THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



203 



they slioukl be prepared for winter 

 early— certainly by Oct. 1, and before 

 if they need feeding— so they will 

 have time to evaporate the honey and 

 seal it before cold weather sets in. 

 Many colonies are lost that are fed so 

 late as not to have time to evaporate 

 the honey, and it sours and kills the 

 bees. There are also cellars that are 

 damp and cold where bees are win- 

 tered. Objections to wintering in a 

 cellar often arises from a lack of un- 

 derstanding of some of the requisites. 

 The hives are often placed so close to 

 the wall that tliey absorb moisture 

 and become moldy and unhealthful ; 

 sometiuies they are placed on shelves 

 attached to the sleepers overhead, and 

 are thus subjected to every jar from 

 the room above them with bad re- 

 sults. Dry. pure air and a proper and 

 even temperature are the prime essen- 

 tials in successful wintering ; and 

 these cannot be so perfectly controlled 

 out-of-doors as in a suitable cellar. 

 The room should be partitioned off 

 with matched lumber, so that it will 

 not admit a ray of light, and be kept 

 as nearly a temperature of 45° as 

 possible. I find them most quiet at 45°. 



Gathering Pollen and Rearing 

 Brood.— Louis Werner, Edwardsville, 

 ? Ills., on March 18, 1886, writes : 



My apiary fronts to the south. I 

 have just finished examining my bees, 

 and they are in fine condition. They 

 have been working on soft maple and 

 red elm for the past 5 days, and are 

 rearing brood. I have some colonies 

 full of brood. I have never seen a 

 finer spring than we are having now, 

 and the outlook for a good season is 

 excellent. I have wintered 91 colo- 

 nies on the summer stands. I found 

 one that was queenless ; the others 

 are all right. 



"Working on the Maples.— J. G. 



Norton, (32-50), Macomb, to Ills., on 

 March 18, 1S86, says : 



My bees havs come through another 

 hard winter without loss, and are in 

 fine condition. They were all work- 

 ing on maple to-day. White clover 

 looks the finest I ever saw it at this 

 time of the year. 



Perspicuity in Writing. — S. D. 

 Webster, Kirkwood,o+ Mo., says : 



On page 153 I find the following 

 sentence : " That the flowers of many 

 species of the vegetable world do not 

 require insect aid in the process of 

 fecundation is evident ; and that any 

 species of the melliferous flora is 

 absolutely dependent on the insect 

 tribes for their fecundation, I am 

 not prepared to accejit as an axiom 

 from which deductions may be drawn 

 that harmonize with the principles of 

 sympathetic reproduction as unfolded 

 in cosmogony." If tliere is one thing, 

 Mr. Editor, that I admire more than 

 another it is clearness of expression ; 

 and I always feel under obligation to 

 your correspondents when they so 

 forcibly express their opinions. I had 

 some trouble, when a boy, from a 

 boil ; and some more trouble with 



another boy about whether it should 

 be pronounced " bile," which led to a 

 reference to the "Unabridged." 

 There I found that a " boil " " was a 

 circumscribed, sub-cutaneous pustule, 

 characterized by a circular-pointed 

 tumor, suppurating with a central 

 core; a perencutus." I do not ex- 

 actly know yet what a " perencutus " 

 is ; but the lucidity of the definition 

 was so striking as to cause it to cling 

 in my memory through all these years. 

 If we cannot have the principles of 

 sympathetic reproduction either of 

 the flora or hymenoptera harmonized 

 when cosmologically unfolded, we do 

 not want them at all. 



Successful Wintering of Bees.— 



Oharlie W. Bradish, Greig,5 N. Y., 

 on March 17, 1880, writes : 



I have kept bees for 15 years, and 

 can say that the season of 1885 was 

 the poorest season for honey during 

 that time. I had wintered 90 colonies 

 out of 93, sold 12, and united some 

 weak ones, so tliat when the honey 

 harvest began I had 70 colonies to 

 commence with. I increased them to 

 128, and took 2,500 pounds of comb 

 honey, -500 pounds of extracted honey, 

 and 1,800 unfinished sections. I piit 

 my bees into the cellar in November, 

 and they are wintering well. I have 

 lost only 7 colonies in 8 winters, and 

 4 of them were destroyed by mice. I 

 shall move about 10 miles from here, 

 this spring, to a better location. 



Merry Bees.— I. J. Glass, Sharps- 

 burg,© Ills., on March 22, 1886, says : 



I carried my bees out of the cellar 

 last Friday, after a confinement of 

 105 days. Out of the 61 colonies I 

 found one that had starved, and one 

 had deserted its hive and left plenty 

 of stores. The day was pleasant and 

 the air was soon filled with myriads 

 of merry bees taking their first flight 

 after so long a confinement, and very 

 little signs of disease was noticed, 

 and by the middle of the afternoon 

 they began to carry in pollen. On 

 examining them at night I found 

 that 2 colonies had absconded, one of 

 them having considerable brood and 

 a fair quantity of stores. The same 

 day, only a short distance from here, 

 a swarm of bees passed over some 

 workmen, who, following them some 

 distance, failed to stop them. To 

 sum up : I lost one colony by starva- 

 tion, and 3 from ' swarming out," 

 leaving 57 colonies in good condition. 



Wintering Bees in a Chimney.— 



Geo. II. Hayes, Kittery,? Maine, on 

 March 16, 1886, writes : 



My bees are all iti the cellar, and 

 are quiet. If it continues to be warm 

 I shall let them have a flight. They 

 have been in the cellar since last 

 November. I weighed them last 

 Saturday, and they had eaten from 6 

 to T% pounds per colony, and have 

 enough to carry them through all 

 right. I have tried many kinds of 

 hives, but the last change I made was 

 tocntthe 12-iiich l^uinby hive down 

 to 10 inches, and filled the ends, so I 



now have a standard Langstroth hive, 

 and I like it. 1 have lost no bees yet, 

 neither do I expect to. A man came 

 to 'my house a few weeks ago and 

 wanted me to get my bees out of his 

 chimney. They are all right in the 

 top of the chimney. There is a board 

 nailed on the top, with a 6 inch hole 

 in it. The bottom is all open with a 

 fire-place in the lower story. The 

 people do not use the chimney. It 

 has been 21° below zero at times, and 

 below zero for a week at a time, and 

 they have come out so far all right 

 How is that for upward ventilation y 

 I do not believe in it, all the same. 



Upward Ventilation in Winter.— 

 W. J. Davis, Youngsville,x) Pa., on 

 March 22, 1886, says : 



Bees have had a good flight, and 

 have come through the winter iti fine 

 condition, with very small loss, caused 

 by loss of queens. I cannot winter 

 bees in good condition in this locality, 

 without upward ventilation. I am 

 also satisfied that the quality of the 

 bees, as well as their stores, has much 

 to do with successful wintering. 



Hutchinson on Hibernation.— Wm. 



F. Clarke, of Guelph, Ont., writes : 



Mr. Hutchinson has apparently 

 made a strong point against hiberna- 

 tion, but has not killed the theory. 

 May not bees require to cluster in 

 order to hibernate, while other insects 

 cati do it singly ? It is quite certain 

 that bees never hibernate except in 

 the cluster. I am sorry that Mr. H. 

 has taken up and put on the cast-oft' 

 garment of positivism belonging to 

 Prof. Cook, and says, "Bees never 

 enter this state." He should add, to 

 make the sentence right, " in my 

 opinion." Mr. Hutchinson should 

 also know that it has all along been 

 contended that " bees must have food 

 and warmth," in order to their kind 

 of hibernation. Starved and chilled 

 bees do not hibernate, in my opinion, 

 as I have sfatpd more than once in 

 the Bee Journax. 



Shallow Hive in Sections.— Fayette 

 Lee, (65-124), Cokato,© Minn., on 

 March 20, 1886, writes : 



A Mr. Carlson invented a sectional 

 hive 12 years ago, 14x14 inches, and 

 5?;| inches deep, containing 9 frames, 

 5x12. The hive consists of from 2 to 

 6 stories which may be interchanged 

 at pleasure, tliose tor brood and sur- 

 plus being just alike. It is a good 

 hive, for either comb or extracted 

 honey, but is rather an expensive one 

 to make. I have never seen it men- 

 tioned in the American Bee Jouk- 

 NAL. I always put my bees into the 

 cellar before frost, and never lose any 

 of them. Inmy letter, on page 137, the 

 4th line should read : "Upper story for 

 extracting," instead of first story, etc. 



Bees in the finest Condition.— A. J. 



& E. Hatfield, South Bend, 5 Ind.,writp: 



Our 250 colonies of bees are still in 

 the cellar, in the finest condition. 



