146 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Feb. 15 



and I let them have full swing here in the 

 house with my bee-hive material. Now, Ram- 

 bler, how would a few pancakes strike you?" 

 " Bro. McCubbin, I'm speechless." 



COI.ONIES OF BEES FREEZING TO DEATH. 



"Good morning, Mr. Doolittle. Pretty 

 cold outside this morning. " 



" Yes, it is, neighbor Smith. Take this big 

 rocking-chair and draw up by the fire." 



"Thank you, I will do so. And now I 

 want to talk a little while with you about bees 

 freezing to death." 



" I am agreeable. ^Buf what set you to 

 thinking about this matter .-" " • 



" This awful cold, after reading last night 

 in an old bee-paper that some thought that 

 bees froze to death, one writer asserting that 

 any one who has handled bees knows that too 

 cold weather makes them perfectly stiff and 

 apparently lifeless." 



" Did you believe what you read? " 



"Well, enough so that I went and looked 

 at one colou}\ and I found them apparently 

 lifeless, as he said they would be. But this 

 colony was in a single-walled hive, and the 

 writer in the paper said that if bees were 

 in other than thoroughly packed chaff hives 

 they should be taken to warmer quarters if 

 zero cold lasts longer than four or five days, 

 else they might freeze ; and this is why I came 

 over this morning. Would you carry these 

 bees into the cellar ? " 



" It would have been a good plan to carry 

 such colonies as were in single-walled hives 

 into the cellar from the middle to the latter 

 part of last November ; but I consider that 

 which you read as fallacious, and think a little 

 talk over this matter will convince you that 

 there is nothing in the matter further than 

 theory." 



" I am glad to hear you say this, as I had 

 no place where I could put the bees just now. 

 But why should bees not freeze when other 

 animals, which are poorly protected, do so?" 



"While it is possible to freeze nearly all 

 animal life by exposure to a very low temper- 

 ature, the bees seem capable, with plenty of 

 stores near at hand, to stand any amount of 

 cold so long as food remains within easy 

 reach." 



" Bat I saw some bees in the hive I opened 

 this morning, on the outside of the bunch of 

 bees, that were so stiff they did not wiggle 

 when I poked them with a lead-pencil." 



" To be sure, the bees on the outside of the 

 cluster may become somewhat stiffened with 

 cold ; but those within are nearly as brisk and 

 lively as in summer." 



" What proof have you of this assertion ? " 



" M. Quinby, than whom there is no better 

 authority, knew this to be a fact when he said 

 in his ' Mysteries of Bee keeping Explained,' 



that the bees inside the cluster, on a zero 

 morning, could fly as readily as in July, should 

 the cluster be thrown apart. Mr. Quinby 

 wrote this more than 35 years ago. ' ' 



" Well, suppose the zero weather had held 

 on four or five days, that being the length of 

 time the writer allowed in the old bee-paper." 



"This part was made very plain bv that 

 veteran bee-keeper of thirty years ago, E isha 

 Gallup, now of California. When speaking 

 of a winter in Upper Canada he says, ' the 

 thermometer for sixty days in succession was 

 not above 10° below zero, and for eight of 

 these days the mercury was frozen ; yet my 

 bees, in box hives, with a two inch hole at the 

 top and the bottom, plastered up tight, 

 came through in excellent condition.' 

 This you can find in Vol. V. of the American 

 Bee Journal, page 33, unless my memory has 

 given me the slip." 



" Whew ! Mercury frozen ! That is ahead 

 of any thing we ever get here, is it not ? " 



" Yes. But while bees here in Central New 

 York were never put to so seve- e a test as the 

 above, yet, a few years ago, the mercury went 

 as low as 37° below zero ; still, so far as I 

 could see, it did not affect the bees in the 

 least." 



" How can they resist such cold ? " 



" By eating honey, or ' burning it as fuel,' 

 as one writer puts it." 



" I wonder how much heat they can get up 

 in that way." 



"From experiments conducted with a self- 

 registering thermometer I have found that 

 when it is 20° below zero in the outside air, a 

 temperature of 46° above zero is maintained 

 within the hive close to the outside of the 

 cluster of bees, while the center of the cluster 

 gave a warmth of 63° at the same time, show- 

 ing that they were far from freezing." 



" Well, I declare ! Have you made any 

 other tests? " 



"To test more thoroughly this matter of 

 bees freezing, I took a colony one evening 

 when the mercury stood at 10 below zero, and 

 suspended the hive about two feet from the 

 bottom-board, taking off all covering from the 

 top of the hive, so they were the same as if 

 hung in the open air, as the colony was so 

 small that it did not touch the hive at any 

 point. They were left thus all night, during 

 which the mercury went as low as 16 degrees 

 below zero, yet the next morning the bees 

 were all right, though I really expected to find 

 them dead. Since then I have come to the 

 conclusion that the freezing of a colony of 

 bees when in a normal condition is an impos- 

 sibility, and that the finding of bees dead and 

 frozen only proves that the freezing was an ef- 

 fect coming after death produced by some oth- 

 er cause than zero cold, such as starvation, 

 bee-diarrhea, caused by long confinement, 

 etc." 



"But you would not advise swinging all 

 colonies from their bottom-boards during 

 winter ? " 



"No, sir; and I would advise putting all 

 colonies in this section, or north of 40, north 

 latitude, into chaff hives, or into the cellar 

 during winter, as they winter much better 



