AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



671 



I5EE-KEEriNG IN CENTRAL MISSOURI. 



School is out, and I am again in the 

 apiary ; but all is not happiness, for I 

 And 10 of my 32 colonies dead, and 

 about 6 others very weak. 



I made a sad mistake last Fall, and 

 have learned a good lesson which I will 

 not soon forget. I know now that it will 

 not do to rob with the expectation that 

 bees will get plenty of Spanish-needle 

 honey to winter upon. 



While there was plenty of Fall-flowers 

 where I was teaching school, and the 

 bees filled their hives full of the finest 

 Spanish-needle honey I ever saw, yet 

 mine got scarcely any whatever. IIow 

 easy it would have been for me to have 

 reserved a few brood-combs full of 

 honey, and had them ready for my 

 starving bees. It is so easy to keep a 

 hundred pounds of honey in brood- 

 frames, and it is so easy to put them in 

 by the side of a starving colony. 



Columbia, Mo., May 6, 1892. 



"Tlie Winter ProM' 



G. B. PIERCE. 



About Feb. 1, 1892, I received a 

 letter from Mr. D. C. Leach, of Walton, 

 Mich., who was visiting his children in 

 Springfield, Mo. He is an entire 

 stranger to me, and his sending this 

 letter expressing his pleasure in reading 

 my book — " The Winter Problem " — was 

 so hearty that I requested his permis- 

 sion to have it published in the Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal. I gather from what 

 he says, that he has been a devoted 

 lover of bees, though not strictly a "bee- 

 keeper," as we generally use the word. 



Blairstown, Iowa. 



[The letter referred to by Mr. Pierce, 

 written to him by Mr. Leach, reads as 

 follows : — Ed.] 



I have just finished reading, with deep 

 interest, the " Winter Problem in Bee- 

 Keeping." I like it. It confirms me in 

 an opinion I have long entertained, that 

 the instinct of the honey-bee was not a 

 blunder on the part of the Creator. 



I have been an amateur bee-keeper for 

 the greater part of my life (I am now 

 09). In my earlier years I used the 

 box-hives. My father before me used 

 the " gum," a section of a hollow leg, 

 from 15 to 18 inches long. I do not 

 remember that he ever had a colony 

 frozen in Winter, and I cannot recollect 



that I ever had, while I used the old- 

 fashioned box-hives, although I lived in 

 central Michigan, where the mercury 

 often went below zero, and not unfre- 

 quently to 10'^ or 20° below. One Win- 

 ter, I well remember, it went to 23^ 

 below zero, yet ray bees, on the summer 

 stands, without protection, came through 

 all right ; so, also, did those of my 

 neighbors. 



My hives were made of undressed 

 inch boards ; 12 inches wide. The 

 height of the hives were from 14 to 18 

 inches ; hence, inside measurement, was 

 10x12x14 to 18 inches. All parts of 

 the hive, except the entrance at the 

 bottom, were, after the bees had done 

 their part, absolutely air-tight. There 

 was no chance whatever for " upward 

 ventilation." 



Well. I never was an " old fogy ;" I 

 believed in " keeping up with the times," 

 so I accepted the movable-frame hive, 

 and with it the " upward ventilation " 

 theory. Yet I never in my life prepared 

 my bees for Winter, with the cushion 

 and chaff above them, without wonder- 

 ing why they were imbued with the 

 instinct to make the top and sides of 

 their hives air-tight. I never could feel 

 that I was doing quite the riglit thing by 

 them when I removed the perfectly 

 sealed top board, and gave them the 

 cushion and chaff. But I was a busy 

 man, giving a few hours of recreation to 

 my bees, while all wise men, who made 

 bee-keeping a business and a study, said 

 it was the thing to do. So I did it. I 

 might have seen that the bees, with the 

 Creator on their side, were wiser than 

 all their keepers. 



Now, do not your experiments show 

 that the form of our hives might be im- 

 proved ? Would not a hive 10x10x20, 

 or 10x12x18 inches, inside measure, be 

 an improvement? In sucb a hive a 

 strong colony, in Winter, would be able 

 to occupy all except the two outside 

 frames, and, with their stores nearly all 

 above them, could move gradually and 

 safely upward, thus utilizing the heat 

 given out by the cluster. I have so 

 much faith in this view of the matter, 

 that if I were a young man, and situated 

 so I could attend to it, I would try the 

 experiment. 



Referring to what you and Rev. W. F. 

 Clarke say as to why bees select their 

 homes in trees high up from the ground, 

 I will simply remark that it is t)ecause 

 they find the hollows and the holes to 

 get into them some distance above the 

 earth. 



There are probably a hundred trees 

 that furnish them accommodations from 



