THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



Jinniary 



condense thereon, but is held in sus- 

 pension and driven out with tlie vitiated 

 air by tlie bees. One of the early 

 operations of the bees in a new home, be 

 it a box, a straw hive or a hollow tree is 

 to thorouglily varnish the interior, and 

 when they have a box fixed to their 

 liking it will be as tight as a tin can. 

 My bees are prepared as follows: 



Double-walled hives witli two inches 

 of planer-chips all around, an enani'l 

 cloth mat over the frames and over 

 this a tray with cloth bottom contain- 

 ing two inches of chips. The mat is 

 put on early enough to enable tiie 

 bees to glue it tight and also to make 

 their own bee-ways above the frames, 

 if they wish them. For over lifteen 

 years I have thus prepared my bees, 

 sometimes wintering upwards of forty 

 colonies, and with a loss of less than 

 one per cent, of colonies so prepared, in 

 all that time. Go to my bees when the 

 snow lies deep and you will find it melt- 

 ed away from the entrances. That 

 shows ventilation enough to suit me and 

 evidently to suit the bees: at least they 

 come out in the spring witli dry combs, 

 sound stores and healthy bees. 



Nearly every winter I try some differ- 

 ent plan with one or two colonies, and 

 this season have two in single-walled 

 hives, enameled mat and two inches of 

 chips on top of frames, and tarred 

 paper around the outside of hives from 

 the cover to the ground. The climatic 

 conditions are th(!-se: Exposed to all 

 northerly storms, with a temperature 

 often b(^low zero, but never for long 

 periods; then a change of wind to the 

 south which brings in warm, moisture- 

 laden air from the gulf streams, satur- 

 ating everything with water. Then 

 again, while everything is soaked wet 

 the wind will change and in a few hours 

 all is turned to ice. Generally bees get 

 a chance to fly once or twice each 

 month, though I have known them to 

 be shut in all winter. Under such con- 

 ditions I prefer a well-painted chaff 

 hive, sealed tight and only such venti- 



lation as the bees choose to make 

 through the entrance. 



Providence. K. T.. Nov. :.'l. I'.iui). 



QUALIFYING FOR AN APIARIST. 



BY <i. M. i>o(n.riTi.i;. 



NOW that we aie in tiie miJst of 

 long winter evening-; it bi'comes 

 till- duty of ail to s])eud thi^se 

 evenings in such a way that tiiey iiuiy be 

 gaining in knowledge along the line of 

 the pursuit they have chosen in life. In 

 no business engagement is this more im- 

 perative than where tlu' cullure of the 

 honey-bet^ is the chosen occupation; and 

 in no way can this be done to any better 

 advantage than in reading the bee- 

 literature of the day. Beside The 

 American Bee-keeper, other papers 

 especially devoted to bee-keeping should 

 be taken and read, and some of the 

 many good bee-books purchased and 

 studied, from which the mind is to be 

 stored with useful knowledge, which 

 can be put into practice as soon as the 

 season of 1901 opens. 



Wiien I lirst commenced bee-keeping 

 I was greatly benefitted by the writings 

 of L. L. Langstroth, Moses Quinby, E. 

 Gallup. A. I. Root, Adam Grimm and 

 many others of those early writers on 

 this subject; for by their writings I 

 learned my A B C in bee-culture. 1869 

 was my first year of experience in bee- 

 keeping, by way of putting the things 

 which I had read into practice, and, 

 although a year so poor that those keep- 

 ing bees about me got nothing, I ob- 

 tained twelve pounds of comb-honey and 

 one swarm from the two pur- 

 chased in the spring. The next season 

 I obtained an average of about thirty 

 pounds of surplus from each 

 colony I had in the spring. At the end 

 of the fourth season I chronicled an 

 average of eighty pounds of comb-honey 

 as the surplus for each colony in the 

 spring, and at the end of the eighth year 

 my record was an average yield of 1(56?^ 

 pounds of comb-honey from the sixty- 

 nine colonies of that spring, while the 



