THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



35 



■ed on experience, that oven Winters, 

 with steady, continuous cold, are far less 

 disastrous than clian<;eal)lo ones where 

 there are many ])eriods of warm 

 -weather. 



Again, those who have celhirs, or 

 special depositories where they arc cn- 

 oibled to keep the temperature uniform, 

 Jiave alwaj's been the most successful. 



This also explains the — what some 

 would Ciill absurd theories of Gen. D. 

 L. Adair, of Kentucky, and Mr. Balsch, 

 of our own State, that Bees require no 

 ■ventihUion to ensure safe wintering. If 

 in an even temperature, never rising 

 iihove 35° F., the Bees are so dormant 

 that they really do need very little air. 

 To prove this I froze up the opening of 

 •one of my snow-bound hives, last Winter 

 — the entrance of all of them were 

 ■deeply covered with snow — so that it 

 was hermetically sealed, and yet, I 

 never had a colony Winter better. 

 There was not a tablespoonful of dead 

 Bees on the bottom of the hive in 

 the Spring. This at least tends to prove 

 that Bees,if kept from getting too -warm, 

 will need not only very little food, but 

 .also very little air. That it is not from 

 cold Winters that the Bee-keeper need 

 iiave apprehension, but from periods of 

 «iufficient heat to arouse the Bees from 

 their torpor. 



We next speak of the kind of honey. 

 In the Fall of 1871-2,1 placed twelve col- 

 onies of Bees *iu a dry, dark and quiet 

 ■cellar at theAgricultural College, where 

 I had for yeai"S kept Bees from the last 

 •of November till the last of March, 

 without any loss. The previous Autumn 

 had been, as you will remember, un- 

 precedentedly dry. There were scarce 

 any floM^ers in bloom, yet the Bees were 

 verj^ active gathering stores, even to 

 the very verge of Winter. In October 

 I prepared the colonies as usual for the 

 cellar. Found much thin, unsealed 

 honey. Supposing that it would thicken 

 and be capped over in a few days, I 

 took special pains to leave it in the hive, 

 taking out all the nicely capped honey 

 which they had stored early in the sea- 

 son. I did not sell all of this nice honey, 

 but kept a'little of it over. 



Having placed the Bees in the cellar 

 at the approach of cold weather, the 

 last of November, not dreaming that 



any bit of harm could come to my pets, 

 1 left the college, not returning till the 

 last of January. Imagine my Hur])rise 

 upon visiting my Bees, at finding that 

 the usual and supposed quiet had given 

 way to a terrible uproar. Upon exam- 

 ination I found over half the colonies 

 dead, and the five that were still alive 

 were in a sore condition, indeed. I se- 

 lected one colony, in no wise better than 

 the others, on which to experiment. I 

 assure you, faith added not a whit to 

 my success. I took my fresh, good 

 honey and placed it in the hive, taking 

 out all that was tainted or besmeared. 

 My surprise was equal to that of the 

 prophet, for those "dry bones" did live, 

 and that colony netted us about $80 

 the next Summer. I need hardly say 

 that the other colonies all died, though 

 I gave them all the opportunity to drop 

 their foeces. The honey proved to be 

 still thin and uncapped and very un- 

 pleasant to the taste — in fact, fairly 

 sickening. The odor of the diseased 

 colonies, caused no doubt by their ex- 

 cessive discharges, was also very nause- 

 ating. 



I now think that the real source of 

 the honey was in the insect secretions 

 — though I did not think of it then. 

 The dry Fall was very favorable to in- 

 sect life. Our beach trees were fairly 

 covered with a plant louse — (^Pemphigus 

 imbricator, Fitch.) Other nectar secret- 

 ing plant lice were very abundant. On 

 the Tulip trees were hosts of large bark 

 lice — a species of Lecanium, w^hich also 

 secreted a sweet substance — we may 

 call this honey dew. I think louse se- 

 cretion a more fitting cognomen. Now, 

 as the Bees were seen constantly swarm- 

 ing in these trees, is it not more than 

 probable that this was the source of the 

 bad honey, and the cause of the terrible 

 Bee malady of the Winter of 1871-2? I 

 visited and examined a good many apia- 

 ries around Lansing and Owosso, some 

 of which had escaped, while most had 

 met this fatality, and it seemed to me 

 that both of these conditions could be 

 easily accounted for on this theory of 

 poor honey, we only having to consider 

 locality and management. 



As many of you know, Mr. Hosnier, a 

 very, intelligent and successful apiarist, 

 of Minnesota, accounted for the terrible 



