320 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 



ers in your neighborhood. I often met with great 

 losses when my apiary was managed ehielly for the 

 sale of Italian queens. At the close of a poor honey 

 season, iny apiary often had many weak colonies. 

 The temptation to winter every such stock which 

 had a good queen was very great, as the demand at 

 high prices for such queens in the spring was usual- 

 ly greater than could be met. It was only the fact 

 that my location was a poor one for honey, and that 

 I could got large prices for nearly all the queens 

 that I could raise, that at all justified my course. If 

 in addition to the queen business, the selling of bees 

 quite late in the season by the pound had been prac- 

 ticed, the condition of my apiary after an unusually 

 cold winter and late spring would probably have 

 been very similar to that of your own. I give some 

 comments on your replies to questions which I sent 

 to you.* 

 1. "Did you spread the combs further apart?" 

 " I did not. Although recommended, so far as I 

 know it has been mostly abandoned." 



Mr. Harrison, of Buffalo, first called attention to 

 the importance of keeping the combs in which the 

 bees cluster for winter some ?3 of an inch further 

 apart than the natural breeding distance. In the 

 old box hives there are usually spaces in which bees 

 can cluster in much larger numbers than in mova- 

 ble frames properly spaced for the working season. 

 In the very cold winter of 187iJ-'3, 1 wintered in the 

 open air in hives only '3 thick, until February ,+ a 

 number of stocks which were estimated not to have 

 over two quarts of bees per hive. All the bees of a 

 hive were placed between two combs full of honey, 

 which were kept nearly three inches apart, and they 

 formed a single cluster, shaped like a ball. If the 

 combs of these stocks had been left in their summer 

 position, no amount of chaff used in any fashion 

 could have saved them. Mr. J. S. Hill, of Mount 

 Healthy, O., who wintered last season 112 stocks 

 without losing one, and who has wintered on an av- 

 erage 80 stocks a year since 1868, without the loss of 

 one, spreads the combs. 

 3. " Did you make winter passages in the combs?" 

 "Perhaps half of the combs have winter passages. 

 I have never been satisfied it made any material dif- 

 ference." 



In this you differ from those who have had the 

 best success in wintering bees. Mr. Hill, for in- 

 stance, never neglects this point, and I am satisfied 

 that the power of passing from comb to comb 

 through the heart of the warm cluster, besides sav- 

 ing the lives of many bees, greatly encourages early 

 breeding. In the old box hive the holes around the 

 cross-sticks for the support of the combs give the 

 best of winter passages. 



3. "Did you place burlap or any other non-con- 

 ductor of moisture over the frames?" 



"We used burlap, wood mats, and enameled sheets, 

 but saw no difference in favor of either." 



Whatever the material used for confining the bees 

 below, it should, as a matter of course, permit the 

 ready escape of superfluous moisture. With weak 

 stocks in very cold winters, this is a point of great 

 importance. 



4. " Did you giv(! the bees a good space above the 

 frames for clustering in?" 



♦Friend L. wrote, liefore writing: tliis article, asking five 

 <lueations. I answered briefly, and his comments are oil tliese 

 questions. — Ed. 



t Advised by the Signal Service that a cold wave more severe 

 than any previous one was coming, the bees were removed iato 

 a cellar. 



"A part of them, perhaps nearly one-half, had an 

 empty frame, or a frame of stores placed over the 

 cluster. Our Holy-Land bees went into this upper 

 chamber and starved, having plenty of stores below." 



Reference to the back volumes of A. J3. J. show 

 that Bickford's quilt (afterward improved by you) is 

 credited by him to the successful experiments which 

 he witnessed in my apiary. I discarded the honey- 

 board in wintering, using, instead, woolen rags, old 

 carpets, etc., through which allsuperfluous moisture 

 could pass, while sufficient animal heat was retain- 

 ed, explaining at length that the principle was the 

 same as using suitable bed covering to keep our- 

 selves dry and warm in cold weather. I have always 

 regarded the elucidation and application of this prin- 

 ciple as a great adv^ance in practical bee-keeping. 

 The letters of Huber, published only a few years 

 ago, show how much his bees suffered from damp- 

 ness; and before I so fully expounded my ideas in 

 the London Journal of Horticulture, our English 

 friends found that they could not use wooden boxes 

 with any satisfaction. My plans, as seen by Mr. 

 Bickford, and very fully described in A. B. J., not 

 only gave this free escape of moisture without too 

 much loss of heat, but especially provided an ample 

 warm space for the liees above the frames, so that 

 the cluster could contract or expand at will. This 

 saved the lives of many bees which, in very cold 

 weather, even with the best winter passages, often 

 failed to regain the central cluster, and died be- 

 cause they could not keep up the necessary heat. 



I believe that, even in such a winter as the past 

 one, that with winter passages, combs properly 

 spread apart, and a warm clustering space for the 

 aforesaid purposes, bees could be better wintered in 

 the open air in hives 3s of an inch thick, than with 

 any amount of chaff above, around, or below them, 

 where these precautions are ignored; for in sunny 

 weather such thin hives will warm up so as to dry 

 out and allow the bees to reach their stores, while 

 the chaff hives may remain cold and damp as a cel- 

 lar. I will send you, in due season, an unpatented 

 device used by Mr. Hill, for securing a warm nest 

 above the clustered bees, which answers the end 

 better than any one I have yet seen. Is there a man 

 in all our northern country who can claim equal suc- 

 cess with Mr. Hill in wintering bees? It hardly need 

 be said that he is a pattern of skill, energy, and 

 promptness. He has made his bees pay in a region 

 where I think it is ordinarily more difficult to secure 

 one pound of surplus than two in the more favored 

 northern locations. 



5. " Did you feed your bees for winter with a mix- 

 ture of grape and cane sugar? " 



" Only a part of them, as I stated on page 378." 



I think your losses were owing in part to j'our use 

 of grape sugar, even although your candy contained 

 but one part of it to three of best granulated cane 

 sugar. It is not at all necessary that grape sugar 

 should contain any impurities to make it a very haz- 

 ardous food in such a winter and spring as we have 

 ,iust had. From its low sweetening power as com- 

 pared with honey or cane sugar, your bees which 

 used it were forced to eat more than they other- 

 wise would have done, and thus to suffer from a 

 greater accumulation of faeces. You say, " Had our 

 usual April weather come on, we should probably 

 have saved about 50 colonies that wo lost." Is it 

 not highly probable that, with the weather just as it 

 was, you might have saved many of those colonies, 

 if they bad pot been forced to gyccurnb under the 



