STATE BEE-KEEPERS^ ASSOCIATION. 85 



Mr. Kimmey — My point is, is it possible that the bees 

 would be so cold that they would make less noise than they 

 ought to? 



Dr. Miller — No, sir, unless they are dead. When they 

 are dead they make hardly any noise! (Laughter.) 



Mr. Kimmey — I don't want that then. I have tried to 

 keep mine between 45 and 50 degrees, and have succeeded 

 very well and have not lost any. I would like to do better 

 than that if I could ! 



Mr. Abbott — I would like to ask a question, to bring out 

 a point. Dr. Miller says that they will make some noise un- 

 less they are so cold that they are dead. I should like to 

 know if Dr. Miller thinks that bees ever get so cold in the 

 cellar or out-of-doors that they die from cold when they 

 have plenty to eat? I don't think they do. 



Dr. Miller — There are some things I don't know. One 

 of the things I do know is that Mr. Abbott doesn't think as 

 I do about that. My bees will freeze. I take a bee in my 

 hand and if I hold it out in the cold long enough, that bee 

 is going to freeze. 



* Mr. Abbott — That is not the question. Don't confine it 

 to a single bee. If two lie together they make heat. You 

 can't make heat with one. If a lot of bees lie together they 

 make heat. Do they ever freeze when they all lie together in 

 that way? 



Mr. Dadant — How big a bunch of bees? 



Mr. Abbott — The ordinary size? 



Dr. Miller — If there is a stove in a room and it is hot 

 enough people are not going to freeze, and as long as there is 

 plenty of food there to keep the furnace going the bees will 

 keep up that heat; they are not going to freeze. When they 

 fail of that they are going to freeze, Mr. Abbott to the con- 

 trary, notwithstanding. He says they starve. I say they freeze. 

 You can pay your money and take your choice. 



Ernest R. Root — I would like to answer both Mr. Abbott's 

 and Dr. Miller's questions. Last surrimer in queen-rearing 

 operations we conducted a series of experiments to get some 

 drone-layers. We had read in some of the old works that if 

 you freeze a queen for awhile she will become a drone-layer. 

 So I took about a dozen of our young, nice vigorous laying 

 queens, caged them with the bees, put them on a cake of ice 

 in a refrigerator and left them, varying all the way from two 

 hours up to 48. I expected some of them to be dead. The 

 bees were perfectly stiff at the end of two hours. I took them 

 out and examined them and put them back, and some of them 

 we put into nuclei to see what they would do, to see whether 

 the queens would refuse to lay regular worker eggs. I don't 

 know whether you believe me or not — I don't know whether 

 Dr. Miller or Mr. Abbott would; I don't know exactly how 

 they disagree, but we found in every case that when taken off 

 the ice, chilled, cold — I won't say they were frozen to death; 

 they couldn't have been — in a few hours they would "come 

 to;" the queens would begin in three or four days afterwards 



J^Ai*.\i^iSivi'Ji^':i . 



