TUE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



253 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Observations, Statistics, and Queries, rela- 

 tive to wintering bees in cellars and spe- 

 cial repositories. 



Much Esteemed Editor : — The subscriber 

 has been a beekeeper about fifteen years, during 

 which time he has been constantly experiment- 

 ing with a great variety of hives, both patented 

 andoriginal, all liome made and well made; and 

 has also been experimenting in every '■'■modus 

 operandi''' incident to beekeeping, particularly 

 relative to wintering bees in all varieties of ways. 

 In some of these he has succeeded, in others fail- 

 ed ; FAILED and SUCCEEDED in every plan yet 

 tried, and is yet a novice, at least No. 3, and 

 would be No. 1, did not another occupy that 

 chair, and rather assumingly, too, we think ! ! 



Well, we are still in doubt relative to the exact 

 best method of preparing the hives containing 

 colonies for wintering in special repositories. We 

 do not keep many bees ; never having attempted 

 to winter more than ninety colonies in a single 

 season. We have a very excellent, neat, dry 

 cellar — so dry that apples would shrivel in it. 

 It is about twenty feet long, by twelve feet broad, 

 and nine feet high, with a nice, smooth, flagged 

 bottom of flat stones, two and a half inches thick, 

 laid on dry sand. The walls are massive, say 

 three feet thick, (it being in one corner of a large 

 stone edifice, eighty by fifty feet and four stories 

 high). A brick wall divides the cellar from ano- 

 ther in the opposite corner, and a wooden parti- 

 tion from a cross hall, on the opposite side of 

 which is a large dairy, where butter is made, all 

 winter, and which is of course kept at a fit tem- 

 perature for raising cream, summer and winter. 



In this cellar we have wintered, successfully 

 and unsuccessfully, from thirty to sixty-one colo- 

 nies of bees. These were in movable comb and 

 box hives; some in Langstroth's, some in Kid- 

 der's, and some in other styles of movable comb, 

 and yet others in box hives. 



The temperature of this cellar is very uniform, 

 ordinarily not varying more than from four to 

 six degrees all winter, even when containing 

 sixty colonies of bees — the variation being 34° to 

 40°. The cellar is ventilated from the outside, 

 by six pieces of one inch lead pipe thrust through 

 the window frames, of which there are two — one 

 on the east side and one on the south. Through 

 the inner partition there is a round aperture, six 

 inches in diameter, at the bottom, leading into 

 an outer cellar and open hallway connecting 

 with the dairy. 



In the winter of 1868-9, we wintered in this 

 place sixty-one stocks. Twenty-four of these 

 were in box hives, set upon shelves, having the 

 holes thrciugh the top of the hive, connecting 

 with the honey boxes open, inverted, with a 

 straw mat over the bees. We found some of the 

 strongest became uneasy, and removed the mats 

 to quiet them. But these did not winter well ; 

 they crawled out badly, and many bees died and 

 fell down among the combs. We did not like 

 this plan, and would prefer setting them right 

 end up, on a nadir frame four inches high, ven- 

 tilated through its sides. Yet we have wintered 



box hives in this same cellar, inverted and fixed 

 as first stated, which wintered well ; but there 

 were then only twenty-four colonies in it, set 

 only four inches above the stone bottom. 



The remaining thirty-six colonies were in 

 movable frame hives, set on four inch slatwork, 

 placed on the cellar bottom ; the passages in 

 hives at bottom open ; honey boards removed ; 

 wire sieve preserver on top, with a straw mat 

 one inch thick over this. These wintered well. 



The past winter, 1809-70, we put into this 

 cellar thirty-six stocks in movable comb hives. 

 Many of them Avere weak in numbers and scant 

 in honey, though we fed two barrels of white 

 coffee A sugar to about fifty colonies, between 

 the 7th and the 20th of September last. It was 

 mostly sealed over. This sugar was simply 

 melted with about twenty pounds of w^ater to 

 twenty-five pounds of sugar, and one teaspoon- 

 ful of cream of tartar to twenty pounds of sugar. 

 The result is that we lost thirteen of these thirty- 

 six colonies, seven for want of food and six from 

 some other cause — perhaps because there Avere 

 no youug bees bred late in the fall. Or, was it 

 because of their feed ? All the bees, both those 

 that were fed and those not fed, were afiected 

 with a kind of dysentery, though they did not 

 soil the combs at all, but only the tops of the 

 frames. Three-fourths of the bees in each colony 

 died, however, from some cause — apparently dys- 

 entery. 



Query. What produced this dysentery ? The 

 mercury did not vary over four degrees, in this 

 cellar, all last winter. Was it the cream of 

 tartar put into the sugar ? If so, why did those 

 colonies which were not fed at all become in like 

 manner affected, as was the case? 



We had fifty-four colonies in a new bee-house, 

 built expressly last summer, for wintering bees. 

 It had double sills on all sides, and four sets of 

 studding. It has three walls on each side ; two 

 of straw, eight inches thick, and one of eight 

 inches of sawdust between them, two floors, and 

 one foot of straw and eight inches of sawdust 

 between them ; a floor overhead, and on this it 

 is designed to place one foot of sawdust and one 

 foot of straw. This was not finished last fall. 

 The room is twelve by twenty-six feet inside, and 

 nine feet higt. It is divided'through the middle, 

 lengthwise, to a hall five feet wide, which is par- 

 titioned off of the south end by a stud and board 

 partition, with one inch matched boards, and the 

 space between the studs is filled with sawdust. 

 Thus w^e have two bee-rooms for storage, each 

 six feet wide by twenty-one feet long and nine 

 feet high. From each of these rooms we have a 

 ventilating chimney, four by six inches, reaching 

 from one foot below the floor overhead two and 

 a half feet above the roof for egress of foul or 

 heated air ; and one ingress ventilating chimney, 

 four inches by twelve, reaching from the lower 

 floor of beeroom out above the roof. This is so 

 constructed as to supply each of the beerooms, as 

 one-lialf of it opens into each. In warmest 

 weather these ventilators were left open ; in the 

 coldest they were nearly shut ; but owing to so 

 thin a covering on the floor over the rooms, the 

 mercury varied too much — about eighteen de- 

 grees ; that is, it fell to 22°, and rose to 40°, 



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