882 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 15 



amount of packing seems to get damp, so 

 that the sun does not warm it up and dry it 

 out, as does less, and so the walls to the hive 

 remain cold and damp— yes, ofttimes almost 

 wet— and the bees do not seem to do as well 

 on this account as they do where a little 

 more cold works through in extremely cold 

 weather, and the sun warms and dries things 

 out whenever it shines. ' ' 



"Have you any special means of allowing 

 the bees to pass through the combs?" 



"No. Do you think any such thing is 

 necessary?" 



" I think so. Have you never noticed aft- 

 er a cold snap in the fall that there will be 

 little clusters of bees, from three to twenty 

 or more, dead between the combs outside of 

 the main cluster?" 



"Yes, sometimes. What do you think 

 makes this state of affairs?" 



"I reason like this: On the first cold spell 

 the cluster of bees is obliged to contract in 

 order to maintain the necessary degree of 

 heat required; and in doing so those occupy- 

 ing the outer ranges of comb, being in a 

 sluggish state from the influence of the cold, 

 fail to pass up and around the combs quick 

 enough to keep up with the receding cluster, 

 hence are left to perish with the cold." 



"Reasoning thus, what do you do?" 



"To obviate this loss I have what I call 

 ' winter-passageways ' through the center of 

 the combs. You know that, in old box-hive 

 times, when bees rarely if ever died in winter, 

 they used cross-sticks in the center of the 

 hive to give the bees an extra attachment 

 for their combs. ' ' 



"Yes." 



"Well, the bees always left holes around 

 these sticks, and that gave these outside 

 bees a chance to draw up with the cluster, 

 through these holes, and hence bees win- 

 tered better in those days. To make a mov- 

 able-comb hive something like those old box 

 hives used to be, I make holes through the 

 center of the combs each fall, so that the 

 bees can crawl through, and I have had my 

 bees winter better than of yore." 



' ' You have got on to the old idea of some 

 25 years ago, when the makers of hives used 

 to put a curled shaving on a strip of tin long 

 enough to bring the shaving about to the 

 center of the frame, when the upper end 

 was fastened to the under side of the top- 

 bar of the frame. But, so far as I know, 

 few, if any, of our most advanced apiarists 

 use those things now. ' ' 



"Why don't they use them?" 



' ' Because they do not think them of any 

 special advantage, nor believe that those 

 little clusters of dead bees are of any value. " 



"Of no value? If they are of no value, 

 what bees are of value, pray tell?" 



"Bees that have vitality enough to go 

 around the combs with the rest of the bees 

 which go. ' ' 



' ' Do you mean to say that the reason 

 these bees are caught away from the main 

 cluster in these little clusters of from three 

 to twenty is because they do not have vitali- 

 ty enough to winter over?" 



"That is just what many of our bee-keep- 

 ers think." 



"What reason have they for thinking so?" 



" I do not know that I have ever asked 

 others for their reasons; but my reason for 

 so thinking is that, when this old idea was 

 at its height, a quarter of a century ago, I 

 was infatuated with it, and bored holes in 

 the side of my hives, fixing a little door over 

 the same, when every fall I v/ould open these 

 doors, as soon as all comb-building was 

 through for the season, and before the bees 

 formed their cluster for winter, and insert a 

 square stick with a sharp point, and slowly 

 worm this stick through to the back side of 

 the hive, when, after the bees had cleaned 

 it out, I had a hole through every comb in 

 the hive, just where I wanted it, right in 

 the center." 



"Well, I declare! that was a novel way of 

 doing it. And after this you think such a 

 procedure of no value?" 



" I do so think ; for when the combs were 

 so fixed I found that these little clusters of 

 dead bees would be on the combs just the 

 same, and I actually found clusters of them 

 with the bees within less than half of an 

 inch of these holes." 



"That seems strange to me. How did 

 you account for it?" 



' ' After a little watching I found that such 

 death of bees rarely occurred except during 

 the first heavy freeze each fall, and this led 

 me to investigate the matter closely, said 

 investigation proving to my mind that the 

 bees died from lack of vitality, or old age, 

 rather than from not being able to keep up 

 with the cluster by being chilled." 



" I do not see it yet." 



' ' Usually we have much cool cloudy weath- 

 er two to four weeks before the first severe 

 cold, so that old bees do not leave the hive 

 to any extent to die, as they do all through 

 the summer months, so that the number of 

 dead bees dying from this cause would be 

 considerable, providing none were chilled. 

 But instead of dying at once, at this time of 

 the year, these old bees seem to linger along 

 through the dormancy of the bees at this 

 time of the year, and so gather in these 

 little clusters, where they remain in a half- 

 dormant state till caught by the extreme 

 cold, or a warm time comes when a chance 

 is offered for a flight. If a flight occurs, I 

 have often found them clinging about on old 

 boards, fences, corners of the hives, etc., 

 and I presume, if you will think, you have 

 seen the same." 



' ' Yes, I do remember seeing such things, 

 but I had no idea that these nearly dead bees, 

 sticking to every thing, were those I would 

 find dead after a cold snap in late fall or 

 early winter, if no flight had occurred. ' ' 



' ' Then another thing. I noticed that, 

 where a cold snap came immediately after 

 the bees had had a flight, there would be 

 scarcely a bee caught away from the main 

 cluster, this showing also that those caught 

 at any other time were too nearly gone with 

 old age to keep up with the cluster. For 

 these reasons I left off making holes through 



