1!X)3. 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



241 



ter, wutor, for this reasou, is necessary 

 to deconipositiou. 



The prorcss of j;ettiug rid or" ine 

 drones, l»efore winter stops till active 

 work in the hive, is a sanitary or hy- 

 gienic nieasnre taken by the worker 

 bees to protect the colony from Tii'sease 

 which uiight arise from dead dromes in 

 the hive. It is often said that ipicen- 

 less colonies do not discard the drones. 

 For a good reason the workers delay 

 the sanitary measnre, which may some- 

 times be neglected altogether, but I 

 have seen queenless colonies driving 

 out the drones. Fortunately for ihe 

 bee-keepers' interests the worlver bees 

 do not study economic measures as 

 closely as they do liygianie measures, 

 and if our hives were constructed with- 

 out floor-boards, so that the drones ex- 

 cluded from the hibernating- clusters 

 would fall to the ground when cliilled 

 by the winter cold, the workers would 

 not eject the drones from the hive. 



A sti'ictly hygienic hive would ]3rob- 

 ably be a hive without a floor-board. 

 Langstroth and Cowan have stated 

 that they knew bees to winter safely 

 in hives without floor-boards, aud 

 Langstroth states in the first edition 



of his book that the only colony he had 

 to survive an unusually cold winter 

 in the State of New York was in a 

 single-walled hive without any floor- 

 boards — the colonies in hives with 

 floor-boards all having perished. Lang- 

 stroth mentioiiS, however, having giv- 

 en some upward ventilation to these 

 hives in which the colonies perislied. 

 The top of hi^es for wintering colonies 

 safelv in snow should be hermetically 

 tight! 



Doctor Draper said that man would 

 yet learn sociology from the bees, and 

 hygiene might be added. The ijees 

 will teach more than the "act of order 

 to a peopled Ivingdom," but only when 

 the people of the kingdom are ready 

 and willing to learn. 



In our climate the drones do not die 

 of old age, and their death and life- 

 Avork are l)y nature inseparably unit- 

 ed. The life of the drones, soon to end 

 from the winter cold, is shortened by 

 the worker bees in order to protect the 

 colony fi"om disease, the preservation 

 of the colony requiring that the drones 

 should not die in the hive in winter 

 when the workers are unable to do any 

 sanitarA' work, or to carrv out the dead. 





the time — things kind of ornery down 

 his way, tho' he don't mention it — 

 and he's been relieving of himself on 

 nie. I can always stand it from the 

 I'arson 'cause his doin' is always 

 ahead of his preachiu'. He sot me to 

 cogitatin' rather more'n usual, kinder 

 overstocked me, so I'll be a lettin' of 

 i*^ out on you. Why you? Wal the 

 inen as has bees be about the same as 

 tother folks, only sometimes more so 

 here and there, and if I tell you it'll 

 leak out — generally does — so all hands 

 will get a taste of it. 



Don't throAv mud at my idols, if ye 

 Dear Brother Hill: — I've been back do I'll hate ye. They may be battered 

 about a week and be a feelin' right and tattered, bedaubed and bedraggled, 

 smart. Doc sort of knew what I the sawdust may be a runnin' out of 

 needed, I 'low. Well since I returned 'em and their tin halo be on askew, but 

 the Parson has camped here most of they're my idols and you're a low down 



