THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



257 



strong colonies for 3'our surplus, 

 and let the weak colonies build up 

 into good colonies at their own ex- 

 pense. Perhaps they will be your 

 strong colonies the next j'ear. 

 I am not to be understood that I 

 do not advise the use of brood in 

 necessary cases, to save weak col- 

 onies. 



Christiansburg, Ky. 



From '^Gleanings.'" 



CELLAR vs. OUTDOOR WIN- 

 TERING. 



W. Z. Hutchinson. 



It is a pleasure indeed to dis- 

 cuss apicultural problems with such 

 a man as O. O. Poppleton — one 

 who can lay aside prejudices, and 

 calmly and fairly tr}'^ to find truth. 

 I am glad to note with what unan- 

 imity most of the bee-journals and 

 their contributors are dropping 

 personalities — discussing irrinci- 

 ples instead of men. 



It is true, that these matters un- 

 der discussion between friend Pop- 

 pleton and myself are foreign to 

 the main topic of my little book ; 

 but they are important and season- 

 able. 



In regard to caring for bees in 

 the cellar, there may be a grain of 

 truth in what Mr. Poppleton says. 

 If a man wishes to leave his bees 

 uncared for all winter, and go off 

 to the land of flowers, it may be 

 better to protect them thoroughly 

 upon their summer stands. Most 

 of our beekeepers, however, stay 

 at home winters, and to them this 

 question of supervision is not a 

 weighty one. Take my own case, 

 for instance. My bees were kept 

 in a cellar under the sitting-room ; 

 hence there was no expense for a 

 fire on account of the bees, or else 

 there was no expense for a fire to 



keep ourselves warm. I presume the 

 majority of beekeepers are situated 

 in exactly this manner. And now 

 about the supervision in regard to 

 temperature. We ripped apart, 

 for a short distance, two breadths 

 of the carpet, bored a hole in tlie 

 floor, and suspended a thermome- 

 ter b}' means of a string attached 

 to a cork that just filled the hole in 

 the floor. A rug was kept over 

 the slit in the carpet. Our little 

 girls kept watch of the tempera- 

 ture. It seemed to afford them 

 considerable pleasure to have each 

 one guess what the "tempuchary" 

 (as the youngest one called it; was, 

 and then look and see who had 

 guessed the nearest. The "tem- 

 puchary'" varied from 40° to 48° ; 

 most of the time it was 45°. When 

 we had extremely cold weather, 

 accompanied by high winds, the 

 mercury would sink to 40°. Upon 

 several occasions I kept a lamp- 

 stove burning all night in the 

 hatchway, and burned, perhaps, 

 between one and two gallons of 

 oil. Had there been a double door 

 to the hatchway I do not think this 

 burning of lamps would have been 

 necessary. The mercury reached 

 48° during warm days upon the ap- 

 proach of spring. Nearly all cel- 

 lars need a drain, and it is just 

 about as easy to make the drain so 

 that it can be used for a sub-earth 

 ventilator as not. My own cellar 

 drain is so arranged ; but I have 

 not allowed the air to pass in 

 through the drain for the last two 

 winters. Do you ask why? Well, 

 I had my doubts as to its benefits ; 

 and, besides this, it lowered the 

 temperature. Had the pipe been 

 longer it might not have done so ; 

 it is only about seventy feet. I 

 had twenty colonies buried in a 

 clamp last winter. They were put 

 in about the middle of November. 

 A wooden tube, three inches square 

 and about eight feet long, extended 

 from near the bottom of the clamp 



