1906 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1309 



cages and feeding bees in the winter. It 

 looks to us now like (juite a simple matter to 

 work up sugar and honey together so as to 

 make a sort of dough that will not daub the 

 bees and queen, and yet give them sufficient 

 liquid so they will not need the little bottles 

 of water that we had l)een supplying queen- 

 cages with before the Good candy eame out. 

 But I tell you it took a lot of experimenting 

 and a deal of talking it over to get the queen- 

 cage (:a.nd.j Just rig lit. 



Friend Good, you and your good wife have 

 given the world' just douljle the number of 

 good men and women that belong to the 

 Root family. You have done your duty; and 

 if there were more to follow your example I 

 think our nation would not be in the predic- 

 ament it is now in some respects. No one 

 can accuse you of not doing your part to 

 prevent "race suicide ;" and I think we shall 

 have to submit this picture to our good 

 President for his approval and encourage- 

 ment. There are too many educated people 

 — people who have abundant means to give 

 their childrtm every opportunity — who seem 

 to think no obligation rests upon them to 

 rear good-sized familes in the fear of the 

 Lord. Maj^ God continue to be with you 

 and your good wife and that promising Hock 

 of children. 



The good Book says, " Be fruitful, and mul- 

 tiply, and replenish the earth." Again, "As 

 arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so 

 are the children of the youth. Happy is the 

 man that hath his quiver full of them." — 

 A. L R.] 



WINTERING BEES. 



The Value of a Protected Location; a Bee- 

 cellar in a Sand Hill ; Spring Care. 



BY N. E. FRANCE. 



In the Northern States successful winter- 

 ing of bees is quite a problem. The more I 

 study this as I visit apiaries, the more I be- 

 lieve the bee-keeper is to blame for losses. 

 How, then, can they be prevented? 



1. I want, early in July, more sealed hon- 

 ey in the brood-combs than is necessary to 

 winter the colony. The unused honey in the 

 spring will all be used to feed early-hatched 

 brood, and I often find weak colonies or dead 

 ones, as I go over the State in the spring, 

 that are starved or nearly so. Starving 

 colonies in spring are seldom profitable. 

 This shortage also causes the bees to eat too 

 much pollen, and dj'sentery will follow. 



3. During the latter part of the honey har- 

 vest I remove every queen, and at the same 

 time replace, with new queens, either those 

 which 1 buy or some raised in the apiary for 

 the purpose. This will leave the hives soon 

 after the honey-tiow with fewer old bees to 

 feed during the fall, that would die before 

 winter any way, thus saviug winter food. 

 The new queen will lill the hives in the fall 

 with young workers that will live through 

 the trying months to maintain heat and care 

 for early brood in the spring. In this north- 



ern climate, where winters are hard, I do 

 not dare to winter queens twice, for they 

 are liable to die in the spring, leaving queen- 

 less colonies that are of little value. 



8. The location of the apiary often decides 

 success or failure, especially if bees are win- 

 tered outside. The apiary should l)e well 

 sheltered from cold winds, the hives provid- 

 ed with youug queens and an abundance of 

 young workers, and well tilled with honey in 

 the fall. It is well to allow a free flight of 

 l)ees twice during the winter, on warm days; 

 the hives should be protected from the out- 

 side air with heavy building-paper, or by an 

 outside casing. If the above conditions are 

 met I woiUd rather winter the bees on sum- 

 mer stands. It is much less work, and the 

 amount of extra food consumed (not over lU 

 lbs.) will not pay for the extra labor. The 

 illustration shows such an apiary of over lUU 

 colonies, protected with building-paper, in a 

 sheltered location; the winter loss, including 

 spring dwindling, is never over 2 per cent. 

 The hive in the foreground has the outside 

 paper removed, showing the brood-chamber 

 and the super of sealed combs for winter 

 food. 



As I go among hundreds of apiaries inspect- 

 ing bees I find a large portion of the apiaries 

 are not so locateil as to be protected, and out- 

 side wintering results in heavy loss. Cellar 

 wintering, then, must be resorted to. Good 

 results are obtainetl where the haea are win- 

 tered in a so-called root-cellar, dug back in- 

 to a sandy hillside. Some bee- beepers wall 

 up the sides with good stone, leavmg every 

 thing covered with soil for protection. Oth- 

 ers stand posts near together to keep the 

 sand from caving in. The ceiling is built of 

 heavy sound timbers; over this, at least 3 

 feet of sand or soil, then a foot of straw un- 

 der the board roof, which conducts all storms 

 away. There should be a ventilating-tube at 

 least a foot square fi"om near the bottom of 

 the cellar, with a damper that can be closed 

 any time. This tube should extend above 

 the roof, with an elbow on top, so as to point 

 downward. 



It is a good thing to have a thermometer 

 in the cellar where it can be read frequently, 

 and the temperature kept uniformly at 45°. 

 Double tight-htting doors at the entrance are 

 necessarJ^ and should swing out. In the 

 spring if the cellar gets too warm, and the 

 bees restless, I open the doors at early eve- 

 ning, closing them early the next morning. 

 If frost is creeping in, and the room getting 

 too cold, a small stove can be put in between 

 the doors; and when the air is warmed there, 

 the inside door is swung open. Well-built 

 cellai's will keep about the same temperature 

 without all this manipulation. 



The more the cellar is back in the bank, 

 the better. There is a perfect Avintering-eel- 

 lar in Wisconsin, made by blasting out the 

 sand rock, forming a cave the size and shape 

 wanted, thex'e being several feet of stone 

 and soil above for the roof. A cellar under 

 a dwelling-house is often the place for a farm- 

 er to keep his bees, if what space is wanted 

 for the hives is partitioned off so it can be 



