- 

 dition. L. L. Langstboth. 



Dayton. Ohio. 



Continued. 



WINTERING BEES UNDER SNOW. 



DOOLITTI.ES EXPERIENCE. 



A correspondent writes, saying: " By setting 

 my bees next to a fence which I have on the 

 west side of my bee-yard I can usually have 

 them covered with snow from one to five feet 

 deep. Will this be a good way to winter them, 

 and would you advise me to do this ?" 



This is a question which has been frequently 

 asked in the past, and, as a rule, the answer 

 has been, " Yes, let the snow drift over the bees 

 if it will; for, the more snow over the hives the 

 better." My experience has not been in accord 

 with this, however; but I have found that, if 

 the hives are covered two-thirds the way up 

 the brood-chamber, it is a great advantage; 

 but if the hives are covered two-thirds the way 

 up the cap or cover, or completely over, it is a 

 positive damage to the bees, and worse than no 

 snow at all. For several winters, when I first 

 began to keep bees I uniformly wintered them 

 in the cellar; and, not being as successful one 

 winter as I desired, I concluded to winter on 

 the summer stands the next winter, and, as the 

 snow fell, sweep it up around them. I did so; 

 and by December 10 the hives were covered 

 from sight, while the pyramids of snow all over 

 the yard made a very picturesque view which 

 was quite enchanting. At the end of a month 

 we had a thaw, when I looked at them and 

 found that the warmth from the bees had so 

 thawed the snow that a small dog or a cat could 

 easily go around between the hives and snow. 

 I was highly elated over the apparent success, 

 and concluded that was just the way to winter 

 bees. I found, however, that the bees were 



quite restless, and, upon raising the quilt, were 

 ready to fly out and perish on the snow, instead 

 of being quiet, as all good bees should be. As 

 the next day was fine they had a cleansing 

 flight, and all appeared well. We had little 

 snow the rest of the winter; and when the sea- 

 son fairly opened I found I had 29 colonies left 

 out of 52. This loss was attributed to the severe 

 cold during April and the fore part of May; 

 and I believed that, if I could have had snow to 

 cover them all winter, no loss would have oc- 

 curred. One thing I noticed, however: All the 

 hives I opened at the time of the thaw had 

 brood in from two to three combs, while in 

 April scarcely a bit of brood was to be found in 

 any hive. Of course, I reasoned that, had the 

 snow continued, brood-rearing would have been 

 kept up, and in the spring the hives would 

 have been teeming with thousands of young 

 bees instead of depopulated colonies, as I then 

 had. The next winter put an end to these vis- 

 ions, however, for this time we had snow to 

 keep them covered from December to April 10. 

 During the fore part of February there came a 

 warm day. so the bees flew finely, and upon 

 examination I found several hives that had 

 brood in four or five frames; while others, that 

 were not buried so deeply, had only a very little 

 brood in two frames. I noticed that the bees in 

 those hives which had the most brood were so 

 heavily loaded with feces that they were scarce- 

 ly able to fly, while those with but little brood 

 spotted the snow but very little compared with 

 the others. However, I figured that those hav- 

 ing brood in about 250 square inches of comb, 

 as some of the best had. would give fifty young 

 bees to the inch; and it was with a look of 

 wisdom that I told my neighbors that such a 

 colony would hatch out 12.500 bees in twenty-one 

 days, and that I expected a rousing colony by 

 spring. Cold weather, with more snow, came, 

 and held so until about the middle of March, 

 when we again had a day that the bees could fly. 

 The bees were all shoveled out, and I expected 

 to see plenty of these 12,500 young bees on the 

 wing: but upon going to these hives I was dis- 

 appointed beyond measure to find all the old 

 bees dead on the bottom-board, and those 

 young downy bees clustered closely together 

 where they had hatched, in the embrace of 

 death. Not only this, but the old bees had con- 

 sumed nearly all the honey in rearing these 

 bees, so I had nearly a total loss except the 

 combs. 



When the working season arrived I found I 

 was again reduced to 29 to start the season 

 with. The difficulty with me seems to be that, 

 as soon as the hives are covered with snow, the 

 warmth of the ground, combined with the 

 warmth of the bees, makes it so warm that the 

 bees become uneasy, go to breeding, consume 

 large quantities of honey, thus distending their 

 bodies and using up their vitality, causing them 

 to die of old age during February. March, and 

 April, while the young bees have not the usual 

 strength and vitality of bees hatched in Sep- 

 tember and October to withstand the rigors of 

 winter, so spring dwindling and death are the 

 result. I find that what is true of myself is also 

 true with nearly or quite every bee-keeper in 

 Central New York. 



I have given the particulars in the above, as 

 it best describes all the cases which I have 

 known where bees were drifted under snow for 

 any length of time. One winter I had snow ten 

 feet deep over a part of the bees, caused by a 

 deep snow and a peculiar wind drifting it over 

 a knoll. I tried as far as possible to keep the 

 front sides shoveled clear of all I could: but I 

 completely lost track of ten colonies: and of 

 those ten, not one was living the first of May. 



From the above experience, during fifteen 



