304 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



September 



and has to receive some attention t < • 

 keep the temperature right. The out- 

 cellar has never really required any 

 attention from the time the bees 

 were put in until I took them out in 

 Spring; although I usually visited it 

 once to three times. Both cellars 

 had arrangements for ventilation. 



Wanting to spend the winter in 

 Tennessee, 1 put all my bees in this 

 out-cellar, thinking they would be 

 perfectly safe. My reason for doing 

 tins was that no one would be in my 

 home, while 1 was away, to look 

 alter tin home cellar. During the 

 summer I had done some repairing 

 at the out-cellar, and when I put the 

 bees in, the ventilators were yet to 

 be put in again 



At our State Convention Mr. ■ 



a representative from the Bureau of 

 Entomology, gave us a lecture, the 

 principal part of it being that they 

 had found a new and much better 

 way of wintering bees than was gen- 

 erally known. He said it had been 

 thoroughly tested and found to be 

 far superior to any other method. 

 He said if the temperature of cellar 

 was SO degrees, the bees were so 

 quiet and comfortable and in such a 

 dormant condition that they required 

 very little oxygen and wintered very 

 much better with all ventilators 

 closed perfectly tight than if given 

 air. 1 remembered that Doolittle 

 said the same thing years ago. The 

 cellar must be at that temperature 

 when the bees were put in. I never 

 until last fall had my cellar so warm 

 as that, when the bees were put in, 

 but it was this time. Heretofore my 

 home cellar would always get up to 

 that the latter part of March, and I 

 would have to take them out early, 

 for they got uneasy. 



Being anxious to leave my bees in 

 perfect condition while away, it ap- 

 pealed to me quite strongly. I had a 

 talk with him about it and told him 

 of my intended trip and how my cel- 

 lars were, etc. He said to shut it up 

 perfectly tight and all would be so 

 good I would never give ventilation 



again. Then I talked with Prof. , 



who, though not a man of much ex- 

 perience with bees, said he was go- 

 ing lo winter our State University 

 bees that way, and said he knew that 

 was the proper way to do. Being in 

 a hurry to get off to the South, and 



as this would save me a day's work 

 from putting in ventilators, 1 yielded 

 my judgment and experience to 

 theirs and "bottled my bees up 

 tight" and made for the Southland. 



The outside temperature has never 

 materially affected that cellar, and I 

 have had that many hives in il be- 

 fore. The temperature was just 50 

 degrees. 



We had our cold week just after 

 January 1, which was the coldest 

 spell we had this winter. Immedi- 

 ately after I left, the 13th, it warmed 

 up and was warm all the while 1 was 

 gone, but I cannot see why this 

 should have affected the cellar 

 much, being three feet under the 

 ground. There is three feet of earth 

 over the top. It is true we had the 

 warmest winter we ever had, and 

 possibly it made some difference. 



The first week in February I wrote 

 to a man to go in the cellar and re- 

 port conditions to me. He wrote the 

 bees were several inches thick on the 

 cellar bottom. I went home from 

 Nashville as quickly as possible, 

 which was about the middle of Feb- 

 ruary. I never saw such a sight and 

 hope to never again. It seemed the 

 bees could smell a little air coming 

 in around the door and had deserted 

 their hives and gone towards the 

 door until the hives nearest it had 

 bees four to six inches thick on the 

 fronts, and many hives farther back 

 had not a bee in them, and the cel- 

 lar registered 62. I shoveled up 

 about eight bushels of dead bees and 

 opened the ventilators and the cel- 

 lar cooled down to normal, and after 

 that but few bees left their hives. As 

 a result, the hives that had any bees 

 in when I removed them from the 

 cellar had from a cupful to a pint, 

 or a little more, to a hive. The 

 weather has been extremely hard on 

 even strong colonies, and at present 

 I have, from 109 fine colonies last 

 fall, probably 20 to 25 three-frame 

 colonies to start beekeeping with 

 again. 



I cannot say what the result would 

 have been if there had been cold 

 weather instead of warm, but this I 

 know, I shall let well enough alone 

 hereafter and experiment on a 

 smaller scale. Had I been at homi 

 and wintered as usual I am posi- 



tive my bees would be in fine shape 

 now. 



It is impossible for me to have any 

 clover honey this year and I can 

 only run for increase and gel my 

 number as far as possible by fall. 



Prof. wrote me that most of 



the University bees were gone with 

 dysentery. I wonder if it was that 

 or want of air." 



Fig. 5. "Chow" back in the g 



Large Hives Again 



YOUR large brood-chamber prop- 

 aganda is attracting considera- 

 ble attention in this State and 1 

 find a number putting in a few Jumbo 

 hives this year for a test. 



In discussing this large brood- 

 chamber matter with President Bar- 

 clay, he said he understood that if 

 you were starting anew you would 

 use the Jumbo depth Hoffman frame. 

 I did not get this from your talks. 

 Is it true? 



E. G. CARR, New Jersey. 



You are both right. I do not 

 think that I would take the Jumbo 

 hive for my standard, if I took in 

 consideration nothing but my own 

 system. 



But, in consideration of the exist- 

 ence of the Langstroth hive length 

 all over the United States, I did say 

 that if we were to begin over again, 

 we would use the standard length of 

 the Langstroth hive, with the depth 

 of ours, which is the Jumbo size of 

 frame. 



However, I want it made very clear 

 that I do not at all relish the spac- 

 ing of the standard frames and of 

 the Jumbo, i. e., the 1^-inch spacing. 

 Never did 1 realize better than I have 

 done for the past two years that the 

 lJ/2-inch spacing is very superior to 

 the narrower. I said and wrote, and 

 am willing to repeat to as many as 

 will listen, that the lfjj spacing is a 

 promoter of natural swarming. This 

 idea is not my own originally, it was 

 emitted by Allen Latham, but it 

 struck me as evidently true, because 

 we had for years used the wide spac- 

 ing and had been successful in avoid- 

 ing swarming, without thinking of 

 the influence of it upon that feature 

 of bee behavior, while others who 

 tried our method, but with the nar- 

 row spacing in their hives, found 

 the method inadequate. 1 secured 

 these ideas concerning the wide spac- 

 ing, from Mr. Latham immediately 

 after attending your New Jersey 

 meetings, in 1916. 



The wide spacing allows '/s inch 

 additional space between each comb, 

 through the height and length of the 

 hive. This space, ten times repeated, 

 between each of the ten frames 

 maki s a space ol ten eighths, or l'.| 

 inches, which multiplied by the 

 length and the depth, give us some- 

 thing like 170 cubic inches of addi- 

 tional space, breathing space and 

 ventilating space, when the hive is 

 full of brood and bee- When the 

 hive is filling with honey, it adds 

 several pounds of honey above the 

 brood, just where it ought to be, be- 

 , ause lb,- bees do not need all the 

 space to travel through and there- 

 fore narrow it down by lengthening 



