AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



339 



than another with old bees only, because the young bees, which have gone out of 

 their hives but a few times, are more careful, and do not rush out far from the hive, 

 as do the older bees, which, accustomed to go in quest of honey or pollen, go far away, 

 without looking backwards, during a bright winter day, and are often caught and 

 chilled by a change of wind, or by an occasional cloud which darkens the sun. 



A sufficient quantity of food. Honey is the only food necessary in winter for 

 bees on the summer stands ; but it is to be noticed that the food is used not only to 

 sustain life, but to produce the indispensable warmth, for it has been often ascer- 

 tained that a large population has consumed less in winter than a smaller one, 

 whose bees were compelled to eat more to keep warm. Tt is generally admitted 

 that 25 pounds of honey per colony is not too much, to spare the bee-keepers all 

 anxiety about the needs of their bees during the whole winter.^ 



The llovic of ^[r. W. Z. Hutchinson, at Flint, Mich. 



Several means are used to provide bees with a sufficient quantity of food. When 

 but a few colonies of an apiary are short of honey, the most simple means is to take 

 from those which have some to spare what the others need. Such an operation is 

 easy with movable-frame hives. But when no colony has any honey to spare, and 

 this case happens too often to the bee-keepers who use small hives, especially in 

 poor years like this one, the best food to give is sugar syrup, fed to the bees in Octo- 

 ber. This syrup made with a quart of boiling water and four pounds of granulated 

 sugar, to which one pound of honey or more is added to prevent crystallization, is 

 given at evening, when yet tepid, in old tin cans covered with a piece of cotton- 

 cloth, and inverted on the upper bars of the frames. The bees suck the syrup 

 through the cloth. The Hill bee-feeder, made on the same principle, but entirely of 

 tin, is also used, and saves much labor. A strong colony can put in the comb, in a 

 single night, the contents of three or four of these cans, 



