1918 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



307 



call "wintering," or "special prepara- 

 tion of packing and protection of 

 hives, etc." 



Let us look into all the winter 

 problems we need to worry our- 

 selves- about. 



Of course, bees should be kept in 

 good hives all the time, and should 

 have plenty stores' when it is a long 

 time until the next honey flow, win- 

 ter or summer. 



They should be requeened when 

 they need it and not when it is too 

 late to save the colony or have its 

 good service during a honey flow. 

 These are "all the time" problems. 



A majority of beekeepers leave the 

 supers, hive bodies and all storing 

 apartments on the bees over the 

 winter months. This is a great mis- 

 take, wherever it is practiced, and 

 should be abandoned. 



It is too much space above the bees. 

 Better by far would it be to have all 

 the brood, bees and plenty of honey 

 in one single body and a good cover 

 on it. Thus they have snug and con- 

 tracted quarters, such as they need 

 for their good. 



When 8-frame hives are used it 

 would not be amiss to leave one set 

 of shallow extracting combs on, and 

 they should have more or less 

 honey in them. Bees have to main- 

 tain animal heat to exist, and a great 

 space above them would be harmful. 



The first zero weather will kill all 

 scattering moths, both large and 

 small. Then they are all right un- 

 til time to put them back on next 

 spring. If combs are removed and 

 stacked up in the yard and covered 

 just before the first freeze in the 

 fall, they will need no special treat- 

 ment. If much earlier they should be 

 stacked up straight in high stacks 

 and covered up well with straight 

 water-proof covers, and all cracks 

 daubed with clay, so as to be as 

 near airtight as possible. Then give 

 each stack a good, strong sulphur 

 smoking, from the bottom, for' not 

 less than 10 minutes; then close up 

 well. Or you can set in at the top 

 of each stack a very small, flat ves- 

 sel of carbon disulphide. 



Cordele, Ga. 



Winter Protection of Bees 



By T. K. Massie 



REGARDING the subject of win- 

 ter protection, which of late 

 has ln-en receiving considerable 

 attention, I wish to offer a few 

 thoughts, as they, from long experi- 

 ence and observation appear to me. 



The Government plan of outside 

 dual winter cases, while all right for 

 bees in thin-wall hives after the bees 

 are placed in them, is so very costly 

 that it will never be adopted by even 

 one per cent of our farmer-beekeep- 

 ers. The first cost of material and 

 labor in their construction, the time 

 and labor required to pack in the fall 

 and unpack in the spring and the 

 storage room and labor of storing 

 them during the summer are so very 

 great that few beekeepers will ever 

 try the plan. Farmers do not have 

 the time for all this kind of work. 



The plan of using two hives packed 

 in the same case where the entrances 

 are close together and face in the 

 same direction is not practical, be- 

 cause the stronger colony draws the 

 bees from the weaker one, just tin- 

 opposite of what we would like to 

 have take place. 



The Demuth-Pritchard plan of us- 

 ing two or three hive-bodies or two 

 hive-bodies and a super for an out- 

 side case and an inside case of f^-inch 

 lumber made large enough to hold six 

 frames standing on end, which, of 

 late, has been referred to and com- 

 mented upon in "Gleanings" and il- 

 lustrated in the American Bee Jour- 

 nal on page 13 for January, is open 

 to several objections. With this 

 plan the first cost of material and 

 labor in making the cases, the time 

 and labor spent in "fussing" with the 

 packing and unpacking, the storage 

 room, time and labor spent in storing 

 the inner cases in summer and the 

 storage room, time and labor re- 

 quired to store the surplus frames — 

 the two or three frames removed 

 from the brood-chambers — is too 

 great. As a rule farmers do not have 

 the time to spend in doing so much 

 extra work, neither does the aver- 

 age beekeeper. 



Four of the best colonies of bees I 

 ever saw are owned by Mr. Ayres 

 Hill, a farmer who lives four miles 

 northeast of Princeton, our county 

 seat. Mr. Hill knows nothing about 

 bees and keeps them absolutely on 

 the "let alone" plan. I inspected his 

 bees on the 18th of July. I found 

 them in old box hives made of V/2- 

 inch lumber, 18 inches wide and 27 

 inches tall. The bees had coated the 

 entire inside surface of the hives 

 with a considerable thickness of wax 

 and propolis. The condition of the 

 bees proved that they had wintered 

 perfectly the winter before. They 

 were "boiling over" with bees. There 

 seemed to be more than the equiva- 

 lent of two large swarms in each of 

 those hives. Our honey season has 

 been rather a poor one, but each one 

 of those hives had 100 pounds of sur- 

 plus honey on it. 



Now, a few lessons here. Where 

 did the bees in those hives form their 

 winter cluster last fall for the 



past cold winter: Evidently on the 

 empty combs along the lower lines 

 of their honey and over the cells 

 from which the last brood emerged. 

 The guess is sure. As their honey is 

 consumed they can move upward for 

 it and keep up with their diminishing 

 stores. This i-. the normal way. Now, 

 suppose man, with his superior 

 knowledge (?), had gone to "mess- 

 ing" with those hives on his great 

 idea of vertical contraction and re- 

 moved some of those combs, thus sep- 

 arating the bees from their combs 

 and wax-coated walls, all of which 

 are non-conductors of heat and cold, 

 and inserted wooden "dummies" 

 which are conductors of heat and 

 cold, would he not have done dam- 

 age to the bees and defeated the very 

 object he was trying to accomplish? 

 Again, suppose that those bees had 

 been put on combs filled solidly full 

 of honey and pollen, no empty cells, 

 where would we now find the bees 

 clustered in very cold weather? 

 Just as far away from the en- 

 trance as they could get, which 

 would be at the tops of the combs. 

 Then, if the honey over which they 

 are clustered is consumed during the 

 continuance of the cold spell, what 

 would happen? They would all 

 starve because they could not reach 

 the honey below them. With the De- 

 imith plan, the combs standing on 

 end, the empty cells which were at 

 the bottoms of the frames extending 

 all the way from the bottom to the 

 top along one edge and the honey 

 along the other edge, or side, they 

 are placed in a vertically contracted 

 and abnormal position, and I would 

 expect them to again form their 

 winter cluster at the tops of the 

 frames and starve. If I were to use 

 this plan I would put the bees in the 

 inside case early in the fall and feed 

 liberally to cause them to fill the top 

 part of the frames with honey and 

 rear brood in the combs at the bot- 

 tom so that they would form their 

 winter cluster in a normal position 

 at the bottom ends of the frames. 

 Again, six frames, containing only 

 about 825 square inches of comb, is 

 not enough to supply room for brood- 

 rearing in the spring. Very few bee- 

 keepers use hives large enough. 



J. G. Norto 



