1873.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



275 



fall down and close the entrance ; and the bees 

 must have ventilation somewhere. But the 

 bees are tough little fellows, and can stand a 

 good deal of wet, if warm, and a good deal of 

 cold, when dry ; but like other creatures, they 

 cannot stand wet and cold both at the same 

 time. If the air is too cold on the outside of 

 the hive, the pressure at the entrance is great, 

 and the air is pressed into the hive with great 

 force, and the circulation becomes rapid, the 

 power of the bees to keep up the necessary 

 heat is lessened, the hive is cooled, and the 

 moisture condenses and falls back on the bees, 

 like dew to the ground when the sun goes down; 

 the quilt and absorbents have lost their power, 

 and their utility is destroyed. Now the poor 

 wet bees will have the dysentery in two minutes 

 after they become chilled ; and will fall down, 

 and as there is but a half inch space below the 

 frames, this space is soon filled up, and they 

 lodge between the combs, the combs are already 

 wet with moisture and filled with dead bees, the 

 combs soon begin to mould, and the dead bees 

 to decompose, and the moisture increases. There 

 is now an absolute necessity for a good bee 

 doctor to know what's the matter; and to know 

 how to get into the hive, the right quantity of 

 pure air, of the right temperature, and to force 

 out the bad air. 



" Too much honey *' exclaims lots of bee- 

 keepers. This is not the cause but the effect. 

 Take out two or three frames of honey, and put 

 in boards that will exactly fill the place of the 

 frames taken out, and the effect will be the same. 

 It is not less honey, but more air, that the bees 

 need ; and it requires great experience and skil 

 ful management, to so winter a hive of bees, 

 with a few cubic inches of air, that, safe win- 

 tering will be the rule, and not the exception. 

 While here in this cold latitude of forty-five 

 degrees north, bees are suspended in their na- 

 tural hive, from twenty to fifty feet in the air, 

 and swayed about all winter by the winter 

 winds, enough to make a sailor seasick, yet these 

 bees put in their appearance all right in the 

 spring. This is the rule, and not the exception. 

 How to improve the improved hives is the 

 question. As it is hardly an invention, but as 

 the old woman said, a nice contrivance ; I shall 

 not apply for a patent, and any one who wishes 

 can easily apply it, to any kind of hive. 



Make a tight box that will just fit the outside 

 of the hive, set an inch post in each inside cor- 

 ner of the box, an inch shorter than the depth 

 of the box ; place the hive without a bottom on 

 these posts, the box will now close the entrance ; 

 make it all tight as possible between the box 

 and the hive, and make the ventilation two or 

 three inches from the bottom of the box. The* 

 hive will now contain four or five times as much 

 air as it did without the box, and if put in any 

 building sufficiently comfortable for horses or 

 cattle according to the amount of animal life it 

 contains, with a sufficiency of pure air, is warm 



enough for bees. A bee house or cellar that is 

 oUly large enough to hold twenty hives of bees 

 with a sufficiency of pure air, should not be 

 made to contain fifty hives; any more than a 

 stable sufficient for ten horses or cattle, should 

 have twenty crowded in. In the spring when 

 the bees are set out, saw a pole about six inches 

 square in the bottom board of the hives, and 

 tack a piece of wire cloth on, and place it on 

 the box for their summer stand, close the ven- 

 tilation in the box until the weather becomes 

 warm, and the bees need no more air than is 

 given at the entrance. 



Very Respectfully yours, 



Isaac Andrus. 

 Faribault, Rice Co., Minn., April 1873. 



[For the American Bee Journal ] 



To the Persecuted Bee-Keeper, 



Mr. James Wedden seems to be having about 

 the same trouble as a bee-keeper in Wenham 

 did, six years ago. Mr. John Gould, who lived 

 in this town, had about sixty hives of bees. 

 For several years his bees had not stored much 

 honey in boxes ; in other words, did otn pay. 

 I well remember that two seasons before the 

 trouble commenced, his bees, forty-five stocks, 

 did not gather an ounce of honey more than 

 they consumed from day to day, during the 

 whole season. That fall he purchased several 

 barrels of heavj/ and granulated sugar and fed 

 them, and the following spring they came out 

 lively. The honey harvest commenced and we - 

 had the best we ever knew here, and Mr. 

 Gould's bees did do remarkably well, about one 

 ton of very nice surplus honey was received and 

 sold at a fair price, netting to Mr. Gould not far 

 from five or six hundred dollars. His success 

 was soon known about town, and then com- 

 menced the trouble. The bees were a nuisance ; 

 no one could get much fruit, and what they did 

 get was sour and poor stuff, as the bees sucked 

 all the honey out of the blossoms. 



I don't like to expose the ignorance of our 

 neighbors, but such is the fact. 



Some were afraid they would be stung to 

 death if they ventured near Mr. Gould's house, 

 and had an idea that it was not safe to go where 

 they had traveled for years before, where Mr. 

 G. had kept bees for the fifteen years previous. 

 A town meeting was called and a vote passed 

 requesting Mr. Gould to remove his bees. Well, 

 Mr. Gould did leavo town, bees and all ; not 

 because of any vote of the town, but because 

 his malicious neighbors were determined to 

 ruin his apiary, a thing they could do. One 

 man killed nearly a bushel of bees one day, but 

 I won't say how r it was done, as some scoundrel 

 might adopt the same plan who happened to 

 read this article. The vote of the town amounted 

 to nothing if the opinion of legal gentlemen 

 was worth anything. 



