November, 1918 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



655 



same bottle, however, had a wide slot, by 

 blowing into one side of the slot the smoke 

 would be easily forced out of the other side. 



A colony of bees in a hive is a good deal 

 like a living-room with a stove in it. Sup- 

 pose we should give that living-room an 

 opening, on a level with the floor, on one 

 side, the opening to be in proportion to the 

 size of the regular ojiening that is used in 

 the hive where bees are being wintered out- 

 doors. If the living-room were 16 x 20, and 

 9 feet high (the proportions of a beehive), 

 the opening in the bottom, to be of the 

 same proportion as that in the hive, would 

 be somewhere about 8 feet long by 4 or 5 

 inches deep. On a cold winter day the cold 

 air could easily blow into this room, but 

 there could be no interchange of air unless 

 the (ipld air went into one side of the 

 opening and the warm air out at the other 

 side. If there were no other openings, that 

 is precisely what it would do. If we were 

 in that room we would have to build a pret- 

 ty good fire in the stove, if it were a cold 

 day outside, to make the room at all livable, 

 and in order to get warm we would have to 

 get as near the ceiling as possible or close 

 to the stove. In a hive bees go up to the 

 top or generate enough heat to start breed- 

 ing. Now suppose that, instead of making 

 a long slot in- the bottom of the room as 

 first proposed, we make a hole 4 or 5 inches 

 in diameter. It is perfectly obvious that the 

 cold air could not come in at that hole near- 

 ly as easily as it could come in thru the slot. 



In modern apiculture we have compelled 

 our bees to winter in a relatively shallow 

 room — in many cases with a wide slot clear 

 across the end of that room, and in other 

 cases with the slot narrowed down to a lit- 

 tle less than half the width of that room. 

 It is perfectly obvious that the floor of that 



room, or the hive, is bound to be cold. The 

 bees are, therefore, compelled to get direct- 

 ly over the opening in the front to get away 

 from the draft. This is exactly what they 

 do in nine cases out of ten. 



The plan that Dr. Phillips is urging for a 

 winter bee entrance is a circular opening 

 with a large amount of packing, and then 

 making the room for the bees twice as deep 

 by using two stories. Two things are ac- 

 complished: The upper part of that room 

 is warm, and that is where the bees will be 

 mainly during the coldest part of the winter 

 if their stores are there; and, second, the 

 change of air is so gradual that the warmth 

 from the bees is enough to keep the interior 

 so they will not suffer from cold. 



The Demuth plan of wintering carries out 

 precisely the same idea on a smaller scale, and 

 it is exactly adaptable to a smaller colony 

 with a lesser amount of stores. In fact, the 

 Demuth inner case is more nearly ideal so 

 far as shape is concerned than the two-story 

 Langstroth hive, which is oblong, and, un- 

 less the colony is very large, the bees cannot 

 fill it up. 



I am giving the argument as it was given 

 to me by Mr. Demuth, who has used the one- 

 hole entrance for years with the greatest 

 of success. Dr. Phillips recommends it, and 

 proved to me that it works successfully 

 both in Washington and at Painesville, O. 

 This past summer I ran across a number 

 of beekeepers who have been using holes 

 instead of slots for winter entrances. B. F. 

 Kindig, State Apiarist of Michigan, has 

 been using a one-hole entrance for a number 

 of years. He discovered its value acciden- 

 tally. As a beginner, one fall he made up 

 his mind to put paper wrappings around all 

 his hives, as he saw that plan mentioned in 

 the bee journals. To keep the bees from 



TOP VIEW 



SIDE VIEW 

 COVER 



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Figs. 6, 7, and 8. — These show the scheme of packing where a Langstroth hive, containing 10 frames, is 

 stood on end. • In this case the regular hive constitutes the inner case. It is then necessary to use a spe- 

 cially constructed outer case to surround the four hives. The method of providing the entrance is shown 

 in Fig. 6. This requires that the honey-board on the front he shoved up so as to leave an opening. A honey- 

 board between 1 and 3 and between 3 and 4 should be shown in Fig. 6. This arrangement changes a reg- 

 ular Langstroth hive that is relatively shallow into a deep one for winter. It also makes it po.ssible to use 

 a smaller winter case than the one shown in Fig. 1. Top view looking down is shown in Fig. 6. Side view 

 is shown in Fig. 7. The scheme shown in Figs. 2, 3, 4, and 5 will be cheaper than that shown in 6 and 7. 



