226 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



Lastly, let us look after food ; see 

 that we never have unwholesome 

 food. Never give our bees honey 

 that we would not eat ourselves. 

 Unless we are sure of our tempera- 

 ture, we better, in my judgment, ex- 

 clude pollen, and will even find good 

 cane syrup safer than honey. This 

 last opinion is not mere guesswork 

 but the result of many years' careful 

 experiment and observation. 

 Lansing, Mich. 



THE WINTERING 



PROBLEM. 



No. 4. 



J. E. Pond, jr. 



The wintering problem is to-day 

 the most important question with 

 which our northern beekeepers have 

 to contend. A large majority of 

 losses are caused by lack of proper 

 preparation, and he who gives us a 

 rule, by following which the mini- 

 mum of loss will follow, will benefit 

 the fraternity to an incalculable ex- 

 tent. There is one pecuhar thing 

 shown by the reports of past years, 

 and that is that no matter what 

 method of general preparation is 

 used, losses still follow ; from this 

 we judge that no inflexible rule can 

 be given, the following of which will 

 cause absolute immunity from loss. 

 The best that can be done is to 

 adopt that method the following of 

 which has shown it to be the near- 

 est to safety of any which has been 

 adopted. For myself, I have always 

 wintered on summer stands, and am 

 not qualified to speak of any other 

 method ; the fact, however, tliat dur- 

 ing the last fifteen years I have lost 

 but four colonies (all of which 

 starved) is proof that the plan of prep- 

 aration for winter, made use of by 

 myself, is as safe as any at least in my 

 own locaUty ; viz., eastern Massachu- 

 setts. 



In this article I do not propose to 

 discuss the various methods made 

 use of by others, but simply to give 

 a brief and comprehensive statement 

 of the method adopted by myself 

 and used for over fifteen years, with 

 the result as heretofore stated, dur- 

 ing which time I have wintered from 

 ten to twenty-five colonies each sea- 

 son. I use nothing but the Lang- 

 stroth hive \ I have used such con- 

 structed with double and single walls ; 

 chaff-filled, filled with cut straw and 

 sawdust, and with no filling at all ; 

 my preference now being for a dou- 

 ble-walled hive with dead-air space, 

 the inner wall being not over one- 

 half an inch thick. 



I begin my preparations for winter 

 as early as the first of September, by 

 leaving in the hive at that time only 

 as many frames of comb as the bees 

 can cover. My intention is to have 

 no less than five frames and no more 

 than seven at that time. I cause the 

 upper two-thirds of these frames to 

 be filled with sealed stores, taking no 

 pains to remove any pollen, but ex- 

 tract any honey in early October that 

 may be stored in the lower-third of 

 the frames. Brood-rearing I keep 

 up by stimulative feeding as late as 

 the bees can care for the brood ; de- 

 siring they should go into winter 

 quarters with a full quota of young 

 bees. 



On the advent of settled cold 

 weather and as soon as the cluster is 

 beginning to form, I force such clus- 

 ters to the west side of the hive (my 

 hives face to the south). I have used 

 division-boards of various kinds, but 

 consider a one-half inch board as 

 good as any, especially when used in 

 a double- walled hive. In using a 

 single-walled hive, I should use a di- 

 vision-board one and one-half inches 

 thick made of one-half inch stuff, 

 with dead air space between. 



After forcing the cluster to the 

 west side of the hive up, place a 

 "Hill's device" or its equivalent on 

 the frames, so as to allow for the tops 



