1891 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



887 



the moisture will collect on the inside of this 

 hive and split the sides open. I have had them 

 split open so that the hive fell into two parts, 

 and in Febriiar}- there were cracks, in the pre- 

 viously solid wood, }i inch wide. Sometimes 

 colonies would make a great fuss until the hive 

 split open, when they would become quiet. At 

 other times, when the hives were in the usual 

 position, with tight cover-boards, the colonies 

 became uneasy: and on raising the edge of the 

 boards a little "they became quiet, and wintered 

 well. 



CLOSED-END FRAMES ARE A REGULATOI!. 



The more the moisture accumulates in the 

 closed-end frames, the more they swell and 

 widen the cracks until there is just the right 

 amount of ventilation; then when the ventila- 

 tion is too much they dry out and approach 

 their former state. Henry Alley said in the 

 Revieir. that we can lointer bees all right, but 

 the difficulty is in sprmging them. 



Now. I believe if bees are wintered properly 

 they will take care of themselves thi'ough the 

 spring; but with poor wintering, when the col- 

 onies come out weak and sickly, there is the 

 difference which was evident in the wintering 

 of Mr. Miller's bees. It is as much trouble to 

 nurse up a sickly colony as a good colony is 

 woi'th. and .50 well -wintered colonies are worth 

 more than 100 which must be springed. It is 

 no trouble to "breed up" well-wintered colo- 

 nies. Closed-end frames regulate the ventila- 

 tion without the aid, and probably without the 

 knowledge, of the apiarist. C. W. Dayton. 



Clinton, Wis., Nov. 2. 



[You have produced some good arguments 

 for the closed-end frame, and we have been 

 wondering \\hether you were using them or not. 

 In one of your articles which appeared in the 

 American Bee Jmirnal we h&d concluded that 

 you were opposed to the use of fixed frames of 

 all kinds: but it seems you are an advocate of 

 the closed ends. There is no denying the fact 

 that they have many decided points of advan- 

 tage over many others. If we could adapt them 

 with any degree of satisfaction to an eight- 

 frame L. hive, or to the hives already in use, 

 we would use them in preference to all others; 

 but so far the Hoffman seems to be the nearest 

 approach we can make to them. They are part- 

 ly closed -end, you know. 



' In reference to the box hive, it is quite likely 

 you have touched upon one or two of the es- 

 sential conditions for its good wintering. After 

 all. of late years we have had no trouble in 

 wintering in eight-frame or ten-fi'ame L. hives, 

 with open-end or loose frames, either in or out 

 of doors. The last ten or twelve years our per- 

 centage of loss has not been above three per 

 cent: but almost every spring we have a few 

 weak ones to nurse up. 



This topic is seasonable and timely: and in- 

 stead of being all in a maze on the wintering 

 question, light from a multitude of testimonies 

 is surely coming, if, indeed, it is not already 

 here. What we need to do now is to compare 

 notes, and sift out the truth.] E. R. 



WHERE TO KEEP HONEY. 



GOOD ADVICE. 



A correspondent writes that his "honey has 

 all turned watery, apparently, as the comb 

 looks transparent, and thei'e ai'e drops of water 

 or thin sweet standing in many places on the 

 combs." After thus saying he asks whether I 

 can explain to the readers of Gleanings and 

 himself what the trouble is. This question has 



been asked and answered so often it would al- 

 most seem that all should know the trouble, 

 without any thing further being said on the 

 subject: but as he is evidently trying to keep 

 his honey late in the season, perhaps a few 

 words on the subject may not be amiss, espe- 

 cially to those who, like him, wish to keep hon- 

 ey till into the winter. 



Some seem to think that the cause of honey 

 becoming watery is because the bees do not 

 thoroughly ripen it before sealing it; but if 

 they used a little more thought on the subject 

 it would seem that they must see the fallacy of 

 such an idea; for. whether ripened or not, the 

 honey can only ooze from the cells after being 

 capped, on account of a larger bulk of liquid 

 being in the cell afterward than there was at 

 the time the bees sealed the cell. This can 

 come from only one source, which is always 

 brought about by either cold damp weather or 

 a non-circulation of air. or both. Honey swells 

 only as it becomes damp: and the first that will 

 be seen of that dampness will be in the unsealed 

 cells where the honey will have become so 

 thin that it will stand out beyond the cells, or. 

 in other words, the cells will be heaping full. 

 If the dampness remains, the sealed honey will 

 soon become transparent, while the honey from 

 the unsealed cells will commence to run out, 

 daubing every thing below it: and eventually, 

 if the cause is not removed, the capping of the 

 cells will burst, and the whole will become a 

 souring mass. In one or two instances I have 

 seen honey left in such cold rooms, where the 

 moisture was also very apparent, that it became 

 so very thin that it ran down from the combs 

 so it stood in puddles on the floor all around the 

 bottom of the nice white cases in which it was 

 stored. It was evident that this honey had 

 once been of the very best quality, from the 

 nice appearance of the cases; but the grocer 

 had put it in the cellar when it arrived at his 

 store, and there it had been left till it had thus 

 become very nearly good for nothing. 



When I first commenced to keep bees I stored 

 my honey in a tight room on the north side of 

 the house, where it usually remained from four 

 to six weeks before crating for market. In 

 crating this honey I always found the center 

 and back side of the pile watery and transpai'- 

 ent in appearance. As that which was stored 

 first was always the worst. I thought it must 

 be owing to tliat being the poorest or least 

 ripened, until one year I chanced to place this 

 early honey by itself in a warm, dry, airy room, 

 when, to my surpi'ise, I found, upon crating it. 

 that this first honey had kept perfectly, while 

 the later honey stored in the old rooni was as 

 watery as ever. This gave me the clew to the 

 whole matter: so. when I built my present 

 honey-room I located it in the southwest corner 

 of the building I call •"my shop." and painted 

 the south and west sides a dark color to absorb 

 the heat of the midday and afternoon sun. On 

 two sides of this room I fixed platforms for the 

 honey, as has been illustrated in one of the 

 back volumes of Gleanings. The sections 

 were so piled on these platforms that the air 

 could cii'cujatc all through the whole pile, even 

 if it reached the top of tlu' room. Dui'ing the 

 afternoons of August and September the teni- 

 pei'ature of the i-oom would often be raised to 

 nearly or quite 100 degrees, which would warm 

 the pile of honey to nearly that degree of heat: 

 and as this laige body of honey once heated 

 retained the same for some length of time, the 

 temperature of the room would often be from 

 80 to 90° in the morning aftei- a warm day. 

 when it was as low as from 40 to 60° outside at 

 6 o'clock A.M. By this means the honey was 

 being ripened each day. and that in the unseal- 

 ed cells became thicker and thicker, when, by 



