64 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[Sept. 



than ever before. I put them in the cellar Nov. 

 14, the first cold day we had, while the hives 

 throughout were as dry as midsummer. I took 

 them out March 10. The combs were generally 

 dry and free from mould, and the bees strong 

 and healthy. 



3. 'Ilie room shotdd be entirely dark. 



When this is the case and other circum- 

 stances are favorable the bees will be quiet all 

 winter without closing the entrance to the hive, 

 which from my experience I think preferable 

 to closing it. If the room is light and bees are 

 closed in the hive, they will gnaw for perhaps, 

 half the winter, to get out. If they are not 

 closed in, they will come out to the light and 

 never get back. 



4. T/ie room should be as dry as possible. 



I always put my bees on a platform about two 

 feet high to avoid the damp air near the floor. 

 Three years ago last winter the water was six 

 inches deep in my cellar for some time, and the 

 floor was damp from that until spring. I did 

 not lose any bees, but in the spring the hives 

 were wet inside, the frames damp and mouldy, 

 and the bees out of sorts generally. The next 

 summer I put a drain to the cellar, and since 

 then the floor has been dry, even dusty, and I 

 have had no trouble whatever. 



5. The larger the room the better. 



1 have used three different cellars. One, 

 thirteen feet square, I used one winter ; another 

 fifteen by twenty-six feet I used six winters, and 

 the one I am now using is twenty -five by thirty- 

 five feet. In the last the temperature is less 

 variable, there is less moisture, and bees have 

 better ventilation than in either of the others. 

 Large rooms are healthier than small ones for 

 bees as well as people. 



In my experience I have not found anything 

 additional to the above essential to successfully 

 winter bees. 



In the matter of the ventilation of the hive, I 

 have tried having the honey board oflF and having 

 it on, having the hive open below and having it 

 closed, have taken the honey board off and cov- 

 ered the frames closely with clean dry corn cobs, 

 have covered the frames with a piece of old 

 woolen carpet folded double, but never found 

 these things to make much difference if every- 

 thing else was right. 



I think perhaps the best way is to leave the 

 hive open below as it is during the summer, 

 and if the cellar is damp take off the honey 

 board and cover the frames with some kind of 

 old woolen goods. 



My bees have always wintered on their natural 

 stores except last fall I fed sugar to a few stands 

 that had not honey enough. 1 believe however 

 that white sugar syrup is better for wintering 

 than honey if a person feels like giving the labor 

 to rnake the change. The syrup is a stronger 

 or richer food than honey, produces less faeces 

 and consequently the bees will bear confinement 

 longer than on honey. 



I have wintered nuclei of from three to five 

 frames (full size) for the last two winters with- 

 out any trouble, but I have had trouble with 

 them and with weak swarms during the cool 

 weather in April, some desert their hive, some 

 perish with cold. This time of year I am very 

 much troubled by bees filling their brood combs 

 with pollen. I am now taking out and saving a 

 number of frames so filled, and next spring 

 after giving the bees of my nuclei a chance for 

 a purifying flight on some warm day, I will 

 give each nucleus a frame of pollen, and a sponge 

 of water, put them back into the cellar and let 

 them remain there until warm weather comes if 

 it is not until the flrst of June. 



Yours truly, 



W. J. Ronald. 



Grandview, Louisa Co., la., Aug. 15, 1873. 



»-♦ 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Gallup on the Adair Hive. 



The reader will recollect that wc promised to 

 give our views about the New Idea Hive, etc. 

 The hive is a continuous chamber, ten inches la 

 height, thirteen inches in width and four feet 

 long. After the brood nest is well established, 

 it is placed in the centre of the hive and the 

 ends are filled out with }4 ^^ /4 sections for 

 surplus. The entrance is in one end, conse- 

 quently there is but very little ventilation. It 

 is composed of close-fitting sections, which form 

 the hive jjroper, and those are inclosed in an 

 outer case, making the hive in reality double 

 cased. We found that in extreme hot weather, 

 with the theiTnometer up to from 95 to 110 in the 

 shade, nearly the entire swarm was driven to 

 the outside of the hive, and in ordinary weather, 

 too, such as we had last season, on cool mornings 

 there would be a jjuddle of water in the en- 

 trance, one-foi.rth of an inch in depth, for the 

 bees to wade through. But in an even tempera- 

 ture, of from 75 to 85, everything worked satis- 

 factorily. 



Mr. Adair claims that the sections are an 

 advantage over the open Langstroth frames in 

 economizing the animal heat, etc. He further 

 says that the queen does not deposit eggs to 

 within about one inch of the wood or sides of 

 frames, etc. (We are quoting from memory, 

 and may be a little out of the way.) Now, Mr. 

 Adair's hive may be ventilated all right for his 

 climate ; therefore we are not going to accuse 

 him of falsehood. The close sections have the 

 same objections that all combs have that are 

 fixed at jJermanent distances, and are not near 

 so easily manipulated, without crushing bees, as 

 the open Langstroth frames. And we think 

 that Mr. Adair's objections to properly con- 

 structed open frames will not hold good. But 

 we think Mr. Adair has the right form for a 

 hive when we come to understand how to work 

 it. The reader will recollect that we formerly 

 had objections to this form of hive, because we 



