108 



Feb. 7, 1907 



American Hee Journal 



of the red corpuscles, the blood of bees 

 is essentially like our own. 



The Heart of Insects. 



The heart of all insects, and so of 

 the bee, is a straight tube, which is 

 dorsal ; that is, it extends along the 

 back. This heat is all the circulating 

 apparatus that the bee has. It has 

 neither arteries nor veins. The heart 

 has valves along the sides, which open 

 as the heart is relh.xed, and close as it 

 contracts. The heart only moves the 

 blood one way — towards the head. It 

 then pushes back, through the intervas 

 cular spaces, and again crowds into the 

 heart, to be emptied again near the 

 head. We see, then, that the heart 

 serves only to keep the blood in mo- 

 tion, forcing it ever towards the head. 

 The circulating apparatus is very sim- 

 ple, while the breathing system is very 

 well developed. We should expect this, 

 as the muscular development and func- 

 tion is very high in insects, and good 

 breathing and great activity go to- 

 gether. 



Wintering Bees in California. 



The bee - keeper in California has 

 great advantage over his brother in the 

 North and East. There the winter comes 

 with such rigor, that often the bees are 

 swept as with the very" besom of de- 

 struction. How often the entire apiary 

 has been swept off by the Storm King, 

 from the unwary bee-keeper, who was 

 not careful to protect his bees from its 

 fury. Here in our "Sunny South" land 

 we have no such menace, and do not 

 dread the winter's cold in the least. Here 

 there is never a winter that the bees do 

 not fly at some time each month of the 

 winter. Often the bees fly, gather, and 

 breed up quite strong in the very heart 

 of the winter. As we all know, there 

 can be no danger of death from cold, 

 and unusually poor food would not be 

 harmful in such cases as this. 



Yet there is one menace even in Cali- 

 fornia. I refer to starvation. This 

 should never occur, and will never oc- 

 cur, if the bee-keeper is aware of the 

 danger, and gives heed to his business. 

 There is a reason why this occurs far 

 too often. The California bee-keeper, 

 from his distance from the large mar- 

 kets, is very likely to work for e.x- 

 tracted honey. This is less likely to be 

 injured in the long transit to market, 

 and is sent often at less expense. If 

 the season is good, the honey comes 

 in rapidly, and the over-ambitious bee- 

 keeper is very likely to extract too close- 

 ly, and so the bees are robbed of the 

 needed stores for winter. . It behooves 

 every bee-keeper to look well to his 

 bees, and be sure that all have enough 

 honey to carry them through the win- 

 ter. It is a sad truth that many colo- 

 nies of bees die here almost every win- 

 ter from this inexcusable neglect. 



Abundant Rains. 



The crying need in California— espec- 

 ially Southern California — is generous 

 rains. We must have them to iiisure a 

 full honey crop. We have been very 

 fortunate in this respect this winter. We 

 have not only had more than is usual, 

 but we have them in a way to do the 

 most good. The prospects now for next 



season are very excellent. With good 

 rains we are almost sure to have a good 

 honey-year. Last year, however, even with 

 rains, we had a dearth of honey. The 

 cold, damp season was the cause. Such 

 seasons are very exceptional. 

 Claremont, Cal., Dec. 29, 1906. 



Do Bees Freeze to Death ? 



BV G. ir. DOOLITTLE. 



A correspondent writes that one of 

 his neighbors tells him that bees often 

 freeze to death in extremely cold spells 

 during winter, and wishes me to tell 

 in the American Bee Journal whether 

 his neighbor is right or not. 



Many seem to think that bees often 

 freeze to death in winter, and when 

 colonies are found dead in the spring, 

 after an unusually cmUI winter, thev are 

 quite sure that no other cause besides 

 freezing will account for their being 

 dead, as they have often seen bees on 

 the outside of the cluster somewhat stif- 

 fened with the cold when the mercury 

 registered little more than the freez- 

 ing point. And some are so unreason- 

 able that they will not listen to anything 

 which goes "to prove that they may be 

 mistaken. But to the careftil student 

 of intricate problems, facts often appear 

 which show that each, in a measure, 

 may be right and wrong, where two- 

 take exactly opposite sides in these iiiat- 

 ters. 



That bees will freeze to death, wlien 

 isolated from the main cluster, no one 

 can deny, for no observing bee-kp'o'" 

 has failed to see single bees, and little 

 clusters of 2, 3, 5, 10, 20, or even 50 

 to 100 in a place, away from the main 

 cluster, frozen till life had become ex- 

 tinct, long, long ago. 



There has been considerable talk of 

 late about freezing bees and queens dur- 

 ing the summer, by putting them in 

 a refrigerator or an ice-house, so that 

 in this frozen condition they would 

 not consume anything, nor grow old by 

 wearing themselves out through use- 

 less activity, thus prolonging their life 

 indefinitely, and allowing the keeping 

 of extra queens on hand, while the nu- 

 clei were worked for more queens, the 

 frozen ones being thawed out at any 

 time when they were wished for use, or 

 successfully introduced while they were 

 partially inactive through not being ful- 

 ly recovered from their stupor, which 

 was brought on from freezing. But I 

 can only look upon that word freezing, 

 as used here, during ^uch talk, as a fal- 

 lacy, for. if I am right, no bee, after 

 being once frozen, ever comes to life 

 again. What was being talked about 

 was bees brought into a dormant con- 

 dition through a certain degree of cold, 

 which degree was kept up till they were 

 brought out from under that condition 

 into a condition of .-lotivity ?<ja:n throuo'h 

 a lesser degree of cold. But that de- 

 gree of cold must always be less than 

 the feezing point, for. with all niv efforts 

 to bring a frozen hce back to life again, 

 I have signally failed. 



I have picked up thousands of bees 

 which had dropped down and become 

 chilled on the snow, with the mcrcur\' 

 standing at from .•?2 to 40 degrees, and 

 brought them to life again, hut with 



repeated trials on similar numbers of 

 bees after the mercury had sunken as 

 low as 30 degrees, or lower, not a sin- 

 gle one could be gotten to move so much 

 as a single foot or wing, .^nd I have 

 taken these little clusters of bees out on 

 the combs, away from the main cluster, 

 and brought them to life again the same 

 as were those which had not been froz- 

 en on the snow, where frost had never 

 reached them, but after they had been 

 once frozen it was always useless to try 

 to bring them back to life again. So 

 much for little clusters and single bees 

 that have become isolated from the 

 main cluster during cold or very cool 

 weather, which all go to prove that my 

 correspondent's neighbor was right, that 

 bees do freeze to death. 



But there is another side to this mat- 

 ter, and this other side shows that his 

 neighbor was wrong, if he intended to 

 convey the idea that a good colony of 

 bees with plenty of stores within easy 

 reach could be frozen to death. While 

 it is possible to freeze nearly all animal 

 life by exposure to a very low tempera- 

 ture, the bees seem capable, with plenty 

 of stores near at hand, to stand any 

 :\mount of cold, so long as food remains 

 witiiin easy reach. To be sure, the bees 

 on the outside of the cluster may become 

 somewhat stiffened with the cold, but 

 those within are as brisk and as livelj' 

 as in summer. That pioneer bee-keeper, 

 Moses Quinby, than whom there is no 

 better authority, knew this to be a fact 

 when he said that "the bees inside of 

 the cluster, on a zero morning could 

 fly as readily as in July, should the 

 cluster be suddenly thrown apart." 



Again, that veteran apiarist. Elisha 

 Gallup, who died only a short time ago, 

 in writing of a winter in upper Canada, 

 where he kept bees a half century ago, 

 said, "The thermometer for 60 days in 

 succession was not above 10 degrees 

 below zero, and for 8 of these days the 

 mercury was frozen, yet my bees, in 

 box-hives, with a 2-inch pole at the 

 top, and the bottom plastered up tight, 

 came through in excellent condition." 

 (See American Bee Journal, Vol. V., 

 page 33.) 



Now if colonies of bees will not freeze 

 to death under such conditions as these, 

 pray tell me when they would do so. 

 While bees here in central New York 

 were never put to so severe a test 

 as the above, yet the mercury of- 

 ten drops from 20 to 30 degrees 

 below zero; still it does not seem 

 to affect good colonies of bees in the 

 least. From experiments conducted 

 with a self-registering thermometer, I 

 find that when it is 20 degrees below 

 zero in the outside air, a temperature 

 of 46 above zero is maintained within 

 the hive and close to the outside of the 

 cluster of bees, while the center of the 

 cluster gave a warmth of 63 degrees 

 above zero at the same time, thus show- 

 ing that the bees were far from freez- 

 ing. 



To test more thoroughly this matter 

 of freezing colonies of bees, I took a 

 colony one evening when the mercury 

 stood from 10 to 15 below zero, and 

 suspended the hive about 2 feet from 

 th" bottrm-bonrd. t;i'--i"'T off .-ill r'^\- 

 ering from the top of the hive, so they 

 were practically the same as hung in 



