758 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



than are ;iecessary. If I had a colony 

 which had only fifteen pounds of 

 honey in the hive, I would reed imme- 

 diately so they could store it. I have 

 wintered a colony fed on syrup as late 

 as the middle of November. I do not 

 use a queen-excluding board between 

 the frames and section-rack. I use 

 both wooden and tin separators and 

 find no difference, I have tried vv'ith- 

 out separators to my sorrow. I do 

 not allow natural swarming if I can 

 prevent it. I have my apiary about 

 300 yards from my store, but connected 

 with a telephone. I winter my bees 

 on their summer stands, and contract 

 the entrances in cold weather, 



Mr. Vescelius : The first thing that 

 I did to produce a crop of honey, was 

 to rear plenty of bees. This I did by 

 breaking the caps from the honey of 

 outside combs and placing them in 

 the center of the hive and starting 

 the queen to laying. I got but little 

 from white clover. There was no 

 honey in my hives on August 1, but 

 shortly afterward the buckwheat crop 

 came on and I commenced to extract 

 and have taken from 13 colonies, 

 spring count, over one ton of extracted 

 honey and have increased them to 35 

 colonies. I set some frames aside in 

 the early part of the season, the honey 

 of which IS not so nice, and on these 

 I propose to winter my bees, ily 

 hives today are full of bees, all owing 

 to constant extracting. 



Mr. King said that what Mr. Vesce- 

 lius had said, proved that if the bees 

 are in good condition, they will gather 

 sufficient honey it the harvest lasts 

 only a short season, and prove profit- 

 able to the bee-keeper. 



Mr. Vescelius : 1 will now give you 

 the other side of the question. 1 have 

 a neighbor who has movable frames. 

 I have, on various occasions, given 

 him advice. He has nine colonies, 

 and his honey crop, this season, 

 amounts to about nine two pound 

 cans of squeezed-out honey. He does 

 not believe in extracting, but consid- 

 ers it too expensive. 



Mr. Waite : Are queen-excluding 

 boards necessary ? 



President : I have had no experience 

 but 1 do not believe in using them. 



The Secretary announced that he 

 would be absent during the winter 

 months ; that he was going on a pleas- 

 ure cruise through the Southern 

 States and would not probably be able 

 to attend to the duties devolving upon 

 him as Secretary. 



It was, on motion, ordered that a 

 committee be appointed to call upon 

 Prof. J. Hasbrouck and obtain from 

 him the roll of membership of this 

 Association, and also the minute book 

 and minutes of its former proceed- 

 ings. 



The President appointed Mr. A. E. 

 Cunkey, as such committee. 



Considering that the proper officers 

 had failed to prepare a programme 

 for the use of this convention, it wits, 

 on motion of Samuel Miller, ordered 

 that the President, with the assist- 

 ance of any one whom he may choose, 

 prepare a programme for the next 

 session of the convention, and to 

 notify the members of the Association 

 by postal, of its next meeting, and 



see to it that the room is opened at 

 the proper time in the morniug for its 

 next session. 



The President named Mr. A. E. 

 Cunkey to assist him in that work, on 

 account of the absence of the Secre- 

 tary. 



The meeting was then adjourned. 

 John Aspinwall, Sec. 



.J. H. M. Cook, Fres. 



Read at the Rochester National Convention. 



Wintering Bees. 



REV. W. F. CLARKE. 



The subject of wintering bees is in 

 a chaotic state. It is like the primeval 

 earth, "without form, and void, and 

 darkness is on the face of the deep " 

 places in the ground to which so 

 many apiarists consign their colonies 

 for burial from four to six months of 

 the year. But, as at creation's dawn, 

 there were already subsisting ele- 

 ments which only required the birth 

 of light and the wand of order to 

 transform chaos into paradise, so,it is 

 believed, we have the requisite data 

 out of which to construct a theory of 

 wintering bees, which only require 

 intelligent application to prevent our 

 apiaries from being transformed into 

 charnel-houses and cemeteries by the 

 advent of cold weather. 



Our best bee-keepers frankly admit 

 that as yet we have developed (V) no 

 absolutely safe and sure method of 

 wintering bees. The directions given 

 in our apiarian manuals only encour- 

 age the liope of successful wintering, 

 in case they are followed to the letter. 

 They make no definite promises. 

 There is no method before the public 

 which has not proved fatal during 

 some seasons and under certain cir- 

 cumstances. Some of our leading 

 spirits in apiculture, who seem to have 

 mastered every essential point in 

 summering their bees to the best ad- 

 vantage, are still only experimenting 

 in the matter of winter management. 

 When we find men like Hutchinson 

 of Michigan, and Doolittle of New 

 York, " trying their luck " with such 

 devices as " clamps " and coal-oil 

 furnaces, only to lose a large propor- 

 tion of the colonies thus treated, we 

 may be sure that wintering bees has 

 not yet risen to the dignity of one of 

 fixed or exact sciences. 



Now and then a bee-keeper starts 

 up and tells us that he has no difficulty 

 whatever in this respect, and can 

 winter bees as easily as he can winter 

 cattle or sheep. He crows lustily for 

 a single summer, but the next season 

 we hear nothing from him ; he has 

 failed, and very naturally does not 

 like to tell his losses. He quietly re- 

 pairs them by purchase, and so keeps 

 i>is apiary up to its numerical stan- 

 dard, but sings low thereafter as to 

 the ease with which the winter diffi- 

 culty can be conquered. Our frank 

 and honest bee-keepers who make a 

 clean breast of it in confessing their 

 failures, occupy the front rank among 

 us both as men and as bee-ketpers. and 

 are deserving of all praise for dis- 

 daining to sail under false colors. Let 

 us own that, as yet, we are all of us 



only learners in regard to this subject, 

 and that not one in our numerous 

 ranks is entitled to write M. A. after 

 his name— Master of Arts, or Master 

 of Apiculture, for want of proficiency 

 in this most perplexing art of winter- 

 ing bees. 



While almost every other branch of 

 bee-keeping has made wonderful pro- 

 gress during the past twenty years, 

 wintering has been at a stand-still. 

 A reference to the bee-papers of 

 twenty years ago, will show that 

 about as much was known on this- 

 subject with certainty at that period 

 as now. No more despair could have 

 been expressed then, than was uttered 

 by Mr. H. S. Hackman in the Asieej- 

 CAN Bee Journal of April 23, 1884, 

 who, after detailing heavy losses un- 

 der various plans of management, 

 sums up all by asking : " So what do 

 we know about wintering bees ?" 



It is, I hope, with becoming diffi- 

 dence, and most certainly without 

 any assumption of superiority, that I 

 venture to propound a theory, which 

 I firmly believe will prove the Ariad- 

 nean clew to guide us out of the 

 labyrinth of winter difficulty in which 

 we have been so long bewildered and 

 entangled. It seems perfectly clear 

 to my mind that all our trouble is 

 traceable to the fact that we have 

 overlooked a principle or law of bee- 

 life, not wholly unknown to us, but 

 whose vital importance to the matter 

 in hand, we have hitherto failed to 

 recognize and appreciate. I refer, of 

 course, to hibernation, a word with 

 which my name has been conspicu- 

 ously connected for some months 

 past in the bee-periodicals. Doubt- 

 less it was on this account that our 

 worthy Vice-President, L. C. Root, 

 requested me to address this meeting 

 on the time-worn, hackneyed, thread- 

 bare, but yet unexhausted theme of 

 wintering bees. I am glad of the 

 opportunity to broach my theory be- 

 fore this august apicultural assem- 

 blage, for such it may without any 

 flattery be called. It is the supreme 

 court of bee-keeping on this Conti- 

 nent, and before such a tribunal by 

 which the utmost impartiality and 

 the highest judicial acumen may be 

 expected to be exercised, I have much 

 pleasure in submitting a statement 

 of my case. 



Hibernation is a term often em- 

 ployed in general literature to ex- 

 press the simple idea of passing the 

 winter, but, in the world of science, 

 it stands for that state of complete or 

 partial torpor into which certain ani- 

 mals and many insects are wont to- 

 sink on the advent of cold weather. 

 At the outset of this discussion, let 

 me lay down the proposition that bees 

 in cold climates instinctively sink 

 into this condition of torpor or leth- 

 argy ; also, this otl;er proposition, that 

 when provided with proper shelter 

 and a sufficiency of food, they will 

 infallibly winter well, if they can 

 hibernate. What proof I am able to 

 furnish in support of these two prop- 

 ositions, I now proceed to submit. 



The hibernation of bees is no new 

 discovery. Science proclaimed it long 

 ago. Observing bee-keepers have 

 noticed it time and again. Steam 



