258 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



April 23, 



apiary, his experience, so far as he states it, tallies exactly 

 with mine. 



Prom the results described by Mr. D., I should judge that 

 his hives were ail single-walled, and also without paclfing at 

 the top, for my experience has been that a sunny, sheltered 

 place is a very poor place to attempt to "spring" bees that 

 are housed in single-walled hives, but on the contrary, it is tlie 

 place, par excellence, to locate an apiary where chaff hives or 

 packing are used ; as (in my opinion) they ought to be used 

 in all northern localities, and in some that do not claim to be 

 very northern, too, and even though the bees are wintered in 

 the cellar. Such hives, in such a location, very soon make up 

 the cost of the packing, if the honey-flow amounts to any- 

 thing before basswood, though where the main flow is from 

 basswood and fall flowers, and no increase is desired, much of 

 the importance of a " sunny location " vanishes. 



I have an apiary located on a rather steep bank of a 

 ravine, facing the south and southwest, extra-well protected 

 from winds from almost any direction, where a few hours' 

 sunshine on fine days in the winter cleans away the snow in 

 quick order, and leaves a dry footing for the bees to alight on, 

 should they fly during the winter (I winter bees outside) ; and I 

 find after trying no packing at all, packing lightly, and packing 

 extra heavily, that the bees that are best protected from the 

 heat of the sun's rays beating directly on their hives, winter 

 the best, spring the best, and consume the least stores in 

 reaching their maximum strength in the spring; and more 

 than that, they are far in advance of the average strength of 

 colonies in the same neighborhood that have not the combina- 

 tion of a sunny location and packing. 



Some of my bee-keeping friends around there believe in 

 sunshine and shelter from winds ; some believe in packing, 

 and some in neither, and I think there is pretty good ground 

 for this apparent difference of opinion found in their different 

 systems of management. 



Is not this " sunshine and shelter theory " a tradition 

 handed down to us from the days of box-hives, when the 

 combs ran " criss-cross " in the hives, and gave the bees a 

 protection from sudden changes of temperature, that the 

 orderly method of modern movable frames does not allow? 

 and do not many of us accept this old maxim without any 

 modification to suit our changed conditions? Occasionally 

 some of the observant ones have ■• kinder wondered " why the 

 bees have spring-dwindled so badly in some "beautiful loca- 

 tion," while they came through a perhaps cold and backward 

 spring without very much loss, in another apiary near by that 

 was considerably exposed to all kinds of weather. 



I noticed that my bees seemed to have a pretty tough time 

 of it in getting through the spring in decent condition, when I 

 first began bee-keeping there, as I used to clear away the 

 packing pretty early in the season "to let the sun get at 

 them and warm them up;" but after keeping bees for a year 

 or two, and learning more of their habits, and the detriment 

 it was to them to be continually disturbing them, or causing 

 them to take useless flights, it struck me that that was the 

 very thing the sun was doing nearly every day, for a month 

 before there was much pollen or honey to be secured ; and 

 that it was rather unreasonable to clear away the packing be- 

 fore there was plenty of both pollen and honey coming in, 

 and since then I have found minor reasons why it is advis- 

 able to keep bees packed nearly if not the whole year through, 

 the two chief of which are, the steady and more certain in- 

 crease of brood (no check ever occurring from a rapid lower- 

 ing of the temperature outside), and the better and cheaper 

 work done in comb-building and capping honey right out to 

 the corners of frames and sections. 



On the other hand, if I had decided, from any reasons, 

 that it suited my purpose to run a certain apiary in single- 

 walled hives, I would choose a place where the wind got all 

 around the hives ; and I would put them where the sun had 

 to raise the temperature for miles around at the same time 

 that it warmed the hives, for then there would have to be a 

 pretty general rise in the temperature before the bees inside 

 the hives felt the influence of the sun to any very great ex- 

 tent, and thus no harm would be done like there would if 

 these same single-walled hives were put in a place that, be- 

 cause of its shelter, allowed the sun to raise the temperature 

 very rapidly on every fine day, and did not allow the wind to 

 circulate freely over and around the sun-heated surfaces of 

 the hives. 



These frequent warmings up, and the general jubilee that 

 always accompanies them, are a very positive detriment to the 

 bees, causing loss of vitality, and an unnecessary consumption 

 of stores, without any corresponding gain ; so that when the 

 hard labor of pollen and honey gathering in the spring really 

 commences, the remaining bees are practically old and feeble, 



and rapidly "dwindle" away; whereas, had they been 

 located in a sunny, sheltered place, and protected by packing 

 from these short periods of warm sunshine, so that when they 

 were induced to fly the average temperature outside their 

 sunny location would not be too low for them to withstand, 

 and inside their shelter it is so much warmer that once the 

 bees are aroused, the air they will at once begin to fan out of 

 their hives is replaced by air fully as warm, which materially 

 assists them in maintaining and increasing the heat of the 

 contents of the hive ; and where these congenial surroundings 

 exist, bees from these hives will be found to have enough 

 vitality and bee-sense to " make for " their sunny home at any 

 lowering of the temperature outside the shelter. They will 

 not as quickly commence to rear brood, but they will hold 

 every cell that they do start, and will have their 8 frames 

 chock-full of brood from a few days to a few weeks earlier 

 than those in single-walled hives in any location, sheltered or 

 otherwise ; and if they started the season with the same 

 amount of stores as those in single-walled hives, they will 

 have consumed less at the commencement of the honey har- 

 vest, though they will have a larger force of more vigorous 

 bees. More vigorous, because at no time in their development 

 have they been subjected to any serious " cooling off," or any 

 stint in food-supply because any of them happened to be left 

 outside the cluster on a cold night. CZILJ 



This so far is not theory, but my experience in the apiary, 

 and from this it will be seen why I think we cannot afford 

 to do without packing, and how I think we can get the benefit 

 of the great advantage that a sunny, sheltered location may 

 be to any apiary. Rudyard, Mich. 



Cellar-Winteriug— The Apiarian Outlook. 



BV MK8. L. C. AXTKLL. 



We put out our 83 colonies of bees (that we had in the 

 cellar) half of them March 10, and the rest on the 26th. All 

 were alive but one, and it seemed to have had laying-workers, 

 from the appearance of the brood. They fly as if they were 

 very strong and in good condition. The 40 wintered out-of- 

 doors also fly as if in good coudition. Probably when we ex- 

 amine them all through, we will find some that are weak, as 

 is always the case, but now as they fly on warm days they will 

 fill the air like they do in swarming-time. 



We took up less dead bees from the cellar than usual. We 

 try to sweep all dead bees up that fall on the bottom of the 

 cellar, about once in two or three weeks — not longer — as we 

 think it must be very unhealthy for us to breathe the cellar- 

 air tainted with dead bees. I do not think all people who 

 winter bees in the cellar are as careful as they ought to be, to 

 remove the dead bees often. Although in the cellar, yet the 

 cellar-air permeates the living-rooms above more than we 

 think. 



One winter we left our bees for one month shut up in the 

 cellar while we were away on a visit. The living-rooms were 

 not opened much while we were gone, yet we had a neighbor 

 throw open the cellar-doors on all warm nights while we were 

 gone. When we came home, the rooms above the cellar were 

 very damp, the windows were frosty, clothing in a closet in 

 the center of the house over the cellar was not fit to wear un- 

 til dried, and yet the cellar was plastered overhead. We had 

 then about 125 colonies in the cellar. 



Some years ago I remember calling on a bee-keeper one 

 spring, in April, I think. They had not yet taken their bees 

 from the cellar. As soon as I went into the house the bad 

 cellar-smell met me. I noticed it immediately. It struck me 

 that it smelled like a corpse. The man and his wife were in 

 poor health. I do not remember how about the health of the 

 children, but the wife died in a year or so. 



I do feel we ought to be careful to remove all dead bees 

 from the cellar quite often, and then there will remain many 

 under the hives and in places we cannot reach, so we ought to 

 air the rooms above every day as much as possible, and some 

 rooms ought to have a window raised night and day. 



What is true of dead bees is true of all impurities in cellar 

 or house. Decaying vegetables, dusty carpets, moldy wall- 

 paper, etc., will tell upon the health of the family. 



THE OUTLOOK FOB BEK-KEEPING. 



It has been the editors of bee-papers that have kept bee- 

 keeping from shipwreck, by gathering up everything possible 

 pertaining to the best interest of bee-keeping, and putting it 

 in a shape so we can learn how to make the most of our bees 

 with the least possible labor, and, indeed, that is the secret of 

 success everywhere— to get the most ive can out of our labor. 



I think no one should embark in bee-keeping expecting to 



