THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



For the American Bee JoumaL 



Our Wintering Trouble. 



G. M. DOOLITTLE (40— SO). 



At last Mr. Ileddon and myself can 

 agree on our wintering trouble, or at 

 least very nearly so, for on page 773 

 of the Bke Journal for 18S4, 1 find 

 these words under the signature of 

 James Ileddon : " Unless, perchance, 

 breeding in confinement should prove 

 to be the cause," by which is meant 

 the " cause," as I understand him, of 

 all our wintering troubles. This 

 coincides with what I have claimed 

 for years, that pollen cannot be the 

 " prime cause," inasmuch as I believe 

 that tlie bees of mature age only rise it 

 as a preparation, which, together with 

 honey and water forms the food for 

 the larvie or immature bees ; also, 

 that when so prepared, bees of mature 

 age sometimes partalse of this chyme 

 or prepared food, but never except 

 when there is brood in the hive. I 

 also believe confinement to be the 

 prime cause ; breeding in confinement 

 the secondary. 



Having given the above belief or 

 statement, I now wish to give the 

 readers a few facts coming under my 

 observation, which go to prove that 

 such statement is correct ; for a state- 

 ment is always valuable only as it is 

 backed up by facts. Right here I 

 wish to say that whenever I use the 

 word pollen, I use it in the sense of 

 bee-bread which is stored in a solid 

 mass in the cells, and not as floating 

 particles of pollen in the honey, 

 should future experiments prove that 

 there was such pollen contained in 

 the honey. If such should ever be 

 found in the honey, then we will have 

 to call honey an adjunct cause, for 

 the reason that this floating pollen 

 and the honey are so inseparably con- 

 nected that a distinction between the 

 two cannot be made by the ordinary 

 bee-keeper. 



The first fact to which I wish to 

 call the reader's attention, as bearing 

 on this winter question, is that the 

 intestines of the newly hatched bee 

 are filled with pollen when it emerges 

 from the cell ; in fact this pollen is 

 easily seen with tlie naked eye, in the 

 larva, before it is sealed over in the 

 cell, and the first thing that the young 

 bee desires to do on the first flight 

 (which occurs where all is favorable 

 when the young bee is about six days 

 old], is to relieve the abdomen of this 

 pollen mass, which accumulated when 

 the bee was consuming food in the 

 larval state. When there are large 

 numbers of these young bees, uneasi- 

 ness is sure to exist in the colony 

 until a chance of flight occurs, after 

 which quiet is again restored for a 

 few days, or until another lot of 

 young bees feel the need of a flight. 



To illustrate : My garden is about 

 four rods southeast of my apiary, so 

 that when the wind is northwest (as 



it nearly always is here in Kew York 

 when the atmosphere clears up after 

 a long continued spell of dull, rainy 

 weather), bees in flight are driven 

 over this garden. Here I often have 

 glass covered boxes to promote the 

 growth of early and tender vegetables, 

 and tliese glass-covered boxes have 

 given me some idea relative to bee- 

 diarrhea, which I should probably 

 never have ascertained in any other 

 way. At one time, after a week or 

 more of cold, cloudy, misty weather 

 in the latter part of June, I noticed 

 that the bees were very uneasy about 

 the hives, in several cases the hives 

 being fouled about the entrance. As 

 the morning was still cloudy, no bees 

 were seen flying except those at labor, 

 their labor being shown by tHeir going 

 too and fro from the entrance in a 

 straight line, while young bees always 

 circle near the entrance to mark their 

 location. 



Having noticed this condition of 

 affairs, 1 went to the garden to work, 

 where I worked until about eleven 

 o'clock, during which time I had 

 moved all the glass-covered boxes, 

 hoed the vegetables and returned the 

 boxes. As I was returning the last 

 of them, the sun commenced to shine, 

 when I soon saw spots of excrement 

 from bees on the glass, which, up to 

 this time, had been perfectly clean. 

 Hearing a loud humming, I went to 

 the apiary, thinking, perhaps, that 

 the bees might be swarming, but in- 

 stead I found hundreds of young bees 

 flying from nearly every hive, some 

 of which was so loaded with feces 

 that they could scarcely rise from the 

 alighting-board. 



When next I went to the garden, 

 about noon, the glass there was so 

 befouled that I could scarcely see a 



Elant through them, while not a spot 

 ad appeared, with lots of field bees 

 flying for more than four liours pre- 

 vious to eleven o'clock, thus showing 

 conclusively that it was only the 

 young bees that were suffering from 

 the bee-diarrhea ; for if the old or 

 mature bees had partaken of pollen, 

 some spote would have appeared on 

 the glass before eleven o'clock, as all 

 had been confined to the hive for a 

 week or more previous to this time. 



Since then I have noticed the same 

 thing many times, yet always under 

 like circumstances. Again, during 

 the past November we had two weeks 

 of quite cold weather, after which 

 there came a warm day so the bees 

 could fly. Noticing previous to the 

 cold spell that a few of my colonies 

 had considerable sealed brood in their 

 combs while others had none, I 

 thought to watch at this time and see 

 if I could not learn something. As 

 the day grew warm, the first bees to 

 fly were those from the colonies hav- 

 ing brood in them, and as these bees 

 flew, the covers to their hives and 

 other hives near them, became soiled 

 with excrement which soon dried in 

 the sun. After these colonies had 

 finished their general flight, the 

 others having no "brood in them, they 

 commenced to fly, and while they 

 flew nicely, yet I failed to find a single 

 spot of fresh excrement or anything 

 that looked like bee-diarrhea; thus 



again proving that it was only the 

 yoiing bees that were affected. How 

 I was led to know which colonies were 

 breeding during the last of October, 

 was that a few colonies were carrying 

 in pollen quite extensively at that 

 time, while others were not. 



Once more: Several years ago, 

 about the middle of January, I found 

 a colony in my yard (I wintered all 

 my bees on the summer stands at that 

 time) which was very uneasy, and as 

 a warm day soon occurred, I opened 

 the hive to find the cause of the un- 

 easiness. To my astonishment I 

 found brood in four combs to the 

 amount of 200 square inches. As I 

 had never seen so much brood in a 

 hive before at this time of the year, 

 I kept close watch of them to see 

 what would become of it. After this 

 warm day, and the consequent flight, 

 the bees were quiet (I examined them 

 every day) for a week, when they be- 

 came uueasy, and by the end of the 

 second week, the hive was a perfect 

 roar. If a corner of the quilt was 

 raised, or the entrance uncovered 

 from snow, the bees would rush out, 

 void their excrement, and die on the 

 snow. 



At the end of 24 days there came a 

 chance for a flight again, when I once 

 more opened the hive. I found the 

 bees reduced about one-half, the dead 

 lying on the bottom-board, while the 

 amount of brood had changed very 

 little. I noticed that the bodies of a 

 part of the dead bees were quite 

 small, and remarked about it to my 

 father, while others were very much 

 distended, the small bodies looking 

 like old bees, and those having dis- 

 tended bodies looking like bees from 

 10 to 20 days old. Of one thing I was 

 certain, which was, that all of the 

 bees which were then in the hive and 

 flying from it, none were old bees, 

 and all not having emptied them- 

 selves were so loaded that they could 

 scarcely fly. It again turned cold, 

 and kept so until March 20, but ten 

 days previous to this the colony had 

 perished, leaving only a handful of 

 white, fuzzy young bees between the 

 combs, the rest being dead on the 

 bottom of the hive. 



In all of the above cases there is 

 conclusive proof, to my mind, that 

 the secondary cause of bee-diarrhea, if 

 such it can be called, was only the 

 natural consequence (which always 

 must result from the larva of the bee 

 being fed on a food largely composed 

 of pollen) of the confinement of the 

 young bees at a time when nature re- 

 quired a day warm enough for them 

 to fly ; or, in other words, the cause is 

 brood-rearing in confinement. The 

 only time that I know of in which all 

 of the bees in a hive suffer from bee- 

 diarrhea at once, is where, in con- 

 nection with brood-rearing, the bees 

 are confronted with starvation, either 

 imaginary or otherwise, in which case 

 the chyme is passed around by the 

 nurse bees as a food to sustain life, 

 when all suffer alike if no opportunity 

 for a flight relieves them. 



From the above I think that Mr. 

 Heddon, or any one else, can trace all 

 losses of bees during cold weather to 

 confinement and brood-rearing during 



