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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Feb. 15 



dence of his son, 4422 Chestnut St., Philadel- 

 phia. Mr. Hooker, whose picture I showed 

 on page 1134 of last year, was at one time 

 one of the leading bee-keepers of England. 

 He was closely associated with such men as 

 Thomas Wm. Cowan, Frank Cheshire, and 

 others, and, moreover, was prominent at the 

 bee conventions and bee shows of Great 

 Britain. 



SEMI-HIBERNATION ON THE PART OF BEES; 



SOME EXPERIMENTS IN CHILLING AND 



FREEZING BEES TO DETERMINE HOW 



LONG LIFE MAY BE SUSTAINED 



UNDER SUCH CONDITIONS. 



I AM well aware that hibernation was ex- 

 ploited about 20 years ago, and it was gen- 

 erally decided, and rightly, too, that bees 

 did not hibernate in the ordinary sense of 

 the term (see American Bee Journal for 

 1885) . But they do go into a quiescent state 

 when the temperature has been lowered; 

 and this state is somewhat analogous to the 

 torpor experienced by some animals in a 

 state of true hibernation. A hibernating 

 animal enters into a sort of sleep, during 

 which no food is taken and respiration is 

 considerably reduced. Dr. Marshall Hall has 

 stated that * ' respiration is inversely as the 

 degree of irritability of the muscular fiber." 

 If the respiration is reduced without this ir- 

 ritability being increased, death results from 

 asphyxia. Hibernation is usually induced by 

 cold; and the animal under its influence at- 

 tains nearly the temperature of the sur- 

 rounding atmosphere. But the hibernating 

 animal can not resist any amount of cold, 

 although its capacity for doing so varies ac- 

 cording to the animal. Some animals bury 

 themselves in holes, like snakes and frogs; 

 others, like the bear, crawl under a pile of 

 leaves and brush where they are still fur- 

 ther covered with snow. Thus buried they 

 will go all winter without food or water; 

 but there is a waste of tissue. Fish may be 

 encased in ice and still live, I am told. A 

 lively frog, as our Mr. Pritchard testifies, 

 may be dropped into a pail of water four or 

 five inches deep, and exposed to a freezing 

 temperature. Indeed, there may be a thin 

 coating of ice formed over the animal. The 

 next morning, that frog, though stiff and 

 cold, can be warmed up into activity. Mr. 

 Pritchard then tried the experiment of giv- 

 ing the frog a solid freeze-up, and it died. 

 Whether the pressure of the ice crushed it, 

 or whether it was the actual cold, or both, 

 we can not say. 



Flies, as is well known, will secrete them- 

 selves in window- frames and other hiding- 

 places, subject to cold atmosphere, for weeks 

 at a time, and yet on exposure to warmth 

 they will revive. As is well known, also, 

 ants have been repeatedly dug out of logs, 

 frozen solid — in fact, fairly enveloped in 

 frost; yet on exposure to warmth they will 

 come to. Some hibernators can endure a 

 freezing temperature, while others, like the 

 bear, woodchuck, and the like, can not. 

 Other very interesting incidents may be 

 taken from natural history; but the purpose 



of this article is to consider whether bees go 

 into a quiescent state that approaches hi- 

 bernation, in which there is low respiration 

 and a small consumption of stores. A year 

 ago last summer we put a number of cages 

 of bees with some queens (laying the cages 

 down on cakes of ice) in a refrigerator. 

 The bees were chilled to absolute stiffness. 

 Every day we would take out a cage, and 

 each time the bees would revive, including 

 the queen. This thing was continued for 

 several days, and yet the bees would ' ' come 

 to" each time. 



The strange part of it was, that the queens 

 went on laying normally when put back in 

 the hives, instead of laying drone eggs as 

 we expected. Just what the temperature 

 to which these bees were subjected was I 

 can not say — probably something below 40 

 and something above 35, for the doors of the 

 refrigerator were frequently opened, and the 

 ice was constantly melting. 



During the past winter, when a cold snap 

 came on, the temperature going down to 

 zero, we put out some cages of bees, expos- 

 ing them to the cold wind, which was then 

 blowing a pretty good gale, when the tem- 

 perature was 5 above zero. I had expected 

 that the bees possibly might be able to sur- 

 vive the shock for a number of hours, and 

 yet revive; but 20 minutes of zero freezing 

 was sufficient to kill them outright. I be- 

 lieve if we had taken the bees and gradual- 

 ly acclimatized them to the cold, first sub- 

 jecting them to 40, then to 35, and gradual- 

 ly down to the zero point, they would have 

 withstood the shock better. 



When the weather warmed up a little we 

 took several cages of bees and buried them 

 in the snow, leaving with them a thermom- 

 eter so that we might know the absolute 

 temperature. We went out and got a cage 

 of bees about every two or three hours, and 

 we found that we could revive them without 

 difficulty; but at the end of 24 hours the 

 bees, when they "came to," seemed some- 

 what the worse for the experience. The 

 temperature in the snow played around the 

 32 mark. But the experiments conducted 

 during the summer would seem to show that 

 bees might stand a temperature of 38 for a 

 number of days. 



We know it to be an absolute fact that the 

 bees on the outside of a ball or cluster, in 

 the case of an outdoor-wintered colony, will 

 often be chilled stiff while those inside will 

 have almost a blood temperature. It has 

 occurred to me that, during very severe 

 weather, the inside bees may be gradually 

 replaced by those within the cluster; for we 

 know there is a constant movement of the 

 cluster. Experiments show that a bee that 

 has been starved will not stand as much cold 

 as one that is well filled. Bee-keejjers who 

 have had any experience in wintering out- 

 doors know how repeatedly they have taken 

 clusters of bees that seemed to be frozen 

 stiff, yet when warmed up before a good fire 

 would revive and appear as lively as ever. 



In view of the experiments we have thus 

 far conducted, it would appear that bees 



