CHAPTER 12 

 Wintering 



If we have a sufficiency of honey in the brood combs, a 

 good strong colony of bees upon those combs, we have the best 

 possible conditions for winter, provided the honey is of good 

 quality. 



We had very expensive experience with honeydew, har- 

 vested in July and retained in the brood combs for winter. We 

 had similarly great losses with fruit juice, apple juice, grape 

 juice, etc., harvested by the bees in September-October, during 

 a dearth of honey. The season of 1879 was especially dis-courag- 

 ing, for, while the bees did no damage to sound fruit and only 

 gathered grape-juice from bird -damaged grapes and sweet cider 

 from damaged apples, many of our neighbors thought that we 

 were getting rich at their expense, supposing that our bees were 

 transforming all that fruit juice into good honey. The truth 

 of the matter was that many a bee was unable to even reach 

 home with the fermented juices that it gathered, in lieu of good 

 honey. Although we tried to take out of the comb all the cider 

 and fermented grape juice that they thus stored in the cells, 

 there was enough left to poison them during the cold days. 



Honeydew, fruit juice, cheap syrups, and honey containing 

 many pollen grains, are bad winter food. To keep warm, the 

 bees must consume honey and they must have as pure saccharine 

 matter as possible, as all grades of sweet food containing acids, 

 vegetable matter, starch, etc., leave a large amount of residue 

 in their intestines, which they must discharge out of the hive, 

 on the wing, or suffer from diarrhea or dysentery. This is dis- 

 charged in the hive, upon the other bees of the cluster, if the 

 weather is too cold for them to void their feces outside. That 

 is why many of the most practical apiarists feed their bees the 

 best quality of sugar syrup to complete their winter stores. 

 It is a good method to follow, even if some desk-educated apiar- 

 ists affirm that bee diseases are due to the use of sugar in bee 

 food. We are quite willing to grant that, for spring food, nothing 

 is better than honey, because of its containing matter which 



99 



