THE AMERICAN BEE JOUENAL. 



101 



filled with Lay or straw. Upper floor and lower; 

 ill winter covered with sawdust. Ventilator in 

 lower floor, with a six inch stove pipe through 

 middle of upper floor, extending up near the 

 roof, with elbow on top to keep out light — mak- 

 ing considerable draft; and when door and 

 window are closed, the repository is as dark as 

 a dungeon. If colonies are strong with bees 

 and honey, or only moderately so with a fertile 

 queen, and well ventilated, I would not be 

 afraid to warrant them to come out all strong 

 in the spring, having no disease whatever. I 

 often throw open the door at evening, closing 

 it in the morning. Keep bees in a dry, even 

 temperature, say from 35^ to 42^, and you will 

 not have a sutfocated, smeared, stinking mass 

 of dead in the spring. Bees, like man, want 

 God's pure fresh air. We must remember that 

 tlie larger the number, the greater the heat. 

 Build large, ventilate. Read Gallup on winter- 

 ing. He is very near right on that, according 

 to my experience. I have had two stocks, one 

 twenty-two and the other twenty-three j'cars 

 old, in well made and painted hives. They 

 always had plenty of ventilation : stood at the 

 west end of a house, without protection, ex- 

 cept loose boards laid on top. They always did 

 well, till one of them died, and the other was 

 transferred. Cold does not kill old strong 

 stocks of bees in cur climate, if they have 

 plenty of honey over them. Best wishes for 

 the American Bee Jouknal and its readers. 

 Thomas Piekson. 

 Ghent, Ohio, October 2, 2869. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Loss in ■Wintering, and the Bee Cholera. 



I propose to speak in general of the reasons 

 for the loss of almost every stock of bees that 

 dies in winter ; and in so doing I think I can 

 unearth an idea or two, that have never been in 

 print before — at least I have never seen them so 

 myself. 



On page 149 and 150 of the Bee Journal, 

 vol. 4, Mr. Truesdell, of Warwick, Canada, 

 says— " On looking for the cause, I found this 

 hive, which was a well made one, closely sealed 

 above, and the melted frost had run down and 

 frozen over the front entrance until it was en- 

 tirely closed. So, evidently in a changing tem- 

 perature, their own breath had been the means 

 of scaling them up to destruction. My, bees 

 need ventilation." 



He should have said — " My bees, in winter, 

 need npward ventilation." 



The custom of many beekeepers is to stop up, 

 with mud or some other material, every crevice 

 about the top of a hive (1 speak of common 

 gum and box hives), at the approach of cold 

 weather, for the purpose of protecting bees 

 against intense cold. This is a sad mistake in 

 practical beekeeping. Better tar be opening up 

 small crevices abottt the upper part of the hive, 

 for the escape of dampness caused by the breath 

 of the bees in winter ; and as soon as the bees 

 begin to fly in the fepring, stop up every crevice 



or space, however small, through which heat 

 could make its escape from the hive, in its nat- 

 ural upward tendency. The first thought of 

 the inexperienced is directly the reverse of this; 

 and really, without experience, it does seem 

 that, in order to keep bees warm in winter, the 

 hive should be perfectly air-tight at top ; and to 

 give them ventilation in warm weather, it 

 should have open spaces about the top, to per- 

 mit the air to pass through the hive. But the 

 ditiereuce is in this, that the bees will them- 

 selves, in warm weather, ventilate the hive be- 

 low, at the place of ingress and egress ; which 

 they are unable to do in cold weather. Except 

 in comparatively only a small number of cases, 

 where the colonies are strong and vigorous, the 

 trouble is not in the temperature of the interior 

 of the hive, in cold weather, unless perhaps it 

 now and then thaws and the water drops down 

 among the bees and makes them damp. In 

 such case, if there is a sudden change again to 

 I intense cold, they sometimes freeze in conse- 

 quence of the dampness. Sometimes too it 

 occurs that the entrance is closed by ice formed 

 from condensed vapor running down, freezing 

 there, closing the entrance, and causing the 

 death of the bees by suffocation. But in my 

 experience I have lost more bees from the two 

 other causes, than from all the rest combined. 



There is a principle in nature, in regard to 

 the breathing of a^ir, that when we have breathed 

 all the air in a given space (for instance an air- 

 tight room) its life-sustaiuing power, which we 

 understand is the "oxygen" is consumed. 

 Then nothing that breathes can live inside of 

 this space. It is somewhat on the principle of 

 a man going into a well, where what is called 

 choke-damp exists. Men who have been in 

 such places and escaped with life, invariably 

 testify that there is not the slightest pain felt, 

 but a sensation of pleasant weakness and a dis- 

 position to fall asleep. The writer once knew 

 three young ladies to place some live coals in a 

 sugar kettle and carry it to their bed-room 

 (from want of a stove) for the purpose of warm- 

 ing their room, which was not ventilated. They 

 went to bed, leaving the live coals smoldering 

 in the kettle. Some time in the night they all 

 died, without even the appearance of a struggle. 

 This same separation of the life-sustaining part 

 of the air — the oxygen — by the use of burning 

 charcoal in a room without ventilation, had 

 taken place ; or if the room had been very small 

 and air-tight, they would have died in the same 

 manner, when they had breathed out all the 

 oxygen. 



Before we define our position thoioughly, we 

 will admit that there is a tendency in the law of 

 nature to an equalization ot temperature, and 

 to purify the air by its own effort to produce 

 commotion. But there seems to be in some 

 cases, perhaps only apparently, an inability to 

 perform this function, resulting in inaction or 

 stagnation. A failure to produce this equaliza- 

 tion of temperature in a hive, and supply the 

 bees with pure air, leaves them to go to sleep in 

 death. This generally occurs in hives that have 

 plenty of honey and bees. In fact, in almost 

 all cases where you find a large number of bees 

 in a hive after they are dead, their death was 



