776 



THE AMERICAl^ BEE JOURNAL. 



'cut cor- 



80 arranged that we can 

 ners." 



President Miller asked how many 

 present were bee keeping specialists. 

 In response, 25 stood up. 



The convention then adjourned 

 until 1:30 p.m. 



AFTERNOON SESSON. 



The convention was called to order 

 by President Miller at 1:30 p. m. 



A vote of thanks was extended to 

 the proprietor of the Cammerclal 

 Hotel, for his uniform courtesy, good 

 attendance, reduced rates, and for the 

 free use of a room for holding the 

 convention. 



The President, Dr Miller, then said 

 —I hereby appoint as the additional 

 member of the committee to secure 

 government statistics, Thomas G. 

 Newman, Chicago, Ills. I did not 

 want to appoint him because of his 

 position as editor ; also on account of 

 his health ; but the interests of the 

 bee-keeping fraternity must be con- 

 sidered flrst. 



Mr. R. L. Taylor, of Lapeer, Mich., 

 then read an essay upon, 



vrintering Bees In tlie Nortliern 

 States. 



The only thing necessary to bees in 

 order to secure their perfect winter- 

 ing, can be expressed in one word — 

 comfort. In a climate warmer than 

 that which reigns during winter in 

 our Northern States, much depend- 

 ence can be placed upon frequent 

 flight to secure that happy condition, 

 but in this latitude such flights can 

 no longer be safely relied upon to 

 furnish immunity from the causes of 

 uneasiness and disease. 



The catalogue of things liable to 

 produce discomfort among the bees 

 miglit be almost indefinitely extended, 

 but after eliminating everything that 

 seems to me of little importance, I 

 find it is contracted to six items, viz : 

 1. Untimely manipulation. 2. Mois- 

 ture. 3. Improper ventilation. 4. 

 Improper temperature. 5. Scattered 

 or scant stores. 6. Improper food. I 

 shall touch upon these points in the 

 order of their arrangement, not in 

 the order of their importance : 



1. It is evident that any manipula- 

 tion after the season when the bees 

 begin to assume the semi-torpid state, 

 tends to dissipate that disposition,and 

 is also liable to leave crevices between 

 the hive and its cover, which, made 

 earlier in the season, would be closed 

 by the bees, but being left open, will 

 often cause an injurious circulation 

 of air through the hive. 



2. When moisture invades the clus- 

 ter in such amounts that the bees are 

 nnable to expel it by their natural 

 warmtli, they are compelled to arouse 

 themselves from their slumbers and 

 to attempt to rid themselves of the 

 moisture by gathering it into their 

 stomachs. Besides other evident 

 evils resulting, the bees will gather 

 with the water more or less of the 

 impurities which will go to help load 

 their intestines ; and no doubt the 

 excessive amount of moisture taken 

 up will have a greater or less ten- 

 dency to impair digestion. 



3. As to ventilation, I fear that too 

 much rather than too little, i. e.,I fear 

 a draught much more than the want 

 of any change of air at all. A cold 

 draught causes discomfort to most 

 kinds of animate nature, but I have 

 seen no indication that for breathing 

 purposes the bees get too little change 

 of air by any of the ordinary methods 

 of wintering. Out-of-doors I give a 

 full hive-entrance ; in-doors I remove 

 the bottom-board entirely, not for 

 ventilation proper, but that the bees 

 may the more readily expel moisture. 



4. On account of the facts which I 

 shall mention below, I do not attach 

 a great importance to a nice adjust- 

 ment of temperature. An improper 

 temperature is to be dreaded, chiefly 

 on account of the increased consump- 

 tion of stores thereby induced, and 

 the consequent increased accumula- 

 tion of fecal matter in case the stores 

 areimviure. For these reasons, viz: 

 the saving of stores and the lessened 

 risk of disease, I hold tliat it pays in 

 this climate to winter bees in the 

 cellar. I cannot find an^ grounds for 

 choice between 35° Pahr., and any of 

 the intervening points up to SO^. I 

 do not find a high temperature an an- 

 tidote to poor stores. 



5. Scant stores cause the bees 

 anxiety, and scattered stores, activity; 

 and the two together make place for 

 all the other untoward consequences 

 that I have mentioned. But we all 

 agree here. 



All the above-mentioned conditions 

 cause discomfort in the way and for 

 the reasons intimated, and I mention 

 them not because I think them ordi- 

 narily fatal, or even in themselves 

 greatly injurious, but because they 

 cause undue exertion and consump- 

 tion of food with a result more or less 

 detrimental, owing to the quality of 

 the food. If successful wintering 

 turned on any or all of these, the 

 problem would have been solved long 

 ago. There is no such uncertainty 

 attached to the securing of the condi- 

 tions desired in these things, as to 

 make their operation long a matter of 

 doubt. 



No, brethren, the thing that causes 

 uncertainty in results, is the uncer- 

 tainty existing as to the quality of 

 the winter stores, which brings me to 

 the sixth and last item to be con- 

 sidered : 



From my experience of ten years 

 with an apiary ranging in numbers 

 from 2 colonies at the beginning to 

 600 colonies now, I am forced to the 

 conclusion that the great cause of our 

 wintering troubles is a poor quality of 

 stores. Some apiaries are, no doubt, 

 placed where the natural stores ob- 

 tained are always of a quality to be 

 relied upon, but mine, I have no 

 doubt, are not thus fortunate. The 

 reasons for my conclusion, that im- 

 proper food is the prime cause of our 

 winter losses, I draw from the follow- 

 ing facts, which are within my own 

 experience and knowledge : 



In the autumu of 1879 I had 1-5 colo- 

 nies, and as that was a year of great 

 scarcity I fed each colony largely of 

 sugar syrup, and wintered them on 

 the summer stands. In the spring a 



pint cup would have held all the dead 

 bees from all the colonies. 



Having purchased a few colonies in 

 the spring of 1880, 1 began the disas- 

 trous winter of 1880-81 with 60 colo- 

 nies ; to 30 of these I fed a limited 

 amounf of sugar syrup, and of these 

 16 survived; of the 30. colonies not 

 fed, 3 survived. 



For the present I pass over the next 

 three winters, to the still more dis- 

 astrous winter of 1884-8.'5, only saying 

 that during the fall of 1883, as an ex- 

 periment. I supplied a few colonies 

 with sugar stores, and those thus 

 prepared wintered so much better 

 than those having' honey stores, that 

 in the autumn of 1884 I gave all my 

 200 colonies empty combs, and fed 

 them syrup. Ttie result was, that 

 while all the other bees with but few 

 exceptions in that part of Michigan 

 perished, there was not a colony of 

 mine in a normal condition, but so far 

 as I could judge, wintered perfectly. 

 These bees were wintered in a cellar. 

 During the following winter my loss 

 was about 12 per cent, of bees, man- 

 aged in every way precisely the same, 

 except that their stores were partly 

 honey and partly syrup, and this 

 though the winter was much more 

 favorable for the successful wintering 

 of bees. 



During the next winter, that of 

 1886-87, 1 had in two cellars at home 

 nearly 400 colonies. Of these about 

 two-thirds had honev stores exclu- 

 sively, but the other third being in 

 single sections of the new Heddon 

 hive, were almost destitute of honey, 

 and consequently were supplied with 

 stores of sugar syrup. Each kind was 

 divided between the two cellars. The 

 temperature of one cellar was kept at 

 5{p Fahr., almost without variation, 

 while that of the other varied from 

 3.5° to 45'-^, but this difference in the 

 temperature seemed to have little 

 eflect on the condition of the bees— if 

 there was any difference it was in 

 favor of the lower temperature. 



But what a marked difference was 

 there in each cellar, between the colo- 

 nies with sugar stores and those with 

 natural stores ! Of the former the 

 bees were the picture of comfort and 

 contentment, quiet, closely clustered, 

 not easily disturbed, not a diarrhetic 

 sign, and only now and tlien a dead 

 bee dropping out of the cluster. Of 

 the latter the bees were uneasy, not 

 closely clustered, easily disturbed, 

 dying by the thousand, and many of 

 the hives bearing the unmistakable 

 signs of disease, aud, as I have said, 

 if there was anv difference, those in 

 the cellar with the rather high, even 

 temperature suffered the more. 



One fact more : During the three 

 winters from 1881 to 1884, which I 

 have mentioned above, I wintered my 

 bees in the same cellar on natural 

 stores, under precisely the same ex- 

 ternal conditions, so far as it was 

 possible for me to judge ; yet the flrst 

 winter they wintered perfectly, while 

 the other two winters they wintered 

 illy, aud with considerable loss. I 

 cannot account for this, unless there 

 was a difference in the stores. 



Outside of my o.wn experience there 

 is one thing I do not fail to remem- 



