AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 6:3 



able to a warm room overhead, presumably to keep the cellar warm, yet we find 

 these same bee-keepers carrying ice into these cellars and opening doors at night to 

 lower the temperature during warm spells in winter. Now, this is just where a 

 cellar under a superstructure fails. Just in so far as a warm room is an advantage 

 in extreme cold weather, it is of positive disadvantage in a warm spell in winter. 

 Who wants to be obliged to keep a fire in or over a cellar all winter, every time the 

 mercury sinks to zero? or open all doors and windows which the cellar contains, 

 carry in ice, etc., every time the mercury rises to 50^ or 60° above zero? There 

 may be fun in the thing for a few times, but after a little it becomes "vanity and 

 vexation of spirit." 



And even after we have had all this trouble, our pets are not nearly as well off 

 as they would have been had the temperature been kept evenly at 45^. Of course, 

 where one has no other place in which to winter bees, they must do the best they 

 can with what they have, but the point which I object to is that followed by some 

 in recommending a thing which requires so much fussing and anxiety of thought, 

 above something which requires nothing of the kind, and over one, which, after a 

 thorough trial by even the most prejudiced, would be recommended as much superior 

 to the old way. 



Some claim the matter of a living-room over the bees has little if anything to 

 do with the matter of good wintering to the bees. Such claim can only be made 

 from lack of knowledge. For many years before I moved to where I now live, I 

 wintered my bees in the cellar under the house we lived in, and during nearly every 

 one of these winters there would come times when I had to build a fire in this cellar 

 to keep it warm enough, or else open the doors at night, or carry in ice to keep it 

 cool enough. Several times it kept warm so long that there was no snow or ice to 

 be had, and the outside air during the night was warmer than the air in the cellar, 

 then I had such a state of affairs in that cellar that caused me to declare that I 

 would never try cellar-wintering again ; bees roaring in the hives and flying out to 

 the cellar-bottom and crawling about there until I feared I should lose the whole 

 thing. At such times at this, where one is obliged to winter bees in such cellars, 

 the only salvation is to have total darkness inside. But with a cellar entirely under 

 ground, with earth overhead as well as on the bottom and at the sides, nothing of 

 this kind ever occurs ; and I would advise all, where it is possible, to construct such 

 an underground cellar for wintering bees, where they are permanently located and 

 have 25 or more colonies. 



In the underground repository which 1 use, and which has been several times 

 described in the bee-papers, the mercury rarely varies more than 2° all winter, 

 standing at from 44- to 46° during the time the bees are in it, and as no ray of 

 light ever enters, it is simply one long, dark night to the bees for five to six months, 

 and they seem to winter perfectly. 



The above is offered as suggestions to those about to build bee-cellars. 



Borodino, N. Y. 



MIGRATORY BEE-KEEPIIVG— BEHS BY THE POUND. 



BY EDWIN BEVINS. 



That article by John McArthur, on " Migratory Bee-Keeping," on page 306, 

 makes me feel chilly. After Langstroth, Dadant and other writers have gotten a 

 generation of bee-keepers educated away from the sulphur pit, here comes a man 

 advocating the wholesale murder of bees to save the trouble and expense of winter- 

 ing ! I am glad the winter problem here is not as serious as it is in Toronto. Don't 

 think I would kill the bees, though, if I lived in Labrador. 



