THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



231 



leading through the packing for a fly 

 hole and air. The spout should slope 

 down from the hive out and leave a 

 hole or passage one inch at the outer 

 end and five or six inches wide when 

 it enters the hive. 



The above plan has been a success 

 with me for ten years and I know of 

 no plan so good. 



It will be observed that fall honey 

 is not the food to winter bees on 

 safely; that thirty pounds will keep a 

 good colony from October till June ; 

 that the bees and hives are free from 

 the rain and dampness of winter with 

 abundance of air below them and no 

 danger of a closed entrance. 



Abronia, Mich. 



G. W. Demaree. 



I do not presume to write on this 

 subject for the benefit of all beekeep- 

 ers in every condition and climate. 

 The writer who presumes to do so 

 deceives himself, and what is worse, 

 he deceives many others. When pre- 

 paring bees for the winter months, 

 locality and climate must be taken 

 into consideration. Anywhere in 

 Kentucky bees will survive the sever- 

 est winters if they have dry quarters 

 and an abundance of winter stores. 

 I know this to be true from long ob- 

 servation. But merely to bring bees 

 through the winter is not necessarily 

 wintering them well. Thousands of 

 colonies are wintered in Kentucky, 

 just as the bees and the hive chance 

 to be in at the close of the honey 

 season. No matter how many boxes, 

 or how many frames the bees may 

 have access to, it is very common 

 to leave them to pass the winter un- 

 disturbed. Last winter, as cold as it 

 was, I wintered a number of colonies 

 in two story L hives, containing 

 nineteen L frames, ten below and 

 nine above. These colonies win- 



tered better than some I had con- 

 fined to the lower stories of chaff- 

 hives. 



For this climate, chaff-hives are a 

 failure. I have had a dozen or more 

 in use in my ajMary for seven or eight 

 years and tliey have not done as well 

 as the single-wall hives. I think the 

 reason for this is, the bees in chaff- 

 hives are deprived of the intervals of 

 sunshine on the south sides of the 

 hives, which in single-wall hives ena- 

 bles the bees to rouse themselves suf- 

 ficiently to change their position and 

 take food to sustain them through the 

 cold nights and cloudy days. 



In my opinion, for this climate, 

 the best preparation for bees in win- 

 ter is "protection" on the north sides 

 and west ends of the hives, causing 

 the single walls on the south sides to 

 be warmed by the sun when its life- 

 giving rays pour through the rifted 

 clouds to cheer mother earth and 

 give the bees new hope and new 

 courage. 



THE EFFECTS OF BAD WINTERING. 



The effects of bad wintering in this 

 climate are weak colonies ; weakened 

 in numbers so that they build up 

 slowly at the start in the spring, which 

 results in few field workers and a 

 great deal of brood and young bees 

 to feed during the early part of the 

 honey harvest which materially cuts 

 down the surplus yield. Nothing can 

 be more discouraging to the apia- 

 rist than to see a large portion of his 

 colonies wasting the best of the honey 

 season rearing brood that can be of 

 no service after the honey season has 

 passed. 



THE CAUSE OF WEAK COLONIES. 



I do not care to notice or contro- 

 vert all the theories which have been 

 persistently advanced to explain and 

 account for our winter losses. In 

 this climate the chief cause of mor- 

 tality in wintering our bees is scat- 

 tered stores in the brood nest or in 

 the hives as the case may be. Under 



