THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL AND GAZETTE. 



191 



Bees in Winter. 



The common liive-bee is probably never, 

 strictly speaking, torpid ; though with regard 

 to the precise state in which it passes the win- 

 ter, a considerable difference of opinion has ob- 

 tained. 



Many authors have conceived that it is the 

 most natural state of bees in winter to be per- 

 fectly torpid at a certain degree of cold, and 

 that their partial revivescence and consequent 

 need of food in our climate are owing to its 

 variableness and often comparative mildness in 

 winter; whence they have advised placing bees 

 during this season in an ice-house, or on the 

 north side of a wall, where the degree of cold 

 being more uniform, and thus their torpidity 

 undisturbed, they imagine no food would be re- 

 quired. 



So far, however, do these suppositions and 

 conclusions seem from being warranted, that 

 Huber expressly affirms that, instead of being 

 torpid in winter, the heat in a well-peopled hive 

 continues at from 80^ to SS^ Fahrenheit, Avheu 

 it is several degrees below zero in the open air; 

 that they then cluster together and keep them- 

 selves ill moiiou in order to preserve their heat; 

 and that in the depth of winter they cease to 

 ventilate the hive by the singular process of 

 agitating their wings. He asserts that, like 

 Eeaumur, he has in winter found in the combs 

 brood of all ages; which, too, the observant 

 Bonnet says, he has witnessed, and which is 

 contirmod by Swammerdam, who expressly 

 states that bees tend and feed their young even 

 in the mid,>t of winter. 



To all these weighty authorities may be added 

 that of John Hunter, who found a hive to grow 

 lighter in a cold than in a warm week of win- 

 ter ; and that a hive, from November 10th to 

 February Dch, lost more than four pounds in 

 weight, whence the conclusion seems inevit- 

 a'nle, that bees do not eat in winter. 



On the other hand, Reaumur adopts (or rather, 

 perhaps, has in great measure given birth to) 

 the more commonly received nolion that bees, 

 in a certain degree of cold, are torpid, and con- 

 sume no food. These are his words: " It has 

 been established with a wisdom Ave cannot but 

 admire — with that wisdom Avith Avhich everj^- 

 thing in nature has been made and ordained — ■ 

 that during the greater part of the time in which 

 the country iurnislies nothing to bees, they have 

 no longer need to eat. The cold Avhich arrests 

 the vegetation of plants; which deprives our 

 fields and meadows of their flowers, throws the 

 bees inio a state in which nourishment ceases to 

 be necessary to them; it keeps them in a sort of 

 torpidity in Avhich no transpiration from them 

 takes place, or, at least, durmg which the quan- 

 tity of that vv'hich transpires is so inconsiderable 

 that it cannot be restored by aliment Avilhout 

 their lives being endangered. In winter, while i 

 it freezes, one may observe without fear the in- j 

 terior of hives that are not of glass; for we may | 

 lay them on their sides, and even turn them j 

 bottom upwards, Avithout putting any bee into 

 motion. We see the bees croAvued and pressed i 

 closely one against the other — little space then 

 suffices for them." 



In another place, speaking of the custom in 

 some countries of putting bee-hives during 

 winter into out-houses and cellars, he says that 

 in such situations the air, though more temper- 

 ate than out of doors during the greater part of 

 winter, "is yet sulhcieutly cold to keep the bees 

 in that species of torpidity Avhich does aAvay 

 their need of eating. ' ' xind, lastly, he expressly 

 says that the milder the weather, the more risk 

 there is of- the bees consuming their hon«y be- 

 fore spring, and dying or hunger; and confirms 

 his assertion by an a«couut of a sLriking ex- 

 periment, in which a hive that he transi'ferred 

 during Avinter into his study, where the tem- 

 perature Avas usually in the day at from 54° to 

 59° Fahrenheit, though provided Avith a plen- 

 tiful supply of honey, Avhich, if they had been 

 in a garden, would have served them past the 

 end of April, had consumed nearly their Avhole 

 stock before the end of February. 



. NoAV, how axe Ave to reconcile this contradic- 

 tion ? for if Huber be correct in asserting that 

 in frosty Aveather bees agitate themselves to 

 keep off the cold, and ventilate their hive — if, 

 as both he and Swammerdam state, they feed 

 their young in the depth of Avinter — it seems 

 impossible to admit that they ever can be in 

 the torpid condition Avhich Reaumur supposes, 

 in Avhich food, so far from being necessary, is 

 injurious to them. In fact, Reaumur himself, 

 in another place, informs us that bees are so in- 

 finitely more sensible of cold than the generality 

 of insects; that they perish when in numbers 

 as small as to be unable to generate sufficient 

 animal heat to counteract the external cold, 

 even at .jT*-^ F., which corresponds Avith Avhat 

 Huber has observed of the high temperature of 

 Avell-peopled hives, even in very severe wea- 

 ther. 



We are forced, then, to conclude that this 

 usually most accurate of observers has, in the 

 present instance, been led into error, chiefly, it 

 is probable, from the clustermg of the bees in 

 the hives in cold Aveather, btit Avhich, instead 

 of being, as he conceived, an indication of tor- 

 pidity, Avould seem to be intended, as Huber as- 

 serts, as a preservation against the benumbing 

 effects of cold. 



Bees, then, do not appear to pass the winter 

 in a state of torpidity in our climate, and prob- 

 ably not in any otliers. Populous SAvarms in- 

 habiting hives formed of the hollow trunks of 

 trees, used in many northern region?, or of other 

 materials that are bad conductors of heat, seem 

 able to generate and keep up a temperate suffi- 

 cient to counteract the iutensest cold to Avhicli 

 they are ordinarily exposed. At the same time, 

 however, I think we may infer that, though 

 bees are not strictly torpid at the lowest degree 

 of heat which they can sustain, yet that Avhen 

 exposed to thai degree they consume consider- 

 ablj^ less food than at a higher temperature; and 

 that, consequently, the plan of placing hives in 

 a north aspect in sunny and mild Avinters, may 

 be adopted by the apiarian Avith advantage. 

 John Hunter's experiment, indeed, cited above, 

 in Avhich he found that a hive grcAV lighter in 

 cold than in AvarniAveeks, seems opposed to this 

 conclusion; but as isolattid observations of this 

 kind, Avhieli Ave do not knoAV to have been in- 



