166 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



were used three yeurs without the loss of ii 

 colony in winter or .i swarm from them in 

 summer. In the summer of ]KS(), those 

 twelve colonies iivei'uued 1(>1 pounds per col- 

 ony of extracted honey, while the balance of 

 the yard (forty-nine colonies, mostly on two 

 tiers of L. frames) averaged only I0(! pounds. 

 We then made two more "shot towers," aiul 

 hiive never lost a colony in them. liast 

 winter we nuide twt^lve nu)re of these tail 

 hives, each holding,' four colonies, so that we 

 now have sev(aiteen " shot towers," sixteen 

 of them full of bees (sixty-four colonies in 

 all), and we intend to make more of them 

 the conuuf^ winter. We think tiiem the 

 most profitable hive we have. 



Now we l)elieve that bees will winter as 

 safely in these lar^t^ tall hives as in a (^<llar, 

 providing they have iilenty of honey, and as 

 we always have a rousiny colony, the biy 

 hive is filled as soon as a small colony fills a 

 small hive. We believe bees eat more stores 

 out-doors, but we also believe that they 

 come out in better trim in the spring. 



Platteville, Wis., 



An 



1SS'.». 



Slight Packing Preferable to Chaff Hives- 

 Quality and Quantity of Stores 

 All-Important. 



R. L. TAYT-OU. 



R^IIIS IS a subject upon which I am all 

 at sea. As I make no pretence of abil- 

 ity to say how to successfully winter 

 bees out of doors, I shall nuike no at- 

 tempt in that direction ; and, at best, can 

 only nuike suyt,'(!stions indicating some 

 methods which arc not successful. 



To be sure, I have wintered l)ees successful- 

 ly out-doors, but the methoiis used on such 

 occasions have jyrovtKl iiiade(iuate at other 

 and more tryiuff times. Several winters I 

 made use of a few chaff hives of the Jvoot 

 pattern, but with me they proved a decided 

 failure. In such hives I used two chaff divis- 

 ion boards, and a chaff cushion on the 

 frames, but in every hard winter any other 

 method I tried proved better than this. The 

 other methods used to a considerable extent 

 were two, viz., ten-fame Ij. hives with five 

 to seven coml)s, a chaff division board on 

 each side, chaff or chaff cushions in an upper 

 story ; and the same arrant^ement with the 

 additional protection of an outer box, 

 within which was a packing of six or eight 

 inches of straw on all sides and top of the 

 hive. Unex[)ectedly, the ones without the 

 outer packing wintered the better. So that, 

 so far as my experience extends, ten-frame 

 single-walled hiv<^s, with internal packing, 

 stand first in effectiveness ; the sanus with 

 outer straw packing, second ; and the chaff 

 hives last. The crucial and final extensive 

 test came in the disastrous winter of '80-81, 

 The best method proved so unsatisfactory 

 at that time that 1 had recourse to cellar 

 wintering, which has proved so much safer, 

 cheaper and more convenient every way 

 that I have since tried out-door wintering 



only in a small way, and that has only had 

 the effect of wedding me more and more to 

 cellar wintering. 



Hetween twelve and twenty-five miles 

 east of me are two considerable apiaries 

 where out-door wintering so invariably fails 

 that it is considered more i)rolitable to de- 

 stroy the bees in the fall, save the combs 

 and honey, and purchase from the South in 

 spring; while about eighteen miles north- 

 east is an ai>iary where bees, packed, winter 

 out of doors with great success. These facts 

 ar(( suggestive. Leaving out the question of 

 food, who will say that any safe rule can be 

 laid down for wintering bees out-doors in 

 this latitude? If I could winter bees safely 

 out of doors here, would it be safe to say I 

 could do so ten miles from here? I think 

 not. Not that ten miles of latitude or lon- 

 gitude is material in itself, but the differ- 

 ence in the Hora which is the source of the fiill 

 crop of honey and pollen I think is. Unless 

 I am right here, the frecpient failures in win- 

 tering bees are to me as yet impenetrable 

 mysteries. 



1 can sum up my knowledge on this sub- 

 ject by saying that, besides the matter of 

 the (luality of the winter stores, there is but 

 one thing of importance I feel sure of, and 

 that is th(^ necessity of an abundance of 

 stores. Suflicieut for the use of the l)ees is 

 not enough. There should be so much that 

 the bees are entirely at ease with reference 

 to su])plies — never less than thirty pounds 

 and that in compact form. 



Lai-kkk, Mich., Aug. 11, 18S<). 



Several Aids to Wintering— All Fail When 



the Food is Poor and the Bees 



Can't Fly. 



BYEON WALKEE. 



"^/^IRIEND II. your letter of recent date, 

 i^ N together with Ivk.vikw for August, at 

 (JJLjc hand. Yes, you have reason to be 

 proud of this nuinl)er, in fact the Re- 

 view is a decided success in the field it aims 

 to fill, and deserves a liberal support. 



I agree with the correspondents referred 

 to, that in introducing the special topic for 

 the Septend)er luimber, you have covered 

 the ground so fully, that but little remains 

 to be said ; and although I have had a large 

 experience covering nearly all sorts of pack- 

 ing, and methods of preparation, there is 

 really not enough renuuning to be said to 

 make it worth while to attempt an article on 

 the subject. I will merely mention a few 

 points that I have found important. 



A wide entrance to the outside box, taking 

 care that this is not deep enough to admit 

 mice. An entrance protector nuide of two 

 riglitangled triangular pieces of inch board 

 jind a piece of thin board as wide as the 

 longest side of these blocks and a little 

 longer than the entrance to the outside box. 

 This stands on a projection of the bottom 

 board during stormy weather, and also 

 serves a gt)od purpose as an alighting board 

 when needed. High, close wind-breaks on 



