PROTECTION. 115 



As soon as the temperature of the hives falls too low for 

 their comfort, the bees gather themselves into a more compact 

 body, to preserve to the utmost, their animal heat ; and 

 if the cold becomes so great that this will not suffice, they 

 keep up an incessant, tremulous motion, accompanied by a 

 loud humming noise ; in other words, they lake active ex- 

 ercise in order to keep warm ! If a thermometer is push- 

 ed up among them, it will indicate a high temperature, 

 even when the external atmosphere is many degrees below 

 zero. When the bees are unable to maintain the necessary 

 amount of animal heat, an occurrence which is very com- 

 mon with small colonies in badly protected hives, then, as a 

 matter of course, they must perish. 



Extreme cold, when of long continuance, very frequent- 

 ly destroys colonies in thin hives, even when they are 

 strong both in bees and honey. The inside of such hives, 

 is often filled with frost, and the bees, after eating all the 

 food in the combs in which they are clustered, are unable to 

 enter the frosty combs, and thus starve in the midst of 

 plenty. The unskilfuU bee-keeper who finds an abundance 

 of honey in the hives, cannot conjecture the cause of their 

 death. 



If the cold merely destroyed feeble colonies, or strong 

 ones only now and then, it would not be so formidable an 

 enemy ; but every year, it causes many of the most flour- 

 ishing stocks to perish by starvation. The extra quantity 

 of food which they are compelled to eat, in order to keep 

 up their heat in their miserable hives, is often the turning 

 point with them, between life and death. They starve, 

 when with proper protection, they would have had food 

 enough and to spare. 



But some one may say, " What possible difference can 

 the kind of hives in which bees are kept make in the quantt- 



