440 



THE AMERICAi^ BEE JOURNAL. 



For the American Bee Journal 



Excessive Humidity in Winter. 



DU. a. L. TINKEIl. 



Mr. S. Cornell, on page 405, of the 

 Bee Journal, gives a highly in- 

 teresting table on the comparative 

 temperature and humidity of the 

 winter of 1880-81 with the winters of] 

 other years. The record is complete 

 from 50 stations in the northern and 

 western States, and in a large nnmber 

 extends over a period of i:! years. 

 For these records he is indebted to 

 our Chief Signal Service Oflicer at 

 Washington, to whom bee-keepers 

 generally are under obligations for 

 the time and labor of preparing them. 

 The table indicates beyond perad- 

 venture that severe and protracted 

 cold conjoined with an unusual humid 

 state of the atmosphere were the 

 chief cause.s of the great bee mortality 

 of the late hard winter. 



It so happened that throughout the 

 greater part of the eastern States, in- 

 cluding New .Jersey and Maryland, 

 that the rate of the mortality was 

 much less than at points farther west. 

 In the State of Maine, as indicated by 

 the table, the cold was not below that 

 of average winters, while the humidity 

 was somewhat less. Mr. Plummer, of 

 Augusta, wrote : " We have not had 

 much snow, which all left about the 

 Istof March." After stating that in 

 his vicinity there were lost only 3 out 

 of 119 colonies, he added: "I think 

 that thi i is a good report for a locality 

 so far north-" And such was the 

 tenor of nearly all the reports from 

 the New England States. Mr. Alley 

 reporting: "Bees never wintered 

 better in this vicinity." There was 

 not the usual snow fall in the eastern 

 States, but the middle States, and the 

 great West were deluged with snow 

 from the 1st of December, 1880, to the 

 15th of April, 1881. So long as the 

 snow did not melt to any great ex- 

 tent, the bees did not appear to suffer. 

 When February came in the tem- 

 perature began to moderate and the 

 snow to melt. The atmosphere be- 

 came damp, and contniued unusually 

 damp all through Marcli in all of 

 those sections where there had been 

 heavy snow falls. Now came the 

 struggle for existence to the bees. 

 February witnessed a frightfnl mor- 

 tality, but in March it became appall- 

 ing. Whole apiaries were swept out 

 of existence, and when at last sum- 

 mer came, less than half of all the 

 bees in the northern States remained 

 alive. 



The table of Mr. Cornell indicates 

 what might have been suspected, viz. : 

 that when so great a fall of snow 

 occurs, extending over a great part of 

 tiie country, we are certain to have a 

 very damp atmosphere during the 

 early spring, and, consequently, an 

 unfavorable condition for bees. It 

 indicates, moreover, what the great 



majority of bee-keepers have long 

 felt, but have been unable to prove, 

 viz. : that in winter excessive damp- 

 ness in the hive, or in the atmosphere 

 outside, is the mosi dangerous thing 

 that can menace a colony of bees. 

 For it appears that cold alone is not 

 injurious to bees, nor is protracted 

 confinement under favorable condi- 

 tions. Nor yet is their normal food 

 (honey and pollen) injurious, if the 

 quality is good. These facts, at the 

 present time, are indisputable. If 

 then, dysentery be the disorder from 

 which so many colonies of bees suc- 

 cumb in winter, we are forced to the 

 conclusion that dampness is the prin- 

 cipal cause of it. 



THE POLLEN THEORY. 



It is Mr. James Heddon, I believe, 

 who has the distinguished honor of 

 being the author of this theory which 

 occupied to a great extent the columns 

 of the Bee Jouknal not long since. 

 The agricultural press took up the 

 refrain as if the majority of bee- 

 keepers acquiesced in the strange 

 doctrine, until the general reader has 

 been led to believe that a food pro- 

 vided bv nature for the bees is a 

 deadly thing for them to eat in winter. 

 Mr. Heddon also holds parentage to 

 the " bacteria theory," on which he 

 was " ten to one " for a long time. 

 Well, now, if he had only just stuck 

 to this, his first ideal offspring, he 

 would to-day have been standing 

 upon solid ground, as to the probable 

 cause of many cases of bee dv.sentery 

 that have occurred in isolated apiaries 

 or in apiaries in certain limited por- 

 tions of the country. 



Now, that the germ theory of dis- 

 ease is quite generally accepted by the 

 most learned men of tlie times, it 

 seems probable ttiat a specific mi- 

 crophyte may gain entrance to the 

 bodies of the bees by means of their 

 food, or in some other manner, and 

 cause dysentery. But no germ theory 

 can be made to account for the mor- 

 tality of bees in tiie winter and spring 

 of 1881. If that winter had been 

 mild, with little snow fall, and there 

 had been great mortality, such a 

 theory might be entertained. But 

 neither can the pollen theory be made 

 to so accounts 



As stated once before in the col- 

 umns of the Bee Journal, I am 

 unable to see how the eating of pollen 

 in winter can be a cause of dysentery 

 in any of its forms. If it were 

 claimed that the eating of aphide 

 honev was a cause of some cases, the 

 hypothesis would have at least the 

 merit of reasonableness. But to as- 

 sume that pollen, a normal food, may 

 cause it, is quite unintelligible. 



My belief is, that bees in a normal 

 condition eat pollen all winter, not to 

 any great extent it is true, because 

 much nitrogenous food is not re- 

 quired in a comparatively inactive 

 condition. If bees can be wintered, 

 as they often are, without a flight for 

 five or six months, and come out 

 healthy, I think it must be just as 

 difficult for others to see how pollen 

 may cause the disease. 



In the early spring of 1881,1 had 

 two hybrid colonies that had failed to 



gather as much honey the previous 

 fall as my Italian colonies, and about 

 the 1st of March, they became short. 

 They were discovered in time to save 

 both from starvation by the great 

 number of bees that were observed 

 crawling slowly out of their hives as 

 if very sick. Although quite cold, I 

 opened both hives and found that they 

 had no honey, and that they 

 had eaten nearly all their pollen up 

 also, as judged by the marks of their 

 mandibles on the little pollen left. I 

 put unsealed honey over each, and 

 the apparently sick and dying soon 

 revived. About four weeks after- 

 wards they were able to take a flight. 

 They had been gorged with pollen, 

 but had not a sign of dysentery. Ii 

 the consuming of much pollen was a 

 cause, why did not these bees get it V 

 But instances of this kind have been 

 numerous. 



It appears that Mr. Heddon thinks 

 that because some colonies prepared 

 for winter with no stores but cane 

 sugar syrup, .seem to winter better 

 than other colonies having natural 

 stores, the pollen theory is demon- 

 strated. I would inquire, why not 

 think the honey to be the cause in- 

 stead of the pollen ? Both being the 

 normal food of the bees. If a child 

 should take cholera infantum and die, 

 who had taken no nourishment but 

 milk and bread of good quality, both 

 being normal food, would I be justi- 

 fied in assuming that it was the bread 

 or the milk that caused the disease, 

 or neither ? I think I hear a common 

 answer, neither. And so with the 

 causation of bee-dysentery, it is 

 neither the honey or the pollen, if of 

 ordinary good quality. 



If it can be proved (which I very 

 much doubt) that bees will winter 

 better on cane sugar syrup than upon 

 their natural stores, it would demon- 

 strate only this, that they are able to 

 hold out longer against adverse con- 

 ditions upon the former food than the 

 latter, not that either kind of food in 

 any case can be acause. For instance, 

 a man insufliciently protected and 

 exposed to the intense cold of the 

 Arctic regions will survive longer on 

 a diet of tallow or animal fat than a 

 diet of sugar, yet both of these agents, 

 and honey also, are hydro-carbons. 

 But cane sugar contains a larger per- 

 centage of neat producing elements 

 than grape sugar, which is the chief 

 constitutent of honey, and animal 

 fat contains a larger per cent, than 

 cane sugar. It would, therefore, ap- 

 pear that if cane sugar syrup is a 

 better diet for bees in winter than 

 honey, that animal fat (if the bees 

 could be made to subsist upon it) 

 would be better than either. 



It may be assumed that my com- 

 parisons are not parallel, that bees in 

 a state of confinement pass no feces. 

 But my own observation, and that of 

 many other reliable observers is. that 

 they do, so that the question of liquid 

 or solid food can signify nothing for 

 or against the theory. The mere fact 

 that pollen contains more particles 

 that cannot be digested than honey, is 

 no evidence that the indigestible par- 

 ticles in the intestines of the bees 

 mav cause dysentery. Are not the 



