306 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



boards or shallow box, as a substitute for 

 pollen, until this is supplied naturally from 

 the trees. 



INTENSE AND PROTRACTED COLD 



is another cause of great loss of bees 

 every winter. In the early part of winter 

 the combs are often filled with sealed honey 

 down almost to the very edges. When this 

 is the case, the cluster is divided off into 

 several little thin layers between the combs, 

 each not over a half inch in thickness, while 

 the combs themselves are nearly an inch 

 thick, keeping these layers thus separated 

 by this inch of comb and honey, which will 

 become cooled down to the freezing point, 

 or below, by the first severe cold of Decem- 

 ber, often freezing all the bees in a mass at 

 once when they are left on their summer 

 stands, at the beginning of winter. But if 

 fortunately the bees have consumed all the 

 honey within a compass of about four inches 

 every way from the center of their cluster, 

 their winter preparation is now in the best 

 possible condition to resist almost any de- 

 gree of cold, until they are compelled to 

 leave the cluster in search of new supplies 

 of food. If there is plenty of sealed honey 

 above them, or at the ends of the same tiers 

 of comb, they will gradually move into con- 

 tact with this honey, and no considerable 

 loss in bees is realized, for they continue to 

 form a dense mass, filling combs and s])accs 

 and the requisite warmth is maintaiiied. 

 But if the cold is protracted for weeks to- 

 gether, after they have consumed all tiie 

 honey in the combs in which they cluster, 

 they cannot cross over to other combs now 

 filled with frost like a mass of snow, to get 

 to their needed supply; consequently they 

 will either starve to death where they are, 

 or freeze in the attempt to reach their fi-ozen 

 supplies. But if they escape both of these 

 dangers, that is — in the fall in having no 

 convenient clustering jAace, on account of 

 too much honey, or later in winter in not 

 having enoiKjh honey within their reach — 

 on the recurrence of a warm day the frost 

 may melt, and either stand in drops all 

 through the hive, or run down upon the 

 mass of bees, and accumulate upon tlie 

 bottom board; in which case cold, damp, 

 mouldy combs will result, causing the bees 

 to gorge themselves with honey to keep up 

 their animal heat, and this in turn will re- 

 sult in dysentery,and a large and often total 

 loss of bees. 

 This loss caused by 



DAMP MOULDY COMBS 



can be i)revented by the method we shall 

 lay down presently, or by a return totiie old 

 fashioned "box hive" or "gum" in which 

 the cluster fills the whole diameter of the 

 cavity in which they are lodged, and is al- 

 ways directly under the honey which con- 

 stitutes their stores, so that the cluster only 

 has to gradually move upward as the honey 

 s needed, in order always to have it within 

 reach, as long as there is any in the hiv(^ 

 But this shaped hive, notwithstanding its 

 advantage in the above respects, will never 

 be adopted as long as surplus honey is the 

 object, without the use of the " Brimstone 

 pit." 



A small amount of ventilation by raising 

 the cover, leaving a crack all around of 

 about an eighth of an inch wide, is a ])artial 

 remedy, but not an entire preventive in our 

 nortiiern latitude. 



But by far the greatest cause of winter 



loss, consists in the fact, that the bees have 

 gathered and laid up 



UNWHOLESOME OR VITIATED FOOD. 



This is the great and wide-spread cause of 

 the bee cholera, dysentery, bee epidemic, 

 or whatever the name by which it has been 

 called. 



There are about three sources which give 

 a supply in times when flowers are not 

 yielding honey in this country, to this un- 

 wholesome or vitiated food for the honey 

 bee. The disease is caused by the so called 

 honey gathered from either eider, sorghum 

 juice, the juice of grapes which has birrst 

 open from wet weather, or the product of 

 the "aphis" or leaf louse called "honey 

 dew," and some years, doubtless by all 

 these together. None of these juices are 

 gathered by the bees, except in times when 

 the honey fails from all other quarters. 

 Some kinds of honey dew are not only 

 sought greedily by the bees, but appear to 

 constitute wholesome food, wiien obtained, 

 but I am confident that the so called honey 

 dew yielded by red oak in the fall of 1869, 

 caused most ot the wide spread destruction 

 of so many colonies all through the middle 

 states and the far west, while the remainder 

 was caused by the juice from bursted grapes, 

 Also in 1871, after a long dearth of honey, 

 caused by exceeding dry weather, just after 

 the grapes began to ripen, we had excessive 

 showers followered by hot sunshine. By 

 two o'clock the next day, after one of these 

 heavy rains, the scorching sun followed by 

 the excessive flow of juice in the vines, had 

 caused the grapes to burst their skins by 

 the thousand. At least one third of the 

 grapes would burst open within forty-eight 

 hours, and the bees lacking all other forage, 

 sought the grapes by the ten thousand for 

 their spoils. Several pounds must have been 

 gathered per colony during that week. But 

 grape juice is not honey; and the bees were 

 compelled to go into winter quarters with 

 this substitute for their fall and early winter 

 food; the consequence was, the colonies 

 perished by the score when the ordinary 

 treatment was pursued. 



Sorghum juice has been gathered under 

 like circumstances, ;uul some falls is doubt- 

 less the cause of similar destruction. Viti- 

 ated food of any like character, whether 

 cider, sorghum, grape juice, or the sweet 

 juices which sometimes issue from punc- 

 tures in the bark of the red oak, or the 

 excrescences of the aphis, will all tend to 

 produce dysentery, when the bees are con- 

 fined to such food, and cannot fly out to void 

 their excrement. 



If, as was reported, the bees began to fly 

 out and drop upon the ground, and thus die 

 in early fall, they might have been saved by 

 the use of the " honey extractor." Throw 

 out from their combs all unsealed honey, 

 and feed a little syrup in its stead, and the 

 disease will disapi)ear at once. 



But as my plan of treatment carried my 

 bees through each winter safely against all 

 these odds, I will now proceed to give it: 

 and would almost guarantee the safety of 

 every colony i)ut up in the order, and accord- 

 ing to the plan of the following 



CHEAP AND SAFE WINTER RECEPTACLE. 



Have a well drained and dry cellar under 

 the room that you use as a kitchen or sitting- 

 room, prei)ared as follows: Run a tin tube 

 one and a half inches in diameter, from the 

 bottom of your cellar up through the floor 



