AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



163 



keepers in the Northern part of the 

 United States, and in Canada, who are 

 up with the times, winter their bees out- 

 of-doors ; at least such is my impression 

 from what I see and hear. 



With some, cellar wintering has 

 proven anything but a success. A Mr. 

 Christiancy, of Toledo, O., who keeps 

 from 200 to 400 colonies, said to me a 

 few days since, "Stand by cellar winter- 

 ing ; its the way to winter bees." He 

 never fails. 



Not every one engaged in any kind of 

 business is successful, and bee-keeping 

 is not, and never will be, an exception. 

 Certain conditions must exist and be 

 complied with or the outcome will not be 

 satisfactory. 



Proper cellar wintering means an 

 abundance of food, a dark, dry cellar, 

 with a temperature of about 45°, and 

 these conditions to be maintained from 

 the beginning of settled cold weather in 

 the Fall, until the beginning of settled 

 warm weather in the Spring, or early 

 Summer. With such conditions existing, 

 there would be no occasion for any one 

 saying as did Dr. Miller, at the recent 

 Keokuk convention, "I don't know 

 whether the greater loss in wintering 

 out-doors. .. .may not be made up by 

 greater vigor, as compared with those 

 wintered in the cellar." 



Some recommend raising the tempera- 

 ture of the cellar as Spring approaches. 

 I would not do so unless it could be 

 maintained when the colonies are placed 

 on the Summer stands. I have tried all 

 kinds of cellars for wintering bees, and 

 unless the cellar is dry, and I can 

 control the temperature, I believe I 

 should prefer to leave them on the Sum- 

 mer stands, and give them suitable pro- 

 tection. I believe that a damp cellar, 

 at any temperature, is a poor place in 

 which to attempt to winter bees. 



If the generally-accepted statement is 

 true, that it requires 25 or 30 pounds of 

 honey to winter a colony out-doors, and 

 it takes from 10 to 15 pounds to winter 

 in a cellar, there is a pretty fair profit 

 on the side of cellar wintering, in the 

 saving of honey alone. The saving of 

 10 pounds of honey per colony by cellar 

 wintering, where the apiarist has 100 

 colonies, means a saving of 1,000 

 pounds, which, at 10 cents per pound, 

 amounts to $100, or $1 per colony. To 

 this amount is to be added the saving of 

 colonies, which, if left on the Summer 

 stands, would have died of starvation, 

 caused by the cold preventing the bees 

 from reaching their stores. 



Strange as it may seem, there are 

 those who are opposed to cellar winter- 



ing, but are in favor of what they call 

 winter protection, and I was amused last 

 Winter, when this same subject was un- 

 der discussion at the Brantford conven- 

 tion, to hear several denounce cellar 

 wintering, and speak so highly of winter 

 protection on the Summer stands ; and I 

 presume that I should have laughed out- 

 right, had not the " dignity that doth 

 hedge about " a presiding officer, pre- 

 vented me, when that positive, sharp, 

 wily Englishman, known as J. B. Hall, 

 of Woodstock, Canada, said: "Where 

 is the man who winters his bees out-of- 

 doors ? You all talk about out-door 

 wintering, but when it comes right down 

 to it, if you do not put your bees into a 

 cellar, you build a little cellar around 

 each colony. Why not put them all into 

 one big cellar, and done with it ?" and 

 more in the same style until he stirred 

 up a fair-sized hornet's nest. 



I have had colonies consume less than 

 4 pounds of stores while in the cellar, 

 from November to April, but last Winter 

 one colony consumed 2 1 pounds of stores 

 in the cellar and then starved — a fair 

 quantity of pollen being left, but not a 

 drop of honey. 



It seems hardly worth while to even 

 mention the matter of expense, for put- 

 ting the bees into the cellar in the Fall, 

 and taking them out in the Spring, but 

 this objection has been made. Compara- 

 tively, few intelligent bee-keepers, now 

 winter their bees on the Summer stands 

 without some kind of protection ; but no 

 kind of protection; that is worthy of the 

 name, can be furnished as cheaply as 

 the bees can be put in and taken out of 

 a cellar or special repository ; and those 

 who winter without any kind of protec- 

 tion, do so at a greater expense than 

 comes from any other method of winter- 

 ing. — Read at the Michigan Convention. 



ProiliictioiiofExtracteil-Honey, 



B. C. GRIFFITH. 



The first thing essential to a crop of 

 extracted-honey is a large force of young 

 and vigorous Italian bees, at the proper 

 time. To secure this, we must have 

 plenty of stores when our bees go into 

 Winter quarters, say about 25 pounds 

 of honey, and in case they should run 

 short before Spring opens, we must give 

 more, to keep up brood-rearing, so that 

 when the Spring crop of honey comes in, 

 our hives are full to overflowing with 

 young and vigorous bees, ready for the 

 field at the peep of day, to bring in the 

 nectar from each tiny flower. 



