July 13 19(5 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



489 



find out what the temperature is under those conditions, and 

 you keep your bees quiet at that temperature, it does not 

 make any difference where your thermometer is. 



Dr. Miller— I am not sure but there is a way of telling. 

 If I understand Mr. Dadant correctly you c"'t tell by the 

 noise of the bees whether they are too cold or too warm. 

 I wouldn't like to be too critical about it, but I think when 

 they begin to get too cold there is a kind of rattling noise, 

 if I may so call it, of their wings, that you hear, and I don't 

 think I could tell you what the other is, but there is a little 

 difference in the noise, Mr. Dadant, between being too cold 

 and too warm. 



Mr. Colburn — In relation to this noise that you speak 

 about, that is the noise bees make in the cellar, I have never 

 had much experience in cellar-wintering — only two winters 

 — and I found my bees making some sort of a noise all the 

 time, and yet they came through last winter very nicely. 

 The question is, how much or how little noise would a green 

 horn want to observe in order to know what the temperatun 

 should be? 



Mr. Stewart — Is there any temperature where bees al- 

 ways keep quiet in the cellar, or do they always keep quiet 

 at any temperature in the cellar? 



Dr. Miller — I think there are some who claim they can 

 secure perfect quiet. I never could. I think you will find 

 this: If you have one colony in the cellar and watch it 

 k closely you will find part of the time that colony will be per- 



fectly quiet, and then it will have a spell of stirring up and 

 it will be noisy, and then quiet for a long time. If you have 

 a number of colonies in the cellar you will find that there 

 will be a noise there all the time. At least that is the way 

 I find it. At times there will be very little noise ; it will 

 suggest to you the blowing of a gentle breeze through the 

 dead trees in winter time. That you will find at all times 

 if your cell ,ar is like mine; and that I think comes from 

 the different colonies, here and there, making an unusual 

 amount of noise. I don't believe there is any one colony that 

 is all the time the same way. I think they have their spells of 

 "turning over in bed," when they make a little more noise 

 than usual. But as to trying to get them so that they are 

 entirelv quiet all the time, you might as well give that up. 

 But, find the temperature at which they make the least 

 noise. That is the point. 



Mr. Kimmey — Do bees make more noise as they become 

 too cold? 



Dr. Miller— Yes. 



^Ir. Kimmey — Suppose I should find my thermometer at 

 28 degrees, would you advise me to leave it that way? Do 

 you think it is possible to find it that way? 



Dr. Miller — No. I think you might possibly find, the 

 way you have it in your cellar, that they were most quiet at 

 40 degrees. I might find them most quiet at 47 degrees. 

 That is, your place and my place may be different. But your 

 question? 



Mr. Kimmey — My point is, is it possible that the bees 

 would be so cold that they would make less noise than they 

 ought to? 



Dr. Miller — No, sir, unless they are dead. When they 

 are dead they make hardly any noise! (Laughter.) 



Mr. Kimmey — I don't want that then. I have tried to 

 keep mine between 45 and .'30 degrees, and have succeeded 

 very well and have not lost any. I would like to do better 

 than that if I could! 



Mr. .Abbott — I would like to ask a question, to bring out 

 a point. Dr. Miller says that they will make some noise un- 

 less they are so cold that they are dead. I should like to 

 know if Dr. Miller thinks that bees ever get so cold in the 

 cellar or out-of-doors that they die from cold when they 

 have plenty to eat? I don't think they do. 



Dr. Miller — There are some things I don't know. One 

 of the things I do know is that Mr. Abbott doesn't think as 

 I do about that. My bees will freeze. I take a bee in my 

 hand and if I hold it out in the cold long enough, that bee 

 is going to freeze. 



Mr. Abbott — That is not the question. Don't confine it 

 to a single bee. If two lie together they make heat. Vou 

 can't make heat with one. If a lot of bees lie together tliey 

 make heat. Do they ever freeze when they all lie together in 

 that way? 



Mr. Dadant — How big a bunch of bees? 



Mr. .Abbott — The ordinary size? 



Dr. Miller — If there is a stove in a room and it is hot 

 enough people are not going to freeze, and as long as there is 

 plenty of food there to keep the furnace going the bees will 



keep up that heat ; they are not going to freeze. When they 

 fail of that they are going to freeze, Mr. Abbott to the con- 

 trary notwithstanding. He says they starve. I say they freeze. 

 You can pay your money and take your choice. 



Ernest R. Root — I would like to answer both Mr. Abbott's 

 and Dr. Miller's questions. Last summer in queen-rearing 

 operations we conducted a series of experiments to get some 

 drone-layers. We had read in some of the old works that if 

 you freeze a queen for awhile she will become a drone-layer. 

 So I took about a dozen of our young, nice vigorous laying 

 queens, caged them with the bees, put them on a cake of ice 

 in a refrigerator and left them, varying all the way from two 

 hours up to 48. I expected some of them to be dead. The 

 bees were perfectly stiff at the end of two hours. I took them 

 out and examined them and put them back, and some of them 

 we put into nuclei to see what they would do, to see whether 

 the queens would refuse to lay regular worker eggs. I don't 

 know whether you believe me or not — I don't know whether 

 Dr. Miller or Mr. Abbott would ; I don't know exactly how 

 they disagree, but we found in every case that when taken off 

 the ice, chilled, cold — I won't say they were frozen to death; 

 they couldn't have been — in a few hours they would "come 

 to;" the queens would begin in three or four days afterwards 

 to lay, and lay normally, and not one of them laid drone-layer 

 eggs. The question was, if bees can be put in a position 

 where they are perfectly stiff with cold for 48 hours, can they 

 be kept in that condition longer, and, if so, how long? I 

 omitted to carry on that experiment. It has been said bees do 

 not die of cold. What kills them we do not know. 



Another question, I should say the question of the temper- 

 ature of the cellar and the buzzing and noise depends some- 

 what on the time of year. When the bees are first put, in they 

 are apt to be quiet in our cellar, with a high or low tempera- 

 ture, but after they have been there for three or four months 

 they begin to get uneasy. Then the latter must be accounted 

 for. If the temperature is too high or too low it rpust be 

 brought to the proper degree. Giving bees a midwinter flight 

 stops the buzzing and roaring in our case. I would describe 

 this noise, when it is normal, as like a harp. Once in a while 

 you will get a noise something like the sound of telephone 

 wires, not that high note, but a sort of low, distant hum. 

 When you get something of the effect of that contented, quiet 

 noise amongst the bees that seems to indicate everything is 

 normal and right, that is the condition we call perfect; and 

 yet there is a little noise there, aiid that noise might, to the 

 beginner, seem to be the wrong thing. 



Mr. Abbott— We don't get the point exactly yet. I think 

 this is a vital point, and I have been trying to get the bee- 

 books and bee-papers, to say something about it for a long 

 time and they have persisted in not doing it, and that is the 

 reason I am calling it out. I hold that bees are wintered suc- 

 cessfully where the mercury runs down to 40 degrees below 

 zero, out-of-doors, on the summer stands ; and that that can be 

 done in any place in the United States, provided there is food 

 accessible ; and that no normal cluster of bees ever dies from 

 cold when there is food accessible; and to be accessible it 

 must be directlv above the cluster; and that the bees in that 

 condition will winter safely any place in any temperature that 

 ever existed in the United States or ever may exist— if the 

 food is accessible— if the "stove" is there, as Dr. Miller says. 

 He brings the point out clearly. If the food is on another 

 frame or where thev can't get at it without breaking cluster 

 or following up the 'line of heat they will die from starvation, 

 but if thev can get at the "stove" they will not die. Now if 

 anybodv has anv evidence to prove to the contrary I should 

 like to know it, for I have been talking this thing for 15 or 20 

 years, and I don't want to talk it any longer if it is not right. 

 But I do. if it is right, longer and louder. 



Mr. Wilcox— What I was going to say was bearing rather 

 upon the discussion between Dr. Miller and Mr. Root, but 

 since Mr. .\bbott has spoken I want to say I have conducted 

 one experiment that substantiates his claim very much. I 

 once took a bee-tree about four feet long and set it 

 up in the front yard, full of honey and bees, and 

 with a temperature of 40 degrees below zero. It froze 

 and burst open the whole length; and those bees win- 

 tered well and came out right in the spring. I could put 

 mv hands right through a crack anywhere in that tree That 

 goes to confirm somewhat Mr. .\bbott's theory. The other 

 matter about which I wish to speak is not very important or 

 profitable, but may perhaps be interesting as an experiment. 

 Before I commenced keeping bees in movable-comb hives I 

 inverted a half sugar barrel filled with bees and honey; 

 poured cold water clear to the brim to drown the bees; left 



