690 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL-. 



brood-frames, but with one single ex- 

 ception I failed — they would not accept 

 the old, worm-eaten hives and frames. 

 I suppose I lost over 20 swarms before 

 I was able to stop the waste. 

 Austin, Tex. 



Some Emerifflenls in Wintering Bees. 



Written for the '■'■ Bee- Keepers' Review'''' 

 BY HON. K. L. TAYLOR. 



During last fall and winter I made 

 such efforts as I could under existing 

 circumstances to get some light on the 

 problems growing out of the matter of 

 wintering bees. 



My bee-cellar is under my honey- 

 house, and is 15 by 30 feet, with a cis- 

 tern in one end. I have wintered bees 

 in this cellar for seven or eight years 

 with almost uniformly excellent success, 



keepers that moisture is one of the prin- 

 cipal causes, if not the principal cause, 

 of the winter disease of bees known as 

 diarrhea, but if this were true, I should 

 have expected to find it prevailing 

 largely among my bees during the last 

 winter, but such did not prove to be the 

 case. In fact, though I suffered a larger 

 percentage of loss than I ever did before 

 in this cellar — about 20 per cent. — yet 

 only a small propotion of those that per- 

 ished showed even a little evidence of 

 that disorder. I discovered only two 

 cases that could be called really bad, in 

 one of which the colony died, and in the 

 other the colony had regained its health, 

 and was in good order and of good 

 strength when removed from the cellar, 

 and still remains so. 



This case was a peculiar one. The 

 hive was an eight-frame Langstroth 

 hive, and the bottom-board was left on 

 in the wintering. Such a forbidding re- 

 ceptacle for bees as this was when taken 



Apiary of Mr. W. Z. Hutchinson, Flint, Mich. — Spring View. 



and yet it now seems certain, from my 

 experiments with a hygrometer, to be a 

 very damp one, there being a difference, 

 at a temperature of from 45 to 50^ be- 

 tween the wet bulb and the dry bulb, of 

 only one-half a degree, which indicates 

 that the percentage of moisture is about 

 9H — almost complete saturation. 



It is claimed by many prominent bee- 



from the cellar about the 10th of April, 

 I have seldom seen. The bottom-board 

 was covered with a mass of sticky or- 

 dure to such an extent that only now 

 and then would a bee venture upon it to 

 gain the outside of the hive. The cover 

 was well sealed on, and when pried off 

 it ran with the almost incredible amount 

 of water, and the honey-board and 



