348 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



exists nowhere except in the imagination 

 and theory. The thermometer does not 

 reveal any such fact. 



Now, I do not say that there are no 

 colonies which will not show this 

 amount of warmth ; indeed, it was only 

 necessary to turn my back to these 

 tested colonies, and place the thermom- 

 eter about >^ inch from the cluster of a 

 colony which was affected with diarrhea, 

 and the mercury jumped to SO '. 



Seeing that these colonies were doomed 

 to destruction from the accumulation of 

 moisture, they were carried out of the 

 cellar into a bee repository where the 

 temperature has not yet been down to 

 50^, or above 650; usually standing at 

 6 20. 



When I lifted the boards and papers 

 off the hives, water literally ran off from 

 them, and the hives showed that mois- 

 ture had condensed on the combs and 

 inside of the hive, so as to run down and 

 soak through the joints at the bottom. 



Two hours in a temperature of 62^ 

 rendered the hives dry. The brood- 

 chambers remained uncovered for 

 awhile, andcthen there was spread over 

 them two thicknesses of newspaper. 



To this covering one of the colonies 

 objected, and manifested their inten- 

 tions by getting uneasy and gnawing 

 three or four holes in the papers, 

 directly above the cluster of the bees, 

 and a nice cluster of bees came up 

 above the paper, and then the colony 

 became very quiet. In the three or four 

 days following this the temperature was 

 lowered from 62^ to 56°, and all but 3 

 or 4 bees of the cluster had retired to 

 the inside of the papers. 



On account of some manipulations I 

 wished to make with some other colo- 

 nies, I continued to lower the tempera- 

 ture toward 50^^, and as these bees had 

 gone inside the hive, I thought a lower 

 temperature would be cold on them, and 

 I accordingly laid on the top of the 

 papers a new J^ inch pine board that 

 was warped so as to leave a space under 

 it like a Hill's device. 



In lowering the temperature it was 

 necessary to be absent about two hours ; 

 when I returned and was surprised to 

 find this colony (previous, so still) now 

 making a great uproar. On raising the 

 board it was found to be warped exactly 

 the opposite from what it was when put 

 on, and hundreds of bees- crowding in 

 und(!r it, and the paper had bc(in re- 

 moved for a si)ace larger than my hand. 

 The board was set on one edge, against 

 the hive, and there was immediately be- 

 gan the contented hum, and nuiri-h back 

 into th(! hive. 



Although I brought a bright lamp and 

 set it on one corner of the hive, only one 

 or two bees paid any attention to the 

 light. The temperature was then 52°. 

 When the bees had become settled a 

 piece of writing-paper was laid over the 

 hole the bees had now made in the 

 papers, and it was soon torn, and as the 

 bees went at it in great force, it was 

 crowded entirely out of the way, and 

 the bees went back amongst the combs 

 and became quiet, and did not enUirge 

 the hole they had made in the paper. 



One thing of importancenoticed, when 

 the bees were in this' uneasy state, 

 and trying to remove the cover was, 

 that quite a number of bees, perhaps 50 

 or 75, crawled out on the cover papers, 

 away from the rest of the bees and 

 dropped their excrement, just as the 

 bees in a diarrhetical colony will crawl 

 upward above the entrance to the hive 

 and void the same. 



There is a peculiar motion to the in- 

 dividual bees when they leave the clus- 

 ter for this purpose— they seem to have 

 only one idea or thought, which is to get 

 out and separate from the rest of the 

 bees. They came threading their way 

 through, turning this way and that, to 

 get past other bees, while the main 

 throng were marching the other way, 

 keeping up a joyful hum. They appear 

 about as heedless (or, perhaps, as head- 

 less) as people escaping from a burning 

 building. 



After evacuation, they remained mo- 

 tionless as if contemplating whether to 

 wander further away from the hive and 

 die, or return and undertake to live in 

 it again. Hearing the hum of content- 

 ment set up by the other bees, they 

 would turn their heads to one side and 

 then to the other, and then scrambled 

 back toward the brood-combs quite 

 lively. 



The bodies of these bees were not ex- 

 cessively distended. They could take 

 wing easily and fly all around the room. 

 Now the question comes up : Was this 

 diarrhea, or healthy evacuation of the 

 intestines? 



It looks to me as if th<u"e was some 

 kind of atmosphere in the hives that 

 caused it, and that tlie board and paper 

 I laid on caused it to accumulate in th<! 

 top of the hive. The entrauce, ^ixKi 

 inches, was wide open. Our, supposed 

 to be, best authorities say that " noisome 

 gas(!s and vapors escape at the bottom of 

 the hive." When the coverings are re- 

 moved, the stench from th(> colonies rlficfi 

 to one's nostrils. 



It looks as if this may have been a 

 healthy colony. Still it would have been 



