i6y7. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



711 



stores for W^inter — Keeping; Down Increase. 



1. I have 5 colonies of bees in box-hives, and find that 

 they cannot have more than abont 15 pounds of honey each 

 to winter on, and at this date too late to do any feeding. I 

 remember reading so often that bees are wintered with less 

 sto'es in a cellar. Do you think it would be a good thing to 

 put those into the cellar right under the house where I live ? 

 The cellar is kept clean the year around, altho in early spring 

 there is water springing therein, but it runs out through a 

 drain. The cellar is 24x26 feet, and 10 feet high, with three 

 air-grates of glass, 8x10 inches, to open. Nothing will freeze 

 in it in winter at any degree. How would it do to fix thera 

 away up from the cellar bottom, and have th'im curtained 

 off with one of those air-grates in the curtained part, and 

 whenever a warm day comes, when bees fly briskly, to take 

 them out, each on its own stand, to have a flight just like the 

 rest which I have nicely put up for winter on the summer 

 stands? The way they are put up, people say they are kept 

 too warm for winter, and ask if they don't consume too much 

 honey. 



2. Having 50 colonies of bees with not one sheet of brood 

 foundation, and no empty comb more than what the other 50 

 are on, and I don't care to have one colony more than 50, how 

 would you manage them next year at swarming-time ? I 

 thought 1 would ask you this in time, and then follow your 

 good plan. Penn. 



Answers. — 1. Bees use less stores if properly cellared 

 than out-doors, especially if they have frequent flights out- 

 doors. They use up more stores through the winter in the 

 South than they do with you in the good old Keystone State. 

 It will probably be the wise thing for you to put those Ave 

 colonies into the cellar, altho it may be better to winter out- 

 doors strong colonies with plenty of stores. 



The great thing is to keep the bees perfectly quiet in the 

 cellar. From your description your cellar seems to be flrst- 

 class. The bees must be kept perfectly dark. The air should 

 be pure. If too warm or too cold they will be uneasy. The 

 only way to tell how warm to keep the cellar is to watch the 

 bees and see at what temperature they're most quiet. When 

 you find what that temperature is, try to keep the cellar at 

 that. You'll find it somewhere about 40^ or 50^. Don't be 

 troubled about the water. Bees have wintered finely where 

 water ran through the cellar constantly. It will be all right 

 to have them raised from the cellar bottom, but it will also be 

 all right near the bottom. 



Don't take them out for a flight on a warm day. It may 

 look as if that was the right thing to do, but experience shows 

 it isn't. They'll use more stores, and don't seem as quiet after 

 the fly. Don't take them out till you take them out for good. 

 And don't take them out at all till you think it's fairly settled 

 weather. About the time soft maple blooms, but sometimes 

 soft maple blooms before it's warm enough to take out the 

 bees. My bees stand it all right to stay five months in the 

 cellar. In your climate they'll not need to be kept in so long. 



I don't think there's any danger of your bees being too 

 w'arm on the summer stands, but, as I said before, they'll eat 

 more if they fly out very often. Still. I'd like to live in a 

 place where bees would fly out once or twice a month. 



2. I don't know. Maybe I'd sell some of them and buy 

 foundation for the rest. If I understand you, you want to 

 limit the swarming to one from each colony. You can man- 

 age that part of it pretty well. When a swarm issues, hive it 

 on the old stand, setting the old hive close beside it. A week 

 later take the old hive away and set it in a new place. All 

 the better if you do this at a time of day when the bees are in 

 the height of a play spell. This will so reduce the number of 

 bees in the old hive that they will generally give up all 

 thought of swarming. The swarm will be strengthened by the 

 returning bees, and will be the one for surplus. Of course, 

 without foundation you'll have too much drone-comb, but you 

 can help matters to some extent by cutting out some of the 

 drone-comb and putting in its place patches of worker founda- 

 tion. But this you can't do till the following spring when the 

 outside combs are empty, altho of course you could cut out 

 drone-comb, brood and all, if no honey was in the way. 



You're wise to ask questions in advance instead of wait- 

 ing till it's time to act, and then expecting an answer in print 

 the next day. 



Xtae racEvo^r Foul Brood Xreatment is 



given in Dr. Howard's pamphlet on " Foul Brood ; its Natural 

 History and Rational Treatment." It is the latest publication 

 on the subject, and should be in the hands of every bee-keeper. 

 Price, 25 cents ; or clubbed with the Bee Journal for one year 

 —both for $1.10. 



BEEDDM BDIIED DOWN. 



Marketings Honey. — At a German bee-convention, 

 H. tiuehler, of Berlin, himself perhaps the largest dealer and 

 middleman in Germany, advised that bee-keepers should dis- 

 pense as far as possible with the services of middlemen, deal- 

 ing directly with the consumer. Sell to customers at home, 

 at the market of the next town, and in groceries. For retail, 

 small glasses are preferable, holiding >b. Mi "a and 1 pound 

 each, with elegant labels. Instructive articles in the weekly 

 papers, and lectures upon the bee and its products will help. 



Box-Hi-ves for the Common People.— "Say 



what you will," says Lebrecht WolU in (Jravenhorst's Bienen- 

 zeitung, " the movable-comb hive will emphatically never be 

 the right thing for the average bee-keeper. It demands too 

 much knowledge and skill, too much attention." In his view 

 it is all right for the masters, but the masters are few. Herr 

 Wolff Is by no means alone in this view, and many successful 

 bee-keepers in Germany uses hives without movable frames. 

 In this country, keeping bees in box-hives is hardly considered 

 bee-keeping at all, and yet the inventor of movable combs, 

 Father Langstroth, held that for the average farmer box- 

 hives were best. Certainly if combs are never to be moved, 

 and in many cases they never are, then they are better not to 

 be movable. 



Bee-Poison. — Joseph Langer has been Investigating 

 the poison of the honey-bee, sacrificing therefor the lives of 

 25,000 bees. The poison is clear as water, with a distinctly 

 acid reaction, a bitter taste and an aromatic smell. Soluble 

 in water. The acid reaction is due to the presence of formic 

 acid, which, however, is not, as heretofore supposed, the 

 poison proper, neither does it give the aromatic odor, which is 

 very volatile. The poison proper is an organic base whose ex- 

 act composition has not yet been ascertained. It is free from 

 microbes, its presence preventing their growth. It withstands 

 both heat and cold. A beesting applied to the eye of a dog 

 after having been kept six weeks at the temperature of boil- 

 ing water, produced precisely the same phenomena as the 

 fresh poison. — Centralblatt. 



Packing' Bees for Spring.— Ersler, in Central- 

 blatt, says that while advance has been made in the matter of 

 packing baes for winter, we are much behind what we should 

 be as to spring packing. An early examination, or spring 

 feeding, makes it necessary to remove the packing, and it is 

 then left removed at the very time when it is especially im- 

 portant that all the heat possible should be retained to keep 

 up the heat for breeding. He emphasizes packing overhead 

 as the most important. And that is in accord with the prac- 

 tice of C. F. Muth, who says no other packing is necessary, if 

 only the bees are well protected overhead. No doubt Mr. 

 Muth is correct for the latitude of Cincinnati, but further 

 north those who winter bees outdoors will find benefit from 

 protection of sides as well as top. 



Bee-Keeping— Farmers' Bulletin Xo. 59. 



— This pamphlet of ci2 pages, written by Frank Benton, as- 

 sitant entomologist, and issued by the Department of Agricul- 

 ture, does not pretend to be a full text-book upon beekeeping, 

 but is well adapted to fill its place as a farmers' bulletin. It 

 gives elementary instruction such as can be of no benefit to 

 one familiar with the ordinary text-books, but may be very 

 serviceable to farmers and others who may have one or more 

 colonies of bees without any knowledge of their care. 



Particularly commendable are the temperate statements 

 as to the profits of bee-keeping. Instead of painting the busi- 

 ness with high colors, awakening expectations that must only 

 end in disappointment, the reader is told that with good win- 

 tering and an average season, a moderate estimate for a fairly 

 good locality would be 30 to 35 pounds of extracted honey or 

 20 pounds of comb honey per colony. The loose-fitting, sus- 

 pended comb frame is recommended, no other frame being 

 mentioned except the Quinby, altho it does not readily appear 

 why a tyro in the business should not have the advantage of 

 a frame that will promptly space itself at the right distance, 

 instead of the loose-fitting frame which troubles the expert to 

 space correctly. One is a little surprised to read that white 

 clover honey is of a rich yellow color. But these are minor 

 defects. As in other publications of the department, bold, 

 clear type on good paper makes the page pleasant to the eye. 



