352 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 



six months. At that rate, one person could 

 take charge of 1000 hives until the time for 

 surplus honey came, and should there be no 

 surplus honey he might do it the year round, 

 for all that would then be required would be 

 to see that each one had a good queen, and 

 the bees would do the rest. At the rate at 

 which good colonies of bees sell, he could do 

 a thriving business selling them, if he didn't 

 get an ounce of honey, and should a great 

 yield of honey come, he ought to be able to 

 hire help at a price that would pay for tak- 

 ing care of it, if he were not burdened with 

 too many "new inventions'". Now all these 

 bright visions could be realized without 

 trouble, if every colony as well supplied as 

 was the one from which we are taking this 

 text would only thrive in the same way. 



The Standard hive wintered beautifully, 

 winter before last, because it contained two 

 good colonies, but during the past winter, a 

 fair colony went down to a pint, and the 

 rest of our apiary went down in the same 

 way more or less, during the month of April, 

 or after they commenced to raise brood 

 briskly. Is it possible that this spring 

 dwindling has all been caused by allowing 

 the juvenile bees to get sore throats, etc., on 

 account of the brisk draft that our modern 

 hives allow, when they are just the age to 

 want to be tucked up? Keeping them warm 

 with a tight board box has been no better ; 

 a tight board box would be small comfort to 

 one of us on a frosty night, but plenty of 

 warm, porous bed clothing would enable 

 even an infant to keep comfortable. Corn 

 fodder and straw put around hives and over 

 them may keep the wind off, but they assur- 

 edly can not confine the animal heat in any 

 such manner as the soft dry oat chaff that is 

 only separated from the bees on all sides by 

 a thin piece of cloth. Again, a packing of 

 straw, or a straw mat over a strong colony 

 of bees may be a very good thing, but can it 

 amount to very much when there are cracks 

 all around where the warm air can creep out, 

 and when the sides are only cold, hard 

 boards after all? How would you like to 

 sleep in a bed made in that way? Would not 

 the children begin to dwindle out in just 

 about the way the bees do? Another thing; 

 we don't cover our children with a board, or 

 an oil cloth, or paper, or canvas, but we 

 have wool and flannel ; as the bees seem pe- 

 culiarly sensitive to accumulations of damp- 

 ness, I am inclined to think that even these 

 would get damp and moldy. In fact, I have 

 had some such experience, but the soft chaff, 

 I think, is going to fully meet the require- 



ments. Is it not possible that our fathers 

 knew what was best when they decided on 

 the old straw hive? Several weak colonies 

 have starved because it was too cool for 

 them to crawl up to a feeder containing syr- 

 up, while this Q. hive has bees all day and 

 all night, walking around on the bare 

 ground in front of the entrance which is 

 kept warm by this blast of warm air that is 

 constantly passing out of one of the en- 

 trances, while a stream of cold air goes in at 

 the other. 



Several years ago, we had a very weak nu- 

 cleus in the fall, and as they were out of 

 stores (they were in the American hive) we 

 gave them one L. frame moderately tilled 

 with stores. To get this frame into the A. 

 hive, we were obliged to stand it on end, and 

 as this looked like rather a cold and "loose" 

 arrangement, we packed some very fine, soft 

 hay all around and over the top. As there 

 was but the one hive, we did it well and 

 carefully, and so closely was the hay or grass 

 packed, not a bee found a chance to get out 

 during the whole four months. Well, we 

 supposed this frame of stores would last 

 them only a month or so, and to deter- 

 mine when they would need more food we 

 tapped on the hive occasionally (they were 

 in the cellar), to see if they responded 

 promptly. Well, they answered every time 

 until the next April, and when they were 

 put out they were all alive, and had nearly 

 all of their frame of honey left. As this was 

 our first 'experiment with in-door wintering, 

 we were jubilant over it, and the next win- 

 ter put all our colonies in the cellar — omit- 

 ting the hay (of course, that could not be im- 

 portant, we then thought, and it may be a 

 good place right here to apologize to those 

 whom we have ridiculed for packing their 

 bees and putting them in the cellar besides), 

 and when they died with dysentery worse 

 than ever before, it did not occur to us then 

 that the hay had anything to do with the 

 matter. If, after all these years, our un- 

 lucky nose has, at last, by accident, been 

 turned in the right direction, we shall be 

 very thankful. 



May 18th.— As the bees were crowding out 

 of the Q. hive to-day, I removed the chaff 

 covering. The colony is a mammoth one 

 for the season, and we found solid sheets of 

 sealed brood in nearly every one of the 8, 

 large Q. frames. The chaff protected them 

 so well, that they seem to have been entire- 

 ly free from the dwindling that has affected 

 nearly every other colony; of course, the 

 the abundance of bees and stores in the fall, 



