652 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Topics u\ Interest. 



Bee-House AlioTe Gronnfl, 



G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



The following letter asks for sugges- 

 tions on the above subject : 



My bee-house is about 7x10 feet on 

 the ground, and 7^ feet high, all inside 

 measure, with 10 inch walls of earth, 

 and 8 inches of earth above. The house 

 is all above ground, and stands on a hill, 

 exposed to heavy winds. It was built 

 one year ago, and it does not seem to 

 have dried through yet. I had a tough 

 time trying to preserve 43 colonies in it 

 last Winter. The frost got into it so 

 badly that I lost nearly one-half of the 

 bees. The rest came through in a very 

 weak condition. I had to warm the bee- 

 house with an oil-stove during the latter 

 part of the Winter. I have oO colonies 

 this year to winter, and I am afraid I 

 shall lose them. I have, this Summer, 

 made an underground ventilator, 70 feet 

 long, to supply air. What I want to 

 know is, how shall I ventilate the bee- 

 house ? The underground ventilator 

 will let warm air in, but how much air 

 shall I let out? I am not used to win- 

 tering my bees in a bee-house. How 

 large a tube do I need to let air out of 

 the bee-house ? I have got one ventila- 

 tor on the top of the bee-house, 10 

 inches square, and one at the bottom of 

 the side of the bee-house, 6 inches 

 square, to let air out of the house. I 

 watched them closely last Winter, and 

 gauged the slides to these tubes care- 

 fully, changing them more than a thou- 

 sand times, trying to keep the bee-house 

 warm, but this I failed to do. Any sug- 

 gestion will be thankfully received. 

 Erie, Pa., Oct. 26, 1891. A. S. 



In the first place I would say that 

 your bee-house is too small to winter 

 bees in ; or, in other words, more bees 

 are required together, in one place, to 

 make wintering in a house above ground 

 a success, than your house will hold. 



It must be remembered that there is 

 absolutely no warming principle inher- 

 ent to bee-houses above ground ; hence, 

 all the heat that there can be to over- 

 come the cold from without, must come 

 from the bees placed inside, or from an 

 oil-stove or something of that descrip- 

 tion. The more bees that are placed 

 together, the greater the heat from 

 them, and if I could not place as many 



as 100 colonies together, in any bee- 

 house above ground, I should not try to 

 depend on these bees for the necessary 

 heat required to safely winter bees in 

 such a place. 



The only thing to be done with such a 

 house as you describe, in order to obtain 

 the necessary temperature, is to provide 

 some means of artificial heat, and for 

 this purpose an oil-stove will be as good 

 as anything, provided you can adopt 

 some means to keep the light from it 

 from annoying the bees, and also pro- 

 vide some way for carrying the offensive 

 odor out of the room, that always arises 

 from such a stove. If it were for only 

 a short time, this foul odor might not do 

 much harm, but when it comes to con- 

 fining bees to such a state of affairs for 

 all Winter, I am satisfied from the ex- 

 perience of the past, that it destroys 

 very much of the vitality of those bees 

 which do not succumb to it entirely. 



To help in this matter of heat, or fix 

 your house so that it will longer retain 

 the heat generated inside, you can 

 " jacket " the outside, so as to nearly or 

 quite double the retaining quality of it, 

 by simply nailing inch strips over the 

 present outside covering, and then re- 

 siding the building. As you nail on the 

 new siding, fill in the inch space with 

 fine cut straw or chaff, and put from 

 four to six inches of chaff over the ceil- 

 ing you now have ; also underneath, if 

 possible. 



This will not only retain the heat 

 generated by the bees and stove much 

 more effectually, but what is of more 

 importance, guard against a too rapid 

 change of temperature, which is most 

 disastrous where bees are wintered in- 

 doors. 



Where bees are wintered inside, there 

 should not be a greater change in tem- 

 perature than 5°, if it is possible to 

 avoid it. My bee cellar does not vary 

 more than B- during the whole Winter, 

 when we have the most unfavorable 

 WMnters, and in some of the most favor- 

 able seasons it has varied only 1°, after 

 the bees had become quieted down from 

 the disturbance consequence upon mov- 

 ing them. 



If you cannot arrange so as to keep 

 the temperature of the bee-house so that 

 it will not go lower than 40^, and not 

 higher than 45°, I should advise you not 

 to put the bees into that bee-house at 

 all. I would much prefer to risk winter- 

 ing out-doors than to take the risk of a 

 winter repository in which I could not 

 control the temperature as above stated. 

 There seems to be something about a 

 fluctuating or cold temperature, while 



