1898. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



789 



in order, and Mr. W. A. Selser and Dr. A. B. Mason were 

 named. 



Dr. Mason — I wish you would select somebody else. I 

 have tried to work faithfully for you ; I never accept any 

 position without trying to do my level best In the work, but I 

 wish you would select somebody else. 



Nominations were then closed, and the members proceeded 

 to balloting. Dr. Mason was found to have been almost 

 unanimously re-elected. 



Several called for a speech from Dr. Mason. 



Dr. Mason — My friends, you know that I can't make a 

 speech; you have had reason to know that in the past two 

 days. But I can say to you that I am grateful for this evi- 

 dence of your con6dence — not for the ballots you have cast 

 for me, nor because you have elected me again, altho I feel 

 thai it is an honor to serve you in any capacity. You have 

 before this honored me for two terms with the presidency 

 of the association — something that never happened before 

 that time, except with Mr. Newman. So I feel that this is an 

 expression of confldence that I cannot help but appreciate, 

 and I do appreciate it. I live upon the good things iny friends 

 give me, more than I do upon what I do myself ; and that is 

 why I appreciate, I think, the good that may come to us all 

 when we realize what He did for us who died to redeem our 

 souls from death. 



The convention then adjourned until 7:30 p.m. 

 IContinued next week.l 



No. 6. — The Care of Bees for Wiutering. 



BY C. P. DADANT. 



■ For eight or ten years past, we have personally aban- 

 doned the practice of cellar-wintering, owing to the better 

 success we have achieved, of late, in out-door wintering. I 

 do not know but it would perhaps be best to narrate our ex- 

 perience on this subject to the reader, an experience of 3U 

 odd years, and let him draw his own conclusions. 



We began experimenting on in-door wintering in 1865, 

 on a small s.;ale. We had then, perhaps In all, some 20 or 25 

 colonies, and as we had no cellar worthy of the name, but 

 merely a " hole in the ground " under our log-house in the 

 woods, we concluded the first year to try a clamp, such as had 

 been recommended by German bee-masters, in the Bienenzei- 

 tung. 



We therefore dug a trench of sulBcient length to contain 

 all our hives side by side, and deep enough so that the hives 

 might be entirely hidden in it. In the bottom of this trench 

 we laid two -txi timbers lengthwise, and on these we set our 

 hives, removing the cap, or cover, and leaving only the honey- 

 board. Over the top of the trench we laid boards that reacht 

 about 6 or 8 inches beyond the pit, and on these a layer of 

 straw, roof-shaped, then a layer of earth and another layer of 

 straw and earth ; making such a covering as a farmer uses, 

 in many parts of the country, for apples or potatoes. We had 

 previously, however, made four light tubes, by nailing four 

 plasterers' laths together for each tube, which had been 

 placed perpendicularly, two of them reaching to the bottom, 

 and the other two at the upper part of the silo, so as to make 

 a light change of air for the breathing of the bees. The 

 trench was drained by a short gravel drain at each end. 



We had very good success, and, encouraged by this, we 

 again put away our bees In this fashion, the following winter. 

 But the winter was very wet this time, and through alternate 

 thaws and freezes, accompanied with rain, the ground became 

 soakt, our drains proved insufficient because they became 

 stopt up by freezing, or for some other reason, and the ex- 

 treme of moisture destroyed a great proportion of the colonies. 

 I believe that during that winter we lost fully a third of the 

 colonies. This discouraged us in any further attempts at 

 silo-wintering. Yet, we know that the practice is good, and 

 in localities where there is little or no danger of a thaw dur- 

 ing the winter, I am sure this would be a very safe method 

 for an apiarist who had no cellar. 



In this part of the United States we have now more com- 

 modities than formerly, our log-houses have been replaced by 

 convenient homes, the cellar ordinarily occupies the entire 

 space under the house, and it is quite easy to partition oS a 



portion of it for the use of the bees ; but I know there must 

 yet be many parts where they still have to do as we did in the 

 '60's, keep a family in two small rooms, where they cook, live 

 and sleep; put the children in a trundle-bed, and the cows in 

 a straw shed. Then the young fellow had to go a-courting in 

 a wagon, and felt happy if he had only a good spring-seat to 

 take his best girl to church, or to a ball. What would the 

 boys of to-day say of this ? 



When our log-house was abandoned for a better home (we 

 then used it for a bee-house till the rats compelled us to tear 

 it down), we took special pains to build a large cellar, and 

 partitioned off a portion of it, a space 10x20 feet, purposely 

 for the bees. This special room has two windows, and the 

 walls and ceiling are lined with a sawdust partition to keep 

 the temperature more even. This was the more necessary be- 

 cause we have a furnace in the cellar to heat the house, and 

 it would produce more warmth than needed. We had already 

 wintered enough colonies, in the hole under the log-house, to 

 make sure that a temperature of more than 45-' was likely to 

 make the bees restless, while a temperature of less than iO^ 

 had the same effect. 



There had been some discussion among bee-keepers as to 

 the proper degree, and a few men held that the bees could 

 stand a great deal of heat, while in the cellar, without suffer- 

 ing ; one man even went so far as to assert that they would 

 winter in a cellar warmed to a temperature of 70^ to 80^, 

 and that he had tried it successfully. This shook the faith of 

 some of our friends, until it was ascertained that this person 

 had just been guessing at the temperature of his cellar, and 

 had no thermometer upon which to base his assertions. A 

 good thermometer costs only 25 to 50 cents, and we used one 

 In the cellar, at all times, and my father visited the bee-room 

 hundreds of times during the winter, and found uniformly 

 that the bees were the quietest at 423 to 43^, and that below 

 40- or above-45-' they began to stir. 



We used this cellar very regularly for 12 or 15 years (It 

 had been built in 1875), and it invariably happened that the 

 bees wintered best in it during the coldest winters. This Is 

 easily understood, for it is much easier to warm up such a 

 cellar than it is to cool it down, when once warmed up, when 

 the temperature on the outside is still higher. In very cold 

 days, if the thermometer registered a lower temperature than 

 40^', all we had to do was to open the door between the two 

 cellars and a steady increase would at once take place. If 

 too warm, during cold days, a little increase of ventilation 

 through the windows would soon regulate that defect. But 

 when the weather got mild, and remained so for several days, 

 it always proved an Impossible task to cool the air enough, 

 with 100 colonies in such a small space, to keep them quiet. 

 We tried a tubful of ice, but the difference made by it was not 

 worth mentioning. 



Of late years, we have had comparatively pleasant win- 

 ters, and have found that, altho we lost but few colonies in 

 cellar-wintering, it was usually preferable to leave the bees 

 out-of-doors, as they breed earlier and run less risk of pillage 

 or spring dwindling. We believe that we are, here, on the 

 southern limit of safe cellar-wintering, and if we lived farther 

 north we would invariably winter the bees in a cellar. 



I see that I have not yet given instructions as to when 

 and how to put the bess into the cellar, and will put this off 

 until next week. Hancock Co., 111. 



Eight or 10 Frame Hives— Tall Sections. 



BY H. LATHROP. 



On page 727, reference is made to Editor Hutchinson's 

 comments on Dadant's articles in Gleanings on the subject of 

 large I).?, small hives, in which Mr. Hutchinson calls attention 

 to the fact that the Dadants run their apiaries for extracted 

 honey, while it is the comb-honey producers, who, as a rule, 

 advocate a smaller brood-chamber than the Dadants advise. 

 The point is well taken. 



I believe Mr. Mclntire has also recently stated, on this 

 subject, that " a 10 frame Langstroth brood-chamber is not" 

 large enough to prevent swarming, and too large to hive a 

 swarm in without contracting." That is the reason I use and 

 prefer an 8-frame hive for comb honey production. I wish to 

 dispense with contracting, so the S-frame brood-chamber 

 seems to be the best size. If I want a larger brood-chamber I 

 add another story. In running my apiary for comb honey, 

 even in good seasons, I usually have but 33 percent of my 

 colonies cast swarms ; this I think is not a bad showing for a 

 comb honey yard. 



In the future I do not expect to allow any more increase 

 than enough to repair winter losses. I use the Heddon plan 

 of hiving swarms on the old stand ; and instead of allowing 



