290 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



ry a month or six weeks and then return 

 them to the cellar and keep the temperature, 

 as before, at 42" to 48°. While the bees are 

 out the cellar is thoroughly renovated, a stove 

 put in and hot fires kept there for several 

 days. 



There will be only a month or six weeks 

 for the bees in the cellar, now, and during 

 this time they cluster very closely. Large 

 colonies roll themselves up into little balls 

 and nuclei almost disappear, and you mut- 

 ter, on searching downward among the 

 combs, "just as I expected, nuclei ain't 

 worth the setting in ;" and were it not for 

 sweeping the cellar would not be worth the 

 setting out ; and as you watch the bees climb 

 the hive front and fill the air, (well wintered 

 bees, as soon as their heads appear at the en- 

 trance, start up the front of the hive on a 

 run and take wing as they run, poorly win- 

 tered ones try their wings on the alighting 

 board and often run off on the ground) 

 you think, "as the hive is now empty, I'll 

 look in and see what has been done here in 

 the way of brood rearing, or, indeed if there 

 is any queen at all." As you raise the quilt 

 hundreds rush out through your hands and 

 fingers and fly around your face and you ex- 

 claim, "why how is this," and look around 

 sharply to see if you are not examining a 

 regular full colony. 



Eight nuclei wintered thus came, through 

 surprisingly active and strong in bees, held 

 their own through the spring and came up 

 in time for the harvest, as I am told. I sold 

 them early in May. 



I have tried this method only three win- 

 ters. Last winter with 40 colonies. The 

 winter before with about one-half that num- 

 ber, and one other winter with four colonies. 

 If long experience and many colonies is 

 necessary to prove the method a good one, I 

 refer to Mr. Ira Barber, of DeKalb Junction, 

 N. Y., who has had abundant experience. 



I once built a frost proof cellar 2Gx38 feet 

 under a large building. Then another 8x:!0 

 feet in the center and entirely below the floor 

 of the first one and with a foot of sawdust 

 overhead. 



This cellar contained from 7.5 to 1.50 colo- 

 nies for four winters, during one of which 

 the temperature remained constantly be- 

 tween 48 and 44 degrees. 



Although I was enabled to winter the colo- 

 nies with little or no loss in it the bees never 

 had the staying qualities, either in number 

 or tenacity of life possessed by the bees win- 

 tered by the high temperature method. 



In winter bees should have as pure a place 

 as is needed by butter all the time and their 

 honey, hive and combs should have as dry a 

 place as is required for comb honey, at least 

 a part of the time ; and no cellar is so for 

 even a day. In Colorado were the dryest 

 cellars I ever saw and they do not require to 

 be walled, the earth in which they are built 

 holding itself. These cellars wintered comb 

 honey most wretchedly. 



There is as much hibernation in a tempera- 

 ture of 6.5 degrees as at any other tempera- 

 ture, and bees maintain the cluster just the 

 same. Eighty degrees and pure air is quieter 

 than 40° and impure air. If they get noisy, 

 always look to the purity of the air first as 

 the cause. One caution is to maintain ab- 

 solute darkness in the bee room. Next, after 

 light, stray bees will seek warmth. If there 

 is a stovepipe or radiator in the room they 

 will go to it, so I placed a hive close by the 

 pipe in one of my rooms to catch them. In 

 four or five days I noticed the colony about 

 half clustered around the end of the hive 

 nearest the pipe. I drew the hive away and 

 wound a strip of wire cloth around the pipe 

 and set a section of honey close by and the 

 bees soon all came out of the hive and clus- 

 tered on the wire cloth. The hive was taken 

 away entirely and the bees remained there in 

 a pile for eight weeks or more when they 

 were put in a hive and set out of doors. All 

 the combs or feed they got was a section of 

 honey placed down by them when needed. 

 They made a good record. 



Four colonies which wintered well and 

 were in this repository with the rest of my 

 colonies remained, together with four colo- 

 nies belonging to a neighbor, in the neigh- 

 bor's cellar from November 20th to February 

 7th. The temperature of his cellar was quite 

 low, little above freezing. None of his col- 

 onies lived until April 15th. They (his and 

 mine) were packed alike, fed alike, the hives 

 were alike and the colonies were alike so far 

 as I could see ; only the temperature of their 

 repositories being, for a time, different. My 

 colonies wintered flnely. I may say that 

 temperature or moisture or confinement do 

 not destroy bees, and I speak the exact 

 truth, yet a high temperature may increase 

 the circulation of air to carry away the moist- 

 ure which would otherwise rest upon and 

 sour the honey that would effect a rapid over- 

 loading of the intestines, bringing confine- 

 ment into a position the most dangerous. 



Hundreds of colonies which are enumer- 

 ated as wintered, are, really, only enabled to 



