THE AMERICA]!^ BEE JOURNAL. 



775 



colony had plenty of air of good 

 quality, I should say, and I mention 

 this report because it borders upon or 

 goes part way into a system that we 

 discussed at my apiary se>'eral years 

 ago, but never put into iiractice. I 

 was going to dig holes 4 to (i feet deep, 

 with a large post-auger, and place the 

 hives over them upon wire-screen 

 shipping-frames, rather than a bot- 

 tom-board, tlien pack witli a large 

 box over all, with a way to open an 

 entrance at will, to use in the spring 

 before the packing would be removed. 

 My idea was to furnish air of a tem- 

 perature of about 42°, from the holes 

 which would reach down into tlie 

 earth below the frost-line, and at the 

 same time exclude all cold air, and 

 prevent a radiatiou of the heat of the 

 bees. I have always believed this 

 plan to be scientific, and one which 

 w(udd come nearer insuring success- 

 ful out-door wintering than any other 

 that kept the colonies on their own 

 summer stands. After all, when we 

 have estimated the cost of boxes, 

 packing and labor, I think a good 

 cellar is not only safer, but cheaper. 



Others sent in reports of successful 

 wintering in cellars, with no ventila- 

 tion whatever, or at least with the 

 cellar closed as tightly as they could 

 close it; but some of them "do not 

 give the number of colonies put in. I 

 hope that many experiments will be 

 made and reported during the coming 

 winter and spring. 



My own apiaries, which now con- 

 tain about 400 colonies, have been 

 housed for about thi'ee weeks. The 

 old and new cellars in our home apiary 

 contain about 27.5 colonies, and a filled 

 house above ground, at Glenwood, 

 Mich., has about 130 colonies in it. 

 More than half of the colonies are 

 supplied with natural stores only, the 

 rest being furnished with stores that 

 are all or in part sugar syrup. The 

 following reasons indicate why I did 

 not resort to supplying all with more 

 or less sugar stores, as 1 intend to do 

 in the future : 



1. My last winter's loss left me so 

 many combs to cover with bees, that I 

 worked my apiaries almost entirely 

 for extracted honey. This and lack 

 of time prevented practicing contrac- 

 tion (my favorite comb-honey system) 

 with a majority of the hives, and so 

 most of them came out in autumn 

 with plenty of honey in the brood- 

 chambers, which must be removed if I 

 were to feed them syrup. 



2. I desirefi to make some tests upon 

 a comprehensive scale, regarding tem- 

 perature vs. food, as causes of bee- 

 diarrhea. I wish to know more of 

 their relative effects. 



3. With over ten tons of honey un- 

 sold, and not knowing when it might 

 be, the purchase of so large an amount 

 of sugar as would be required to feed 

 all, was more than my pocket-book 

 could stand. 



My honey seenris to be exceptionally 

 clear this season, and I have hopes 

 that the bees will winter fairly well 

 on natural stores, where the tempera- 

 ture is kept high enough. 



SMALL HIVES vs. LARGE HIVES. 



I have read with pleasure Mr. 

 Dadant's able article in reply to mine. 



on this subject. We cannot see alike 

 regarding this matter, and we have 

 now had our say, enjoyed the amica- 

 ble and, I hope, not useless discus- 

 sion, and perhaps set others to think- 

 ing upon the subject, which will tend 

 to enable us all to sooner arrive at 

 the truth. We can now do nothing 

 better than to leave it to the future 

 experiments of the many. 

 Dowagiac, ? Mich. 



ror the American Bee JournaL 



Amount of Honey Gathered by a Bee. 



17— G. M. DOOLITTLE, (40—95). 



Although the subject of how much 

 honey one bee may gather during its 

 life-time may have no very definite 

 bearing upon the dollar-and-cent 

 side of apiculture, still such an item 

 may be made of interest to us if we 

 look at it from the right stand-point. 

 That one bee cannot gather 100 pounds 

 of honey is one of the reasons, that 

 more than one bee is required in a 

 hive, and because one bee cannot 

 gather that amount,nor one-ten-thou- 

 sandth part of ii, is the reason that 

 the apiarist desires a large number of 

 bees in his hives at certain seasons 

 of the year. Some tell us. " keep 

 your colonies always strong," just as 

 though a large number of bees in a 

 hive at all times of the year was a 

 thing of great value. But right here 

 comes in another side to this " gath- 

 ering " question. 



I have just said that one bee could 

 not gather one-ien-thousandth part 

 of 100 pounds of honey. My reason 

 for so saying being that in this locality 

 we do not have a yield of honey last- 

 ing through the leheth of life allotted 

 to an individual bee, while many 

 bees, yea more than one-half of those 

 which are reared under the most 

 skillful management, never add an 

 ounce to the surplus. If every bee 

 reared could have a field of honey 

 placed before it in which to labtu-, 

 then the motto. " Keep colonies 

 always strong," would be the right 

 one; but inasmuch as this cannot be. 

 and as bees at all times must be con- 

 sumers, no matter whether producing 

 or not, I cannot see the philosophy of 

 having a colony strong in bees at 

 such seasons when of necessity they 

 can only be consumers. Thus right 

 here corues in another factor in this 

 question, which is the field or supply 

 of lioney. In reality we must begin 

 with the field, or in other words, 

 place that first, for without the lield 

 or honey-flow we have no use for the 

 bees. • 



With a continuous and uninter- 

 rupted honey-flow within two miles 

 of the hive, during the time which a 

 bee lives, I think that a bee might 

 •easily gather one ounce of nectar, 

 which would take only 1.000 bees to 

 gather 100 pounds. Of this amount 

 it would take at least 2o pounds to 

 supply the wants of the colony during 

 the time the bee was living, and ini- 

 less the nectar was thicker than we 

 get it here, it would take 3 pounds of 

 this nectar to make one pound of 

 honev. So then we should have 2-5 



pounds of honey as the product of 

 1,600 bees during their life with an 

 uninterrupted (low of nectar. While 

 this might be possible, yet there are 

 two things which make it improbable, 

 the first being, as already stated, that 

 the honey-flow does not continue 

 long enough, and the second, that the 

 yield would not be sufficient within 

 two miles of the apiary so that the 

 bees could work to the best advan- 

 tage. When all is just right, a few 

 bees will do almost woudersas will be 

 seen by the following : 



In 1871 I had a colony which on 

 May 25 I estimated to contain 4,000 

 bees. This estimate was made by 

 counting all the bees on a given sur- 

 face of comb, and then dividing the 

 amount of comb covered with bees by 

 the space counted, when the quotient 

 was multiplied by the number of bees 

 counted on the first surface. The next 

 day was a fine one, and apple trees 

 were yielding honey as well as I ever 

 saw them ; at 7 a.ii. the bees began 

 to go to work, and at 8 a.m. I found 

 that on an average tiO loaded bees 

 were going into the hive each minute. 

 One was caught and killed, which I 

 found upon dissecting, had a fair- 

 sized drop of honey in tlie honey-sac. 

 By a careful estimate and weighins I 

 found that it would take about 3,000 

 such bee-loads to make (me pound, so 

 I concluded that 4,000 bees were good 

 for the gathering of one pound of 

 nectar each hour, besides caring for 

 the interior of the hive. 



Before a bee had left the hive in the 

 morning, I had weighed the same so 

 that I could tell when night came, 

 how much the colony had gained. 

 They worked right along at the aver- 

 age rate of 60 ))er minute until 4 p.m., 

 when they began to slack up, and at; 

 5 p.m. all had quit work for the day, 

 as the sini had gone back of a cloud 

 soon after 4 p. m. At dusk that 

 night I weighed the hive again, 

 saying as I did so, that if my estimate 

 was correct, it should weigh 8 pounds 

 more than it did in the morning. I 

 found that it weighed 8 pounds and 9 

 ounces, thus showing that I was not 

 far out of the way. I5ut what was a 

 great surprise to me was that when 

 weighed the next morning, I found 

 that S pounds and 9 ounces gain had 

 gone down to 3?.^ pounds, thus show- 

 ing that the nectar just from the' 

 flowers was not all honey by any 

 means. 



After this I became infatuated with 

 the idea that there could be as much 

 honey obtained from apple blossoms 

 as from basswood, if I could only get 

 the popidation of the hive up to 

 40,000 instead of 4,000 ; so I began 

 trying to get my bees strong early in 

 the spring, but after an entire failure 

 of apple honey for the next three 

 years, on account of cold, rainy 

 weather. I gave the matter up, only 

 trying to get the bees strong, so as to 

 take advantage of the generally good 

 weather in ttie basswood harvest, as 

 we have but little white clover here. 



The point I wish to make is : First, 

 we have the field or location we are 

 in. of which we should have a thor- 

 ough knowledge ; next, we have the 

 bees to get in large numbers just in 



