90 ALEXANDER’S WRITINGS ON PRACTICAL BEE CULTURE 
the honey. But if you remove some of the center combs, and pour 
the honey into them, returning these wet combs to their hive, causing 
all the bees to fill themselves with honey, and to scatter through the 
hive, then again there would be cause for future restlessness and 103s. 
The injurious effects of disturbing bees in winter depends to a great 
extent upon how often and to what an extent it is practiced. Wuen 
we wintered our bees in the cellar of our dwelling-house, with four 
rollicking children playing over them, it was no uncommon thing ior 
many colonies to be badly affected with dysentery in February aod 
March. Then it was “Hobson's choice’ to leave them in the cellar and 
see them waste away and die, or set them out for a fly and have tne 
most of them die after they were put back, for the bees never again 
quieted down into a compact cluster, but continued restless and uneasy 
until they were set out to stay. 
In regard to the effect of a continued jarring noise over a cellar 
of bees, as in the the case of The A. I. Root Co.’s bee-cellar under the 
machine-shop, I would say that I have always believed this disturbance 
was very closely related to the necessity of so many mid-winter flights. 
As to giving bees a sleighride of fifty or sixty miles in mid-winter, 
I am quite sure that there are not many that would care to have their 
bees handled in that way for much less than their actual value. I have 
brought home on a sleigh bees that I bought in the winter, and then 
put them into a cellar; but without a single exception I had to set 
them out early in the spring in order to save them. Bees handled in 
that way never will stand five months or more of confinement. I have 
never thought that it did any particular harm to enter a_ bee-cellar 
occasionally for a few minutes, if as little noise is made as possible. 
But when from any cause a disturbance is made in winter to the 
extent that the cluster is broken up and the bees get frightened, filling 
themselves with honey, then because of the unnatural condition, they 
are injured very much and only a chance to fly will restore them to a 
normal state. 
We have to-day, March 23, 750 colonies in our cellar, and the bees 
are so still with the thermometer at 45° that, when I entered this morn- 
ing with a lamp, it was almost impossible to hear the least noise, and 
there seems to be less than 4 quarts of dead bees in the cellar, and 
not a spot of dysentery on any hive. 
I have given many years of study to learn how to keep bees through 
a five-months’ winter in that way, and I must say that, if there is any 
one thing connected with cellar wintering that has more to do with 
success than any other, aside from good food, it is perfect quiet. When 
we take a hive from the cellar with only about a pint of live bees, and 
see about four or five quarts of dead bees around it, we can hardly say 
that that colony lived through the winter; but when they can be placed 
on their summer stands after 160 days’ confinement, apparently as strong 
as they were Nov. 1, then we can say we know something about win- 
tering. This has been done, is being done, and can be done when they 
are kept quiet. But it will be a long time before it can be accom- 
plished where they are subjected to harsh disturbance during long north- 
ern winters. September, 1907. 
