590 



PERHAPS no 

 one thing has 

 thrown so 

 much light on 

 the laws of life 

 and the condi- 

 tions f o r con- 

 tinuous health 

 as the post nior- 

 teTn examina- 

 tions of the dead 

 there is no time 



GLEAN IK GS IN BEE CULTURE 



THE WINTERING PROBLEM 



Three Authorities Discuss Winter 

 Losses and Tell How the beekeep- 

 er May T'repare Against Them 



By J. E. Crane, Jay Smith, and O. L. Hershiser 



and it has seemed to me 

 so desirable to study the 

 best conditions for wintering bees as in the 

 spring, especially in a spring after a bad, 

 hard winter when there have been heavy 

 losses. 



Winter Loss Due to Several Causes. 



During the past winter and spring there 

 has been in northern New England the larg- 

 est per cent of loss, I believe, of any one 

 year in the past 50 years. And now after 

 a careful study of the whole subject, what 

 do we find to be the cause? 



So far as I have been able to make out, 

 there was last winter a combination of three 

 or four unfavorable conditions, any one, or 

 in many cases any two, of which the bees 

 would have withstood with little loss, but 

 they were unable to withstand all of them 

 at the same time. 



Long Cold Winter and Poor Stores. 



It matters little in what order these con- 

 ditions are named, but I shall place them 

 in this way: 



(1) An unusually long period of con- 

 finement, which is always a bad condition. 



(2) An unusually cold winter, one of the 

 severest ever known, the thermometer some 

 days not showing above 20° below zero at 

 noon. 



(3) Poor quality of stores, and in many 

 cases insufficient stores. 



Where bees were shor+ of stores they 

 might have come thru all right had the 

 winter been mild. Where the stores were 

 of poor quality the bees might have lived, 

 if they had had the usual chance of a 

 winter flight. The long continued cold, 

 with the consequent confinement, was not 

 of itself sufficient to cause the serious loss 

 sustained by many beekeepers, for we have 

 found yards where the bees were supplied 

 with good well-ripened clover honey or re- 

 fined sugar syrup, and they wintered with 

 little loss. One such yard of bees was left 

 with summer entrances wide open, showing 

 that it was not the cold alone that killed 

 the bees. The owner said he did not put 

 on his supers until the bees had stored 

 enough for their winter supplies. Bees that 

 were confined for four or five months in cel- 

 lars having good stores wintered fairly well, 

 but where they had poor stores and were 

 even protected by a warm cellar, there was 

 a large loss. I have wintered fairly well 

 when the bees were fed on raw sugar, which 

 shows that where bees can fly several times 

 during Avinter poor stores alone are not 



would feed thein, and 

 them had enough if 



October 1920 



a 1 t o g e t her to 

 blame for all 

 the loss of bees 

 last winter. 



One very good 

 beekeeper said 

 he thought his 

 bees had enough 

 stores to last till 

 spring when he 

 undoubtedly most of 

 the winter had been 

 moderate; but it was not, and lie lost 

 heavily_ 



Some colonies in other yards lived till 

 May and then starved from the carelessness 

 of their owners to provide for their wants. 

 Weak Colonies, Queen Old or Missing. 

 Besides the above-mentioned causes for 

 loss, we had the usual loss from queenless- 

 ness, very weak colonies, and the cluster's 

 getting caught away from the stores, as is 

 sometimes the case. 



I noticed that colonies having young 

 queens seemed to come thru better than 

 those with older queens. Whether this 

 greater vitality came from the bees' being- 

 reared from a young queen or because they 

 were reared later in the season, I do not 

 know, but probably the latter. 



The wintering of bees in the north seems 

 very much a question of endurance, and 

 anything or everything that reduces their 

 vitality lessens their chance of getting safe- 

 ly thru the winter. 



Does Sugar Lessen Vitality? 

 Just here I stop to ask an interesting 

 question. 



Does the feeding of a considerable amount 

 of sugar to a colony in the fall lessen their 

 vitality? Or, to put it in another way. 

 will a good colony having 30 pounds of 

 good clover honey in the hive stand a bet- 

 ter chance of wintering than one equally 

 good that has ten pounds of good honey 

 and is fed 20 pounds of thick sugar syrup? 

 Will the storing of this sj'rup and inverting 

 it so it will not crystallize reduce their 

 vitality? 



In a letter last winter from T. H. Elwood 

 of New York, he stated that Capt. J. K. 

 Hetherington, who was a close observer, be- 

 lieved that changing ordinary sugar to in- 

 vert sugar, as bees do when fed, reduces 

 their vitality. I have no way of proving 

 this one way or the other, but if given my 

 choice between two colonies of bees, one of 

 which had stored 30 pounds of early clo\er 

 honey, and the other 10 pounds and had 

 been fed 20 pounds of best sugar, other 

 qualities of the colonies being the same, T 

 should not hesitate for one moment but taki- 

 the one that had the early stored honey. 

 Quality of Stores Most Important. 

 We liave been accustomed to think that 

 good protection by careful packing of bees 

 for winter 's cold was the most important 

 thing, but the experience of the past winter 

 and spring has shown most conclusively that 



