1907 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1387 



the McEvoy. I do not think Mr. MeEvoy 

 would say it is not necessary to disinfect 

 hives, for he does disinfect his. In the star- 

 vation plan disinfection is accomplished by 

 keeping the bees in prison, and they clean 

 up the hive the same as they do the contents 

 of the honey-sac, which Mr. McEvoy has 

 them clean up and put in the frames of 

 foundation that are afterward melted up. 

 If any one thinks it is not necessary to dis- 

 infect hives, just let him take two diseased 

 colonies, use McEvoy' s plan, but unite the 

 two. That will leave you an empty hive. 

 Just keep it. Do not disinfect. Put in a 

 swarm, and see if foul brood does not de- 

 velop on schedule time. 



I disinfect old hives in this way: I close 

 the entrance with wire cloth, throw grass or 

 hay over it to shut out light, and put in a 

 cup of bees (cruel), and let them remain un- 

 til they starve. I never had a return of the 

 disease. 



I have a colony of Caucasians, and do not 

 like them. I would as soon hunt laying 

 workers as to hunt their queen; and, be- 

 sides, they raise too large families for the 

 amount of work they do. 



I use crushed newspaper to pack double- 

 walled hives. I push it down with a square 

 or any thing handy. I have never had one 

 loss by freezing; and in winter, outdoors, I 

 have seen it 3l° below zero here. 



Why doesn't some one make extra thin 

 surplus with |-inch edge of sheet heavy to 

 fasten by? 



Saltsburg, Pa., Feb. 18. 



[It would be difficult to make foundation 

 with a thick edge, and the expense would 

 probably be prohibitive. One edge might be 

 folded over afterward, perhaps, to give a 

 greater amount of wax; but when founda- 

 tion fastened with the ordinary hot-plate 

 machine is not rigid enough it had better be 

 secured by melted wax applied to the edge 

 with a spoon or tube. This can be done 

 rapidly and well, and the expense is slight. 

 We have seen no statement from Mr. 

 McEvoy that starving bees will disinfect a 

 hive. We are inclined to think you are mis- 

 taken.— Ed.] 



BEE-CELLARS. 



The Matter of Ventilation Depends upon 

 the Temperature. 



BY J. G. BAUMGAERTNER. 



Reading Mr. Bingham's article, page 335, 

 of the March 1st issue, on wintering bees in 

 the cellar with entrances closed down to i 

 inch, I said to myself, "Just the thing for a 

 beginner to try who never cellared bees be- 

 fore!" Give him my cellar, where the tem- 

 perature was up to 50 degrees and more 

 most of the time the past winter, and you 

 will see a man, rather long-faced, scooj) vip 

 bees from the cellar floor, sighing heavily, 

 the next spring. In my cellar, with such a 

 high temperature bees will be as quiet as 



death, with cover and bottom removed — 

 nothing but a thin carpet over the top, and 

 will spread out over the combs fairly well. 

 By contracting or expanding the cluster they 

 regulate the temperature about them to suit 

 themselves, and are contented. But when 

 they are put in with sealed covers and bot- 

 tom-boards,, even if the entrance is | by the 

 width of the hive, they are restless, and fly 

 out to die on the floor in lai'ge numbers. 



However, as you suggested in the footnote, 

 in a cellar with a low temperature Mr. Biug 

 ham's plan may give splendid results; and 1 

 have no doubt it would have been just the 

 pi'escription to spare a certain beginner in 

 Clayton Co., Iowa, an awful disappointment. 

 It was 13 years ago. A certain young man 

 working for a bee-keeper had obtained three 

 colonies of bees, and offered them to me 

 (then a boy of 16) for $7.00 in the fall I had 

 long been wishing to own some bees, and had 

 saved up just about enough of my "spend- 

 ing money" to purchase those bees after my 

 father's pei'mission had been secured to do 

 so. I was assured by the bee-keeper where 

 this young man had his bees that they had 

 honey enough to winter, and I think they 

 did have. So, one evening in October I drove 

 home with those three hives, "my property," 

 in the spring wagon, and an attack of genu- 

 ine bee-fever in my bones. I was going to 

 do great things with those bees. Well do I 

 remember what air castles I built. But noth- 

 ing could be done with them before the next 

 spring, except to put them into winter quar- 

 ters soon. The bee-keeper told me to put 

 them into the cellar the way they were, and 

 take off only the covei", leaving only a thin 

 quilt over the frames. But as my father, be- 

 ing a farmer, wintered several hundred 

 bushels of potatoes, besides many other 

 things, in our cellar, I could find no room 

 there for my bees. So I resorted to a small 

 stone building, used as a milk-house in sum- 

 mer, as the next best place. This building 

 had a 22-inch stone wall, plastered on the 

 inside, also overhead, and whitewashed; 

 wood floor, double window and double doors, 

 and it was quite dry. 



The south end and east side were partly in 

 the ground. I concluded that this was a fine 

 place for my bees. So I set them in there as 

 directed, without the covers, and the entrance 

 wide open. The quilt was the only cover. 

 From time to time i would tiptoe in to listen 

 to their roaring. One time in January or 

 February I heard no roaring noise when I 

 listened again. On lifting up the quilts and 

 peeping in I found, to my consternation, that 

 all my bees were— dead! What a fall from 

 the dazzling heights of my imagined success! 

 And how could they die with plenty of hon- 

 ey in their hives? It's all plain to me now. 

 The extreme cold of January penetrated 

 those walls until it was below the freezing- 

 point inside, and the temperature in the 

 hives sank so low that the bees could not 

 break the cluster sufficiently to move to new 

 stores; so when all the honey inside the clus- 

 ter was consumed they starved. Had the 

 covers been on those hives, and possibly the 



