PUBLISHED EVERY WEEK 



AT SI.OO PER ANNUM. 



35tli Year. 



CHICAGO, ILL., JANUARY 31, 1895. 



No. 5. 



Got;)tnbuted /Vrticks^ 



Oil Imporinnt A.f}larlan Slihjc^cts, 



Handling Bees in Cold Weather. 



BY .;. A. GKEKN. 



I hope that all the readers of the Americaji Bee .lournal 

 are of that class who are always up with their work, and 

 have everything in the way of work with the bees finished 

 before they have ceased to fly. I am fraid, though, that there 

 are many apiaries in which cold weather finds a great deal to be 

 done. I must confess that it has often been so in mine, and 

 especially in the past two or three years, when other work has 

 claimed a share of my attention. 



Working with bees is not a pleasant task at such a time. 

 Some bees are particularly vindictive in cool weather, and one 

 is apt to get many stings in handling even the gentlest, for 

 they are ranch more liable at this time to make their way 

 under the clothing, where they will sting when pinched. 



When such work becomes necessary much trouble may be 

 saved by going about it properly. Perhaps you find the bees 

 of a colony scattered through two or three stories of combs. 

 The bee-escape — one of the greatest of labor-saving inventions 



J. A. Oreen. Ottawa, III. 



for the apiary— is useless so late in the season. Smoke is of 

 little avail. If you attempt to shake or brush the bees down 

 in front of the hive, they either lie there until torpid with cold, 

 or rise into the air, to alight on the surrounding objects, most 

 of them upon the operator. Those which alight on the hives 

 or other cold objects usually become chilled and never get back 

 into their hive. Those which alight on the bee-keeper, imme- 



diately proceed to seek shelter from the cold air by crawling 

 under his clothing, into his pockets, or wherever they can 

 find an opening. 



Instead of trying to brush the bees out into the open air, 

 as it were, pile two or three empty supers or bottomless hives 

 over the one that has the bees in it. You will find that you 

 can shake or brush the bees into the deep funnel thus formed, 



II'. A. Pnjiil. iVurt/i Tcmcscdl, Calif. — See page 73. 



with little or no loss, or trouble from their taking wing. It is 

 best to hold the frame the bees are on by the end, and lower it 

 a little way into the shaft formed by the empty hives, before 

 shaking or brushing them off. Then every bee that is dis- 

 lodged, falls on the top of the brood-frames where it is safe, 

 and from which it will very seldom take wing. 



If the weather is too cold to attempt to do anything with 

 the bees out-of-doors, and there is something that really 

 ought to be done, do not consider it necessary to wait for 

 warmer weather. Take the bees into the house, where you 

 can have it as warm as you choose. I ' 

 experience handling bees in this way. 

 order, in the middle of the winter, for 

 made into medicine. They were shaken and brushed from the 

 combs Into wire-cloth cages in which they were shipped, just 

 as we used to ship bees by the pound iii the summer. The 

 room was kept comfortably warm, though I found the bees 

 were less inclined to fly when it was not over 70o. For the 

 sake of convenience, all the windows were darkened but one, 

 before which the work was done. The few bees that took 

 wing collected on this window and could easily have been re- 

 turned to the hive. 



With the temperature at about 60°, and not too much 

 light, scarcely any bees would leave the combs, especially if 



have had considerable 



I once filled a large 



bees that were to be 



