September, 1916. 



297 



American Hee Jiournal 



FIG. 5.-THE BIG COVER IS FILLED WITH LEAVES AND PLACED ON HIVE 



This does not refer to Wyoming Mon- 

 tana or Idaho, where the winters are 

 either more severe or the atmosphere 

 not so dry as in Colorado. For Colo- 

 rado, Utah, Nevada. New Mexico, parts 

 of Wyoming and Montana, the winter- 

 ing problem cannot be helped by pack- 

 ing. Let us look to having young 

 queens, sufficient stores of best quality 

 and protected locations, with our hives 

 so placed that the combs and bees will 

 remain dry, and the winter loss will be 

 very slight. 



Colonies that have bred heavily 

 nearly all season, or those where the 

 queen has had the run of several ex- 



tracting chambers are almost sure to 

 perish unless requeened with young 

 queens in August or September. Such 

 a queen that has done excellent work 

 during a season rarely is superseded 

 and she is very apt to die in the fall or 

 winter. 



I have several rows of missing hives 

 in my apiaries that are mute testimonies 

 to the fact that these best colonies in 

 extracted honey production will not 

 requeen themselves where their queen 

 begins to fail. The bees may take her 

 slackening in egg laying to be but the 

 normal let up of the season. Such a 

 queen does not come back to fall 

 breedingand the colony perishes before 

 spring. 



The desired condition in the Rocky 

 Mountain country is to winter every 

 normal colony, and this is being done 

 by many beekeepers right along. We 

 do have unfavorable conditions, but 

 the exceptions prove the rule. Colo- 

 nies wintered in packs, double-walled 

 hives or in cellars, do not wint r so 

 well as those colonies left on the sum- 

 mer stands where the location is favor- 

 able and where the honey is of good 

 quality and the queen a young one. 



One of our troubles in wintering is 

 from inferior fall honey, and we can 

 get a good percentage of such honey 

 stored in shallow extracting combs 

 placed on the hives at the close of the 

 season. These may be removed during 

 the winter and replaced on the hives 

 again in the spring when the bees can 

 use it in breeding. 



Our winter losses largely occur from 

 easily remedied troubles. We do not 

 protect our hives from the winter 

 winds; we can so easily keep the hives 

 dry, but we neglect it. Our queens 

 appear to be all right until the colony 

 dies of queenlessness ; foulbrood is so 

 easily controlled that we wake up after 

 a colony has been robbed out; bees 

 need so much ventilation, and we let a 

 colony go a month or more in an out- 

 yard with no cover on it. Our out- 

 apiary fences need repairing, and cattle 



Fig. 8.- 



-Wire Used to Hold Outside 

 Packing 



make or have forced upon us. 



I have tried this, and know that large 

 2story hives with young vigorous 

 queens are heavy honey gatherers. An- 

 other experiment that was tried on five 

 colonies and worked out well was to 

 divide five normal single-story colonies 

 at the close of the honey flow. Each 

 new division was given a young queen 

 and these 4-frame nuclei were wintered 

 in lOframe hives, two in each one. The 

 following spring each of these nuclei 

 was equal in bees and vigor to the 

 average of my single story colonies 

 that had not been divided. Of course, 

 I had to add honey and combs in the 

 spring, but the experiment was an in- 

 teresting one. This plan probably 

 would not work at all unless the sea- 

 son was a normal one. The colonies 

 were all wintered on the summer 

 stands. 



In the Rocky Mountain region, where 

 the winters are comparatively dry and 

 the temperature not severe, we will un- 

 doubtedly waste our time in trying to 

 obviate winter losses by wintering in 

 cellars, in packs, or double-walled hives. 



FIG 7.-TWO MEN FOLLOW AND PACK HIVbS UN THE OUTaiUE 



