and tts Economic Management. 221 
centre, a very dangerous plan in cold latitudes, as these 
also carry insufficient stores.* 
Hibernating as applied to Bees.t 
Do bees hibernate? certainly they do. Perhaps not in 
the same way that we are accustomed to view the torpid 
state of the dormouse, the squirrel, or that more voracious 
animal the bear. While the little brown fellows lay up 
a store to which they may repair at periodical awakenings, 
the flesh-eating monster stuffs to repletion and piles up 
layers of fat on his bones till his shaggy coat will hold no 
more. He seeks a retreat with the drowsiness of gluttony 
already perhaps creeping upon him; and then whether 
dead or alive for weeks he knows not, until it may be fitful 
dreams preceding a final awakening, cause him to realise 
that his bones are nearly bare, and his once sleek and 
tightened coat now folds loosely over his ungainly 
carcase, the result of Nature’s long-continued, if niggardly 
draughts upon the stored fuel, that just a bare flame of 
life may be maintained during his dormant state. 
How like all this is to the conditions governing the hive 
bees! These have their period of preparation ; their term 
of low vitality ; their occasional break in the monotony 
of rest; and finally a glorious awakening to all the 
beauteous gifts of light and life. The only thing different 
being that whereas the quadruped sleeps—a sleep almost 
like unto death, the insect may be said simply to “rest” ; 
and in that she is thus free from labour and from) any 
* The losses in America during the severe Winter of 1911-12 
amounted to 75 per cent., through the owners relying on the 
shallow Langstroth frame, so spaced. 
+ It should be observed that quite young bees cannot hibernate ; 
and where the stock has been injudiciously stimulated late into the 
Autumn, there are more of these ‘‘soft”’ bees die off than there are 
of the adults. 
