ISSl 



gleaa'i:ngs in bee culture. 



329 



contract my bees. When this is done, give to each i 

 colony a few pounds of best white-sugar syrup. 

 They ought then to have twenty pounds of provi- 

 sions to every colony, and are ready to store away; 

 200 colonies can thus be fed up by one man in three 

 days. If, however, you were unable to obtain the 

 combs of honey, or have not thought it of sufficient 

 importance to do so, the feeding must be done ear- 

 lier, to give them time to seal. Let your bees now 

 stand till permanent cold weather has set in, and, 

 unless already too late in November, wait till they 

 have had a last good flight. I know that I herein 

 differ with many good apiarists, and that Prof. Cook 

 remai'ks in his manual that they should be removed 

 to the cellar before " permanent cold weather sets 

 in;" yet my experience has always corroborated my 

 statement once before made, that it is safer to re- 

 move them to the cellar late than take them out 

 eai'ly in spring. If the winter and circumstances 

 are such that bees will stand conflnement for five 

 months, say from the 1st of November to the 1st of 

 April, they will stand it.jutst as wcU from the ir)th of 

 November to the loth of April; and in ordinary falls \ 

 and springs 1 should certainly prefer the latter. But | 

 to return to my instructions. I repeat, leave your . 

 bees out as late as possible. They will thus con- 

 sume all unsealed honey they have, and you may be 

 assured that all hrood will have hatched -another \ 

 most important thing; and, what is more, having 

 been well chilled they will not again begin to breed 

 till removed from the cellar in spring, if the temper- 

 ature is kept even at about 42°. ! 



Often it has happened to me that snow and ice 

 have clogged up the entrance, when I put them in, 

 so that I had to leave the entrance blocks on till 

 thawed off. Last winter was no exception. 1 



And now as to the kind of cellar, ventilation of j 

 the hives, and how to set them. I must refer you to 

 March No., lest this article be too long. The tem- 

 perature ought never vary more than six degrees, 

 and whether this be obtained by extra good protec- 

 tion of the cellar, by water, or by artificial heat, is, 

 I believe, immaterial. If the temperature is even, 

 your bees will be quiet, consume little honey, will 

 not breed. Let them remain there all winter undis- 

 turbed, only once or twice cleaning the entrance by 

 means of a feather. If the winter is mild, a flight 

 during the warm weather might not hurt them; but 

 my bees never enjoy this privilege, and I do not ad- 

 vocate the theory, except where bees are sick with 

 the dysentery. My objection is, it is too liable to 

 stimulate them to breeding. When permanent 

 warm weather has set in, and here again not hcforc, 

 unless dysentery makes it absolutely necessary, 

 carry your bees to their summer stands for good, 

 and in day time, notwithstanding Mr. Little or oth- 

 ers. Wait till 10 or 11 o'clock in the forenoon; then, 

 if there is no wind, and the weather is warm and 

 promising, go to your cellar and make a dense cloud 

 of tobacco smoke, blowing some into each hive (no 

 matter if you do hit a dead one), and then begin to 

 carry them out, always closing the door after you. 

 At first, all will get restless, and a few will fly out; 

 but an occasional dose of tobacco smoke will soon 

 cool them all down, and you can carry them out in 

 perfect quiet. Removing bees from the cellar in 

 day time has many advantages; the most important 

 is, that you know to a certainty the state of the 

 weather, which you can ne%-er know the evening be- 

 fore. As to the bees missing their hives, etc., inci- 



dent to the confusion they are in, that Mr. Little re- 

 marks upon, I must say that I have had far less 

 trouble from it than formerly from wind and 

 weather. 



Let some one who has faith in the above-described 

 manner of wintering bees try it and report. I can 

 not claim that bees thus cared for will aZu'aj/s winter 

 well; but so far they have every time I have tried 

 it, or seen it tried, and that is ten or twelve years. 

 There is no mystery about wintering bees if the es- 

 sentials arc kept in view. It is so well established 

 that all believe it, that "strong colonies of young 

 bees, a g.iod queen, plentj' of pure, healthy honey, or 

 its equivalent, even temperature ranging from 40° 

 to 45°, and proper ventilation," constitute these es- 

 sentials; and what I have said is simply applying 

 them, one and all, to the 8-frame Langstroth hive, 

 with tight bottom and old style honey-board. That 

 I add to these, put them in cellar late; do not let 

 them breed; remove them in day time, etc., maij be 

 only pet hobbies of mine, and safer for me to ride 

 than for j-ou. Geo. Grimm. 



Jefferson, Wis.. June IT, ISSl. 



There, boys, you have it right before you 

 — plain directions from one who winters, 

 winter after winter, so nearly without loss, 

 and in such numbers, that it can not well be 

 accident. If you follow carefully and thor- 

 oughly the directions friend G. has given, 

 there is no reason in the world why you 

 should not succeed in the same way. Re- 

 member, the writer is himself but little more 

 than a boy, like many of the rest of you ; 

 but he has learned from his father to do 

 well what he undertakes to do. I presume 

 friend G. would not undertake to say he 

 could winter bees where the young ones and 

 the queens are all the time sold off from the 

 stocks, as is the case in our apiary. 



FKIEND SMITH, OF PELEE I^iLANU, 



TELLS HIS STORY ABOUT AVIN- 



TERING. 



WHY DID THE BEES DIE ? 



f THOUGHT last month that I would tell my sto- 

 ry about wintermg; but as you kindly admon- 

 — ' ished us in the May No. to drop the subject, I 

 was discouraged from so doing. I know that it is 

 not desirable to keep filling th*; pages of Glean- 

 ings with this subject, especially where it is mere 

 statements of every bee-keeper of the number he 

 had in the fall, and the number he had left in the 

 spring, which statements can be of interest to the 

 majority of readers only as showing the great loss 

 of bees last winter, of which we are all pretty well 

 aware by this time. But when all the facts con- 

 nected with the losses an<l survivals are carefully 

 noted and compared, with a view of arriving at 

 some conclusion as to the cause and remedy of 

 losses, they become <>f more general interest; and 

 we have several such articles in the June No., and 

 reading these has again put me in the notion of 

 telling my story. 



My experience was with a variety of hives under 

 different circumstances, and it seems to point to a 

 different conclusion from most of the reports. I 

 had 40 hives, prepared and unprepared in various 



