7 HE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



knowledge thus gained to the success- 

 ful management of your bees. 



Auother thing I want you to do this 

 winter is to look about you hives often 

 and notice how much faster some col- 

 onies of bees die off than others. You 

 will find that some will keep strong all 

 winter and be as good apparently in 

 the spring as they were last fall, while 

 others will die off more in one month 

 than some do all winter, and they 

 keep on dying until they are so reduc- 

 ed by spring that they are worth but 

 little, and others dwindle and die long- 

 before spring, and all this in face of 

 the fact that you had them all as near 

 alike in the fall as it was possible to 

 have them. Yes, in the same kind of 

 hives, securely packed in orthodox 

 style. 



Now why all this difference in the 

 wintering of your bees? 



Well, please make the observations 

 above mentioned, and I will say that 

 this is one of the questions among oth- 

 ers that I propose to advise you on in 

 these articles. 



M'aynesburg, Pa. 



{To be continued I 

 ^m m — 



Winter Dwindling, Honey Dew 



and Preparing Bees 



for Winter. 



BY M. H. DEWITT. 



Bees sometimes die off during the 

 winter, and this is often caused by 

 unwholesome food and confinement to 

 their hives during long, cold winters. 

 Honey dew is frequently the cause of 

 this trouble, as it makes very un- 

 wholesome winter stores, although I 

 notice that Mr. Jas. Heddon recom- 

 mends it as good winter stores in sev- 

 eral bee journals. It would do for 

 winter stores during mild, open win- 



ters. When bees can have a cleans- 

 ing flight they may winter on sucdi 

 stores, but if the winter is long and 

 protracted they will become diseased, 

 and will soon dwindle away to noth- 

 ing and die, 



I would not recommend honey dew 

 as a winter food by any means, as the 

 result of feeding it would be heavy 

 losses and discouragements to the api- 

 arist. It is a product of the Aphides, 

 or plant lice that feed on the leaves of 

 many trees and emit a sweet liquid 

 and spray it over the leaves of the 

 trees and the bees gather it. It is not 

 a dew, as many suppose, that falls like 

 the dew on the grass. It should be 

 extracted from the combs and sugar 

 syrup fed instead, unless it is too late 

 to do so. 



Many bee keepers who do not use 

 chaff hives pack their bees in an out- 

 er box that answers the purpose of a 

 hive of that kind. A rough box of 

 any kind that is six or eight inches 

 larger each way than the hive will 

 answer. Make an entrance-way thro' 

 it and then fill in between the hive 

 and box with chaff or sawdust and 

 cover the hive over with the same 

 material, and then cover the box so as 

 to exclude the rain. By so doing we 

 can have our bees in as good condi- 

 tion, with respect to thick walls, as 

 the best chaff hive can make them. 

 If we winter without packing in an 

 outer case, we should place chaff or 

 sawdust in and over the brood frames 

 and cover them up as warm as w T e can. 

 Many of our leading bee keepers in 

 the north, where the winters are the 

 coldest, practice cellar wintering with 

 the best of success. The condition 

 necessary is to have a cellar dry and 



