THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



the hives three or four days at a time 

 and then they would be out again. 

 The great snowstorm reached us on 

 the afternoon of Jan. S and it turned 

 wonderfully cold for this climate. 

 From Jan. 9 to Jan. 12 the mercury 

 ne\&x rose above zero, an experience 

 altogether new to me. The lowest 

 dip was 16° below zero. Well, on Jan. 

 14, or the sixth day of the cold snap, 

 the sun shone out brightly and 

 warmed up the south side of some 

 of the hives which are painted with 

 ochre, and the bees began to stir at 

 the entrances of the hive and some 

 of them took wing to meet a breeze 

 too sharp for bees to endure and live 

 a great while. 



The fall before I had fed several 

 colonies with pure sugar syrup, put- 

 ting the bees on clean combs and 

 had treated several colonies the same 

 way, feeding them with extracted 

 honey diluted with warm water. One 

 colony was fed on sorghum syrup, 

 as much as I could induce them to 

 take as they were very reluctant to 

 store it. They seemed willing to fuss 

 with it, but they evidently cared little 

 about risking it for winter stores. Of 

 course I took a lively interest in see- 

 ing what would be the effect of such 

 continued low temperature on the 

 bees in their several differing condi- 

 tions as to their winter stores. To 

 my surprise, the bees which had fed 

 on natural stores and even the colony 

 that had been fed sorghum syrup, 

 looked all right as to color and size ; 

 but the bees that fed solely on pure 

 sugar syrup,a limited number of them, 

 were the worst bloated bees I have 

 ever had the pleasure to see. Some 

 of the bees dragged themselves out 

 of the hive so full that they were help- 

 less, so far as taking wing is con- 

 cerned. I gathered up some of these 

 bloated bees and took them to my 

 office and emptied the contents of 

 their bodies on a sheet of white pa- 

 per. The amount taken from an in- 

 dividual bee was perhaps twice as 

 much as the bee could carry in the 



ordinary way. To all appearances, 

 as to color and consistency, and in 

 every respect, except as to sweetness, 

 the fluid taken from the bodies of 

 these bees was identical with the 

 sugar syrup as I fed it to the bees in 

 the fall. This fluid was put under a 

 glass of pretty considerable powers 

 without reveahng the presence of 

 anything more than might be seen 

 in ordinary syrup. Now here was 

 a plain case of bee diarrhoea so far 

 as the distension of the abdomen of 

 the bee was concerned. A short time 

 afterwards, there came a warm day 

 and a general flight of the bees left 

 them in good condition. These bees 

 were in single wall hives and without 

 any packing of any kind. A few col- 

 onies starved because of the scattered 

 condition of their stores in the hives, 

 being unable to move during the bit- 

 ter cold weather. 



I am now' convinced that sugar 

 syrup is inferior to honey for winter 

 stores in this climate, and I want to 

 enter my protest here against the 

 wholesale sugar- feeding going on in 

 the apiaries of the country. This 

 sugar feeding is rapidly undermining 

 the honey trade. Beekeepers merely 

 indulging their own convenience 

 may shut their eyes to the facts, but 

 the trouble of the honey market is 

 lack of confidence in modern honey. 

 A man visited my apiary not long 

 since, who had taken a fancy to bees 

 but was utterly ignorant of modern 

 bee culture. He told me of a man 

 in Indiana who keeps his bees in a 

 winter repository or bee-house and 

 that, by furnishing them with sugar 

 he kept his bees "making honey" 

 all winter. 



I knew this man was spreading this 

 false story, and ignorantly doing it, 

 so I took all the pains I could to 

 convince him that the Indiana bee- 

 keeper was only feeding his bees on 

 sugar syrup to keep them from starv- 

 ing till the spring bloom would give 

 them a living. But this was taking 

 the romance out of his story and for 



