1881 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUEE. 



129 



my father's plan, and mostly the result of his expe- 

 rience. The three main requisites with me are, 

 strong colonies, plenty of good ripe honey, and a 

 cellar that the frost can not penetrate. As soon as 

 the summer honey season is over, I begin to prepare 

 my bees for winter. The fall honey crop is a thing 

 rarely known here, and I am generally well satisfied 

 if my bees obtain enough from buckwheat to supply 

 them with their winter stores. If there are fields of 

 buckwheat in the neighborhood, I extract most of 

 the white honey from the combs, and let them fill up 

 on buckwheat honey. If the yield is good, they will 

 breed fast; and by the time the storeroom is filled, 

 there will be brood in abundance. It is desirable, 

 and in my opinion necessary, that all this brood 

 should hatch, and the young bees fly out before they 

 are removed to the cellar. But buckwheat does not 

 always yield honey, and it then becomes necessary 

 to feed early and abundantly to induce the bees to 

 breed, and quit in time to allow all the brood to 

 hatch before it is too cold. Nothing but the best 

 ripe honey or white sugar syrup should ever be fed 

 in the fall. I never put my bees in the cellar before 

 1 am compelled to. I am always considerably later 

 than my neighbor bee-keepers; but I am always con- 

 siderably later, too, in taking them out in the spring. 

 My theory is this, and my practice has verified it, 

 that bees can not well stand more than a certain 

 length of confinement, and that they can stand a 

 little cold in the fall of the year, when young and 

 healthy, better than in the spring, when old and 

 weak from long confinement. Of late, my bees are 

 never taken out for a temporary fly, and I have very 

 little trouble from spring dwindling, except in ex- 

 ceptional years. In removing them to the cellar I 

 have often delayed so long that I was compelled to 

 brush the snow from the hiyes. It is not necessary 

 to have them perfectly dry, or the cellar either, 

 when both are properly ventilated. I have wintered 

 with splendid success in a cellar where the water was 

 nearly two feet high for several weeks, and all but 

 entered the hives. Had I not anticipated it, and 

 raised it from near the ground, the lower rows 

 would have been drowned out. 



I will now describe my best cellar. It is about 

 'Z2 X 40, 8 feet high, dug into the side of a hill, the floor 

 being level with the ground at the front end. The 

 sides are well banked up, and the whole is covered 

 with a building used for storing the supplies of the 

 apiary. A space of about ten feet of the front is 

 partitioned off, and is used for storing vinegar. The 

 rear is used for wintering bees. The bottom is hard 

 gravel; the ceiling and walls are plastered. In the 

 center of the partition is a chimney with a ventilat- 

 ing flue for the bee-cellar. In each of the rear cor- 

 ners is a three-inch pipe, one reaching to the floor, 

 the other only through the ceiling. These two tubes 

 enter the storeroom above, while the chimney 

 reaches the outer air. The bees are placed in rows 

 on 2 X 4 scantling, the rear of the hive being about 

 one inch higher than the front. They are placed 

 one on top the other, six high. The ventilation of 

 each hive is simple; the entrance is opened full 

 size, and the honey-board slid forward so as to allow 

 an opening of about 3-16 of an inch at the rear. This 

 allows of a draft through the whole hive. I am nev- 

 er troubled with moldy combs. If the temperature 

 is too high, I open the door communicating with the 

 front part of the cellar, and let in the cool air. If it 

 is too cold, I put a stove in the front part and heat 

 the room, then slightly open the door to the bee- 



cellar. Thus T aim to keep the temperature at about 

 43°. In the cold weather it is easy to keep them suf- 

 ficiently warm; but in warm weather I can not al- 

 ways keep them cool enough. I have been thinking 

 of connecting the front room with an ice-house, as 

 so much depends on keeping the temperature even 

 throughout the winter. I have wintered as many as 

 350 colonies in this one cellar, and wintered them 

 well. My loss has never exceeded five percent. I 

 expect to winter successfully, cA'en this severe win- 

 ter, although I fed very late, and my bees were not 

 over-strong. They are at present very quiet, and 

 show no sign of disease. The dead bees on the bot- 

 tom are not nearly so numerous as I have seen them 

 at this time in other years. Another thing I consid- 

 er of importance, not alone to winter safely, but to 

 prevent inordinate dwindling in the spring; and 

 that is, never to let bees start breeding in the cellar, 

 unless the season is far enough advanced to admit 

 of taking them out of doors soon. Breeding in the 

 spring is only then profitable when it can be carried 

 on without interruption. By keeping the tempera- 

 ture moderately low, breeding in the cellar will be 

 prevented; and by keeping the bees in the cellar as 

 long as possible, when taken out they can breed un- 

 interruptedly. The addition of an ice-house to my 

 cellar I believe would accomplish this. 



Jefferson, Wis., Feb. 8, 1881. Geo. Grimm. 



Perhaps some ma}'^ think this valuable ar- 

 ticle should have been given sooner; but I 

 presume that, with the experience we have 

 had, we are, many of us, prepared to read it 

 understandingly, and we can easily turn 

 back to it when we are ready to begin mak- 

 ing preparations for another winter's cam- 

 paign. That so many of the old veterans 

 who number their colonies by the hundreds, 

 adhere to cellar wintering is a rather signiti- 

 cant fact. 



^ H i » 



THE NORTH-EASTEKN BEE-KEEPERS' 

 ASSOCIATIOi\. 



f'llIS session seems to have been one of 

 unusual interest and harmony. Some 

 — ■ thoughtful friend has been so kind as 

 to send me the report in the Utica Morning 

 Herald, from which I clip as follows:— 



WINTKRING. 



Mr. Doolittle said winters vary, therefore he 

 thought it good policy to winter in the cellir and 

 out of doors in equal proportion. A winter favora- 

 ble for wintering out-doors is not favorable to win- 

 tering in the cellar, and vice versa. One winter he 

 had 90 swarms under heavy snow, in places 11 feet 

 deep. Out of these 90 swarms he wintered but 15. 

 The same year he pvit 00 swarms in the ce;llar, and 

 saved 55 of them. He had a cellar with an even tem- 

 perature of 44 degrees. The bees do not get restless 

 at this temperature. Last winter he had better suc- 

 cess in wintering out-doors than in-doors, although 

 those kept in-doors did pretty well. 



Mr. House said his experience was precisely like 

 that of Mr. Doolittle in regard to wintering under 

 the snow. 



Mr. Doolittle said he had kept bees In a cave, dis- 

 tant from the outer air no less than three feet at 

 any point. The temperature of the interior did not 

 vary more than one degree the entire winter. The 

 bees wintered very well. 



Mr. Ncllis thought bees winter nowhere better 



